Disability and Bodily Difference in Early Modern Europe

Description

Refereed conference session organised on the occasion of the 68th Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America.

The history of disability is an important and growing area of interest, providing a new analytical category along with race, gender and sex to historians exploring life in Renaissance Europe. As the papers in this conference session demonstrate, histories of disability offer original insights into culture and religion in the period. While English literature experts have explored the portrayal of bodily difference, impairment, and exclusion in this period, these papers provide an historical analysis of the lived experiences of people with disability. Challenging assumptions about the nature of disabilities in renaissance Europe, they offer conclusions about processes of 'othering’, the impact of religious change, and what constituted a disability in early modern Europe. We examine perceptions of physical and mental impairment, address the social and cultural factors that ‘disable’, and explore the impact on renaissance ideas of embodiment. The three organisers (Jenni Kuuliala, Angelo Lo Conte and Rosamund Oates) will draw together their work on different disabilities across Europe in the renaissance, to ask what similarities and changes we can see in perceptions and experiences of disability and bodily difference in the early modern period. The panel will be chaired by Julia DeLancey, herself an expert in disability in renaissance Venice.

Period	1 Apr 2022
Event title	Disability and Bodily Difference in Early Modern Europe: 68th Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America
Event type	Seminar
Location	Dublin, IrelandShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International