Tag: Disability
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Herman ‘the Crippled’ – Early Medieval Disability
This week, I want to take a quick look at Herman Contractus (elsewhere Hermann of Reichenau). An eleventh-century German Benedictine monk, Herman is the subject of Berthold of Reichenau’s Chronicle, the author of his own chronicle, and an impressive portfolio of music. Despite his contributions, Herman is most remarkable for his Medieval Latin nickname contractus.…
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Studying ‘Disability’ in History
Understanding and Framing ‘Disability’ A consistent trend in modern academic history has been to challenge ideas that we have traditionally seen as straight-forwards and monolithic. Real life is rarely this simplistic. Variation across time and space makes clear that many cultural trends of the modern world are cultural creations, and vary substantially across history. Recently,…
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Nicknames of ‘Disability’ in Early Medieval England
Last term I attended a confernce put on by the American Names Society to present a paper based on my current PhD work on early medieval nicknames. Specifically, I was talking about nikcnames surrounding disability, and how they might have been used among early medieval popualtions to navigate ideas of ‘difference’, and whether they were…