Description: Explores how conceptions of intellectual disability shaped or were shaped by culture and society in England, Europe and beyond in the period from 1500-1700.
Brief description: Alice Equestri is a Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Padua, Italy and former Marie Sklodowska-Curie researcher at the University of Sussex. She has published two monographs: Literature and Intellectual Disability in Early Modern England: Folly, Law, and Medicine 1500-1640 (2021; winner of the AIA Junior Book Prize 2023) and The Fools of Shakespeare's Romances (2016). Her essays have appeared in venues including Studies in Philology, the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature, Renaissance Studies, Notes and Queries, Disability Studies Quarterly and Cahiers Élisabéthains. Her research interests include folly and intellectual disability in Early Modern English Literature, Shakespeare, Robert Armin, English translations or adaptations of Italian novellas, and law and literature.
Review Quotes: This is an excellent book, written responsibly and with care, that makes a compelling case for bringing experiences of disability from the past into conversation with experiences in the present. I learned much from reading it.--Elizabeth Bearden, University of Wisconsin-Madison