This bibliography includes areas such as culture, disability, and gender.
Suggestions for additions or review copies are welcome. E-mail.

The Disability History Association maintains a list of recent publications in disability history here.

Allen, Robert C. Horrible Prettiness: Burlesque and American Culture. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991.
More than a history of a form of theater, Allen studies burlesque as a cultural phenomenon that expresses struggles of power through bodies.

Ashley, Benedict. Theologies of the Body: Humanist and Christian. Braintree: Pope John XIII Medical-Moral Research and Education Center, 1995.
A massive book that views the development of ideologies of the body in relation to a modern notion that they are freely manipuable by technology.

Bishop, Marilyn, editor. Religion and Disability. Kansas City: Sheed & Ward, 1995.
A collection of theological and practical reflections on bodies and religion.

Bottomley, Frank. Attitudes to the Body in Western Christendom. London: Lepus, 1979.
Bottomley's thesis is that Christianity proclaimed a new relationship of creation and Creator that resulted in new respect for the body due to the Incarnation. He traces this strain through the Reformation, after which such points are sectarian.

Black, Kathy. A Healing Homiletic: Preaching and Disability.. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996.
Contains a sketch of historical matters related to religion and disability, a survey of "homiletical hazards" in certain texts, and in-depth study of several texts.

Bowker, John. Problems of Suffering in Religions of the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970.
Traces how various religions deal with suffering, including the body.

Bynum, Caroline Walker. Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion. New York: Zone Books, 1991.
Bynum, Caroline Walker. The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity 200-1336. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995.
In both books, Bynum deals with medieval religious interest in maintaining the wholeness of the human body, even after death, and its implications for the Christian doctrine of resurrection.

Calabro, Tina. "Breaking Down Barriers" Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 5, 2005.
A report on a conference that notes the ongoing adherence to a variety of stereotypes about disability in the religious sector.

Creamer, Deborah. 1995. "Finding God in our bodies: theology from the perspective of people with Disabilities," Journal of Religion in Disability and Rehabilitation 2(2):67-87.

Duff, Nancy J. "Atonement and the Christian Life: Reformed Doctrine from a Feminist Perspective," Interpretation 53 (January 1999): 21-33.
Classic doctrines of Christian atonement are a theological problem, for they encourage passive tolerance of abuse. She deals with these doctrines as theological misinterpretations.

Eiesland, Nancy. The Disabled God: Toward a Liberatory Theology of Disability. Nashville: Abingdon, 1994.
A ground-breaking study that seeks to place physical disabilities in the liberation theology tradition as one of the areas of God's special concern.

Eiesland, Nancy and Donald Saliers, editors. Human Disability and the Service of God: Reassessing Religious Practice. Nashville: Abingdon, 1998.

Haj, F. Disability in Antiquity. New York: Philosophical Library, 1970.
Historical study that includes information on the difficulty of interpreting passages about bodies in the ancient world.

Jones-Stiteler, Valerie C. "Singing without a Voice: Using Disability Images in the Language of Public Worship" Liturgical Ministry 1(1992): 140-142.
"Must reading" for anyone concerned about the uses of body images in public speech.

Lears, T. J. Jackson. No Place of Grace: Antimodernism and the Transformation of American Culture, 1880-1920. New York: Pantheon Books, 1981.
A crucial book for understanding American culture and attitudes at the turn of the century. This book does not deal with bodily images directly, but gives insight into religious and psychological developments that bear directly on bodily images.

Miles, M. "Some Historical notes on religions, Ideologies and the Handicapped," Al Mushir 23 (1981): 125-134.
Short article that includes implications of bodily ideas on religious practice.

Putney, Clifford. Muscular Christianity: manhood and sports in Protestant America, 1880-1920. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001.
Fulfilling an "ideal" manhood, generally based on a strong physique and accomplishment in sports, is a recurring interest in some Christian groups (and one that is becoming more popular in the early twenty-first century). This book looks into the roots of the practice and its cultural implications. It is not specifically about disability, but many of the ideas of "muscular" Christianity are problematic for any interested in the topic.

Rosen, Christine. Preaching Eugenics: Religious Leaders and the American Eugenics Movement. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Uncovers the problematic relationship of religion as it often succumed to popular culture with specific reference to eugenics, a theory that resulted in, among other things, Hilter's atrocities.

Stauffer, Anita "Worship and Culture: Five Theses," Studia Liturgica 26.
How worship interacts with culture.

Van Gilder, Kirk Alan. "Deaf America's Encounter with Methodism: A Brief Look at a Culture and a Church," Methodist History 36 (July 1998): 239-249.
Includes a discussion of deafness as a cultural group, history of benevolent institutions and education, and pioneering Deaf ministers.

Wilke, Harold H. "No Steps to Heaven" Christian Century 96 (September 12, 1979): 844-848.
An work by one of the founders of disability concerns in religious groups.

Wink, Walter. "The Bible and exclusion, bias and prejudice" Witness 77 (1994): 14-16.
Misreadings of the Bible that contribute to problems with bodily images.

Woods, Brian and Nick Watson. "The social and technological history of wheelchairs" International Journal of Therapy and Rehabilition 11 (September 2004):407-410.
Not at all religious, but a reminder of the role technology plays in our ideas of how the world works and what is possible.