We are looking for a literary specialist to review Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature (Rosemarie Garland Thomson, 2016), which explores the social constructions and representations of disability in the United States. Further information about the themes under study can be found at Colombia University Press.
‘Extraordinary Bodies’ inaugurates a new field of disability studies by framing disability as a minority discourse rather than a medical one, revising oppressive narratives and revealing liberatory ones. The book examines disabled figures in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Rebecca Harding Davis’s Life in the Iron Mills, in African-American novels by Toni Morrison and Audre Lorde, and in the popular cultural ritual of the freak show.
If you would like to review Extraordinary Bodies (no more than 1,000 words in length), then please consult our reviewer’s guidelines and email our reviews editor with a short explanation of why you are well placed to review the book.