'Disabled Bodies in Early Modern Spanish Literature: Prostitutes, Aging Women and Saints provides a politically urgent critical approach to disability and female corporeality in early modern Spanish literary and social discourse. Rigorous in its historical contextualization and offering innovative, compelling readings of classic works, this book challenges familiar interpretations of women's bodies in texts of this period, transforming prior disciplinary boundaries and categories of analysis.'
Professor Susan Antebi, University of Toronto 'Blending historical context and literary text with disability studies method, Encarnacion Juarez-Almendros sets out to challenge the foundations of early modern scholarship through a long-awaited critical feminist examination of disability as both a social construction and an embodied material experience.'
Benjamin Fraser, Professor and Chair, Thomas Harriot College of Arts & Sciences, East Carolina University 'Juarez-Almendros's work demonstrates the usefulness of the lens of feminist disability theory as a new way to examine the premodern perception of women. She calls upon an excellent range of historical, sociological, and literary sources to frame and bolster her argument...this work is a welcome addition to studies on early modern Spanish culture.'

Kristy Wilson Bowers, H-Disability 'Throughout this book, Juarez-Almendros controls an impressive amount of medical knowledge from the period. This is evident not just in the chapters themselves but in the numerous discursive endnotes, which often add textual material to support points she is making and carry the discussion forward. All of the literary texts she discusses are canonical and so have been written about extensively and from different critical viewpoints, which is something her bibliography reflects. Finally, the introduction contains a brief and accessible discussion of disability studies as a discipline with references to some of the most important scholars and works in the field.'
Madeline Sutherland-Meier, Bulletin of the Comediantes Reviews
'The book is an excellent example of how to apply concepts created for the study of the present to the past. It is a well-documented and written in a concise style that uses only the necessary words to express complex ideas.'
Enrique Fernandez, Romance Quarterly 'It constitutes a substantial contribution to the field of disability and ageism studies, as well as a key text for scholars of Spanish early modern literature.'


Victoria Rivera-Cordero, Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal