Disability and the Supernatural in pre modern Britain and Ireland

Building on recent advances in disability studies this project will establish a new and important category of analysis in both the history of the supernatural and of disability. It will position the study of demonic possession, witchcraft and a variety of practical magical beliefs, practices and practitioners in early modern Britain, Ireland and America as a new, key a way to historize disability and highlight the agency, discrimination, and resistance of disabled people in the past. Through close analysis of understudied newly discovered case studies and primary material it will study physical impairment and sensory acuity and extent and/or mental illness or cognitive or intellectual development in this new context.