French and Italian
College of Liberal Arts
Twin Cities
Award Year
2021
University Award
McKnight Land-Grant Professorship
Research Title
The Body Perfect: Race and the Aesthetics of Ableism in the Early French and Francophone World
No Monument Location
Ableism is the belief that able bodies and minds are more worthy than disabled ones. How was this belief formed? Jennifer Row draws upon interdisciplinary archives (dance manuals to fairy tales to floor plans) to examine the formation of ableism and racism in the early modern French court and French Atlantic slavery. How and why were a variety of embodiments and mental traits sorted into a hierarchy of disposable, expendable lives and lives that matter?