Extraordinary bodies: figuring physical disability in American culture and literature

The cultural work of American freak shows, 1835-1940. The spectacle of the extraordinary body

Constituting the average man

Identification and the longing for distinction

From freak to specimen : "The Hottentot Venus" and "The Ugliest Woman in the World"

The end of the prodigious body.

Benevolent maternalism and the disabled women in Stowe, Davis, and Phelps. The maternal benefactress and her disabled sisters

The disabled figure as a call for justice : Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's cabin

Empowering the maternal benefactress

Benevolent maternalism's flight from the body

The female body as liability

Two opposing scripts of female embodiment : Rebecca Harding Davis's Life in the iron mills

The triumph of the beautiful, disembodied heroine : Elizabeth Stuart Phelps's The silent partner.

Disabled women as powerful women in Petry, Morrison, and Lorde. Revising Black female subjectivity

The extraordinary woman as powerful woman : Ann Petry's The street

From the grotesque to the cyborg

The extraordinary body as the historicized body : Toni Morrison's disabled women

The extraordinary subject : Audre Lorde's Zami : a new spelling of my name

The poetics of particularity.