Negotiating the Disabled Body

<p>Negotiating the Disabled Body explores how nonnormative bodies are presented in early Christian literature through the lens of disability studies. In a number of case studies Solevåg shows how early Christians struggled to come to terms with issues relating to body health and dis/ability. These efforts to interpret unruly and extraordinary bodies appear in the texts in a multitude of ways from healing in the gospels to inflicting disability in the Acts of Peter and from theologizing in Paul’s letters to using disability as invective in Papias. Solevåg  uses the concepts of “narrative prosthesis” gaze and stare stigma monster theory and crip theory to examine early Christian material to reveal the multiple polyphonous contradictory ways in which nonnormative bodies appear.</p>