“An excellent, timely, and necessary book that upends the problematic assumption in contemporary disability studies that norming influences didn’t exist in premodern societies. Highly interdisciplinary, Monstrous Kinds is an important contribution to both premodern and contemporary disability studies.”
—Allison P. Hobgood, Willamette University
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“An innovative book that will significantly contribute to the growing body of knowledge of Renaissance disability. The variety of texts examined from different geographical areas and languages, and the in-depth analysis of the works and images, are outstanding.”
—Encarnación Juárez-Almendros, University of Notre Dame
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"In Monstrous Kinds Bearden contributes to this critical intervention, making a strong case for what disability theorists can learn from a deeper understanding of premodern constructions of disability, and what scholars of early modern monstrosity can learn from disability studies.... Bearden's Monstrous Kinds is required reading for scholars interested in disability's past, present, and futures."
—Kristina Lucenko, Disability Studies Quarterly
— Kristina Lucenko, Disability Studies Quarterly
"Bearden, to take another instance, has shown how encounters with disabled persons in Mexican and Ottoman cultures at once establish “the ubiquity of disability” and reinforce “European understandings of the alternative capacities that sensory impairment generates.”
—Melissa E. Sanchez, English Literary Renaissance
— Melissa E. Sanchez, English Literary Renaissance
"Elizabeth Bearden's Monstrous Kinds is a much-needed, rich, interdisciplinary, and global contribution to the study of embodiment in the early modern period."
—Renaissance Quarterly
— Julia A. DeLancey, Renaissance Quarterly
"In its attention to the similarities, as well as differences, in representations of disability across genre, geography, culture and historical period, Monstrous Kinds fulfills its wish to recognize that ‘we have more in common with past attitudes to disability, both good and ill, than we first might like to admit’ and exemplifies the ways in which scholarly diversity and collaboration can enrich critical disability studies."
—Lee Hansen, Renaissance Studies
— Lee Hansen, Renaissance Studies
"Elizabeth B. Bearden’s Monstrous Kinds: Body, Space, and Narrative in Renaissance Representations of Disability is a valuable survey of how monstrosity and disability get deployed in conduct manuals and travel narratives in early modern Europe"
—SEL Review
— Professor Ryan Netzley, SEL: Studies in English Literature
"In arguing for the presence of sophisticated, complicated ideas about disability, impairment, and social power in the early modern period, Bearden shows that disability need not be a purely modern concept: the vibrancy of disability history is there, if we look for it"
—Emily Price, Supernatural Studies
— Emily Price, Supernatural Studies
Winner: 2017 Tobin Siebers Prize for Disability Studies in the Humanities
— Tobin Siebers Prize