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March 2024
- Pages 119-125
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June 2023
- Pages 88-100
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March 2023
- Pages 41-47
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June 2022
- Pages 30-40
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June 2022
- Pages 68-76
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September 2022
- Pages 115-122
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March 2023
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September 2021
- Pages 122-129
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September 2021
- Pages 206-216
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The greatest health problem of the Middle Ages? Estimating the burden of disease in medieval England
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September 2021
- Pages 168-181
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December 2021
- Pages 22-28
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March 2022
- Pages 14-23
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New article – Speaking in Hands: Early Modern Preaching and Signed Languages for the Deaf, by Rosamund Oates, pub. in Past & Present, 2021
New journal issue – Early Modern DisAbility History // DisAbility in der Frühen Neuzeit in the journal Frühen Neuzeit

Extract from the CFP
Imagine the following scenario (Goodey, 1): time travel is possible nowadays. A person labelled as disabled in today’s society has access to a time machine and travels some centuries back in time. Would this person be considered disabled in other times as well? Depending on the era and the culture this person would encounter, the answer might differ significantly. Hence, we start from the basic assumption that disability is subject to both cultural and historical change. It is therefore the result of constructions and attributions embedded in a specific historical period and culture.
In addition, being able or disabled always depends on other social categories and dynamics: Is the time traveller male or female, what is his/her social position and familial ties in the society he/she travels to, to which ethnic or religious community would the person belong, etc.? An axiom of DisAbility History stresses that “[l]ike gender, like race, disability must become a standard analytical tool in the historian’s tool chest” (Longmore/Umansky, 15). Methodologically, DisAbility History benefits from looking at intersections of analytical categories. This means that disability can only be understood in relation to ability. Therefore, it is also crucial to ask who is regarded to be able or unable to do something in certain contexts.
Continuities as well as ruptures shape our understanding of the early modern period. On the one hand, early modern times might retrospectively appear to be the incubation period of modernity (“Inkubationszeit der Moderne”, Paul Münch). In DisAbility History, we can assume that the emergence of the Cartesian mind-body dualism, of secularisation, medicalisation, or the long-standing scholarly trend to categorise phenomena, to name only a few examples, affected and changed the ways of understanding diseases and health until today. On the other hand, as researchers, we are constantly addressing early modern otherness in terminologies, experiences and conceptualisations of DisAbility. In addition, we notice some astonishingly persistent continuities from the medieval to early modern period when it comes to treating illness and disease.
Table of Contents
- Julia Gebke and Julia Heinemann
Dealing with Definitional Voids. DisAbility in Early Modern Europe - Patrick Schmidt
Writing a Discourse History of Multiple Discourses. An Approach to Perceptions and Constructions of Dis/ability in Seventeenth- and Eigteenth-Century European Societies - Philine Helas
Krank, alt, blind. Zur Darstellung des Bettlers in der italienischen Malerei zwischen dem 14. und 18. Jahrhundert - Riikka Miettinen
‘Disabled’ Minds. Mental Impairments and Dis/ability in Early Modern Sweden - Carlos Watzka
Prävention und Rehabilitation von Behinderungen der Erwerbsfähigkeit als Bestandteile der Gesundheitsversorgung im konfessionellen Staat der Frühen Neuzeit. Das Beispiel der Barmherzigen Brüder in Österreich und ihrer Förderung durch die Habsburger - Simon Jarrett
Myths of Marginality. Idiocy in Britain in the Long Eighteenth Century - Bianca Frohne
Living with Pain. Exploring Strange Temporalities in Premodern Disability History
New article – “The Female Condition: Gender and Deformity in High-Medieval Miracle Narratives” by Anne E Bailey, in Gender & History
Abstract
This article explores the intersection of medicine, religion and gender within the context of miracle narratives compiled in England and France in the High Middle Ages. Women in miracle accounts have much to tell us about medieval ideas of gendered sickness and health, yet this is an area which has received little scholarly attention. Focusing on stories of female deformity and disfigurement, it is argued that sickness has a feminising effect on women’s bodies in these sources, but proposed that symptoms of excess femininity were not always seen as the spiritual hindrance that might be expected.
First published: 19 February 2021 https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0424.12519
[Correction added on 20th April 2021, after first online publication: Amendments have been made throughout the text for clarity.]
New publication – Mirator Vol 2020-2 (2021): Disability in the Medieval Nordic World, Edited by Christopher Crocker.

Mirator is a multilingual peer-reviewed electronic journal devoted to medieval studies. It is published by Glossa, the Society for Medieval Studies in Finland.
Open acces edition and more information on the Mirator Journal website.