Disability, the Body, and Radical Intellectuals in the Literature of the Civil War and Reconstruction

Sarah E. Chinn is Professor of English at Hunter College, CUNY. She is the author of three other books: Technology and the Logic of American Racism: A Cultural History of the Body as Evidence (2000), The Invention of Modern Adolescence: The Children of Immigrants in Turn-of-the-Century America (2007), and Spectacular Men: Race, Gender, and Nation on the Early American Stage (2017), which won the 2017 George Freedley Memorial Award for an exemplary work in the field of live theatre or performance from the American Theatre Library Association.

• Introduction: a new kind of nation: Amputation, reconstruction, and the promise of black citizenship; 1. Giving up the ghost: the dead child vs. the amputated limb; 2. 'Strewn promiscuously about': limbs and what happens to them; 3. 1860 or 1865? Amending the national body; 4. 'I don't care a rag for the Union as it was': amputation, the past, and the work of the Freedmen's Bureau; 5. Shaking hands: manual politics and the end of reconstruction; Conclusion: Eloquent Emptiness.

'Juxtaposing detailed accounts of literary representations with “true stories” from soldiers who lost limbs, this compelling book presents valuable critical and historical perspectives on how amputation served as a visible reminder of loss during and after the Civil War.' Shirley Samuels, Cornell University