The Limits of the Human Fictions of Anomaly, Race and Gender in the Long Eighteenth Century

Felicity Nussbaum examines literary and cultural representations of human difference in England and its empire during the eighteenth century. Focusing especially on women's writing, Nussbaum analyzes it from the Restoration to abolition by considering a range of anomalies (defects, disease, and disability) as they intermingle with ideas of femininity, masculinity, and race to define "normalcy". Incorporating writings by Burney, Johnson, Sterne, Equiano and others, she covers a range of disabilities altered by emerging concepts of racial femininity and masculinity.