In Renaissance humanism, difference was understood through a variety of paradigms that rendered particular kinds of bodies and minds disabled. A Cultural Histor

18th century philosopher Edmund Burke wrote, 'deformity is opposed, not to beauty, but to the complete, common form. If one of the legs of a man be found shorte

In the period 1450 to 1650 in Europe, hair was braided, curled, shaped, cut, colored, covered, decorated, supplemented, removed, and reused in magic, courtship,

How has our understanding and treatment of disability evolved in Western culture? How has it been represented and perceived in different social and cultural con

The Middle Ages was an era of dynamic social transformation, and notions of disability in medieval culture reflected how norms and forms of embodiment interacte