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Podcast: New Books in Disability Studies
Episode: Meghan Henning, "Hell Hath No Fury: Gender, Disability, and the Invention of Damned Bodies in Early Christian Literature" (Yale UP, 2021)
Description: In her book Hell Hath No Fury: Gender, Disability, and the Invention of Damned Bodies in Early Christian Literature (Yale University Press, 2021), Meghan Henning illuminates how the bodies that populate hell in early Christian literature are punished after death in spaces that mirror real carceral spaces, effectually criminalizing those bodies on Earth. Contextualizing the apocalypses alongside ancient medical texts, inscriptions, philosophy, and patristic writings, this book demonstrates the ways that Christian depictions of hell intensified and preserved ancient notions of gender and bodily normativity that continue to inform Christian identity.Meghan R. Henning is associate professor of Ch...