Cultures of disability
The Cultures of Disability group explores the experiences of disability throughout history. We work with disabled people and academics to share the history of disability people over a 3000-year period, from ancient Greece to the modern day. We explore the cultures of disability, foregrounding the contributions of disabled people and addressing prejudice. By making disabled people more visible, we question contemporary ideas of ‘normal’ and challenge barriers to inclusion in all walks of life.
We want to explore new ways of doing the history of disability and to promote it in the heritage sector. This website is where we make the results of academic research into disability history available for everyone. It is also a way for anyone to get in touch with us, and one of the ways in which we can share co-produced history and collaborations with disabled people’s organisations. We provide links to online events and events in Manchester on this website too. We welcome enquiries from anyone (including potential PhD students) who want to work with us.
We study the long history of disability to promote the inclusion and integration of disabled people into society. Here are some of the staff and students based at Manchester Metropolitan University who research into the experiences and cultures of disability, past and present.
Leibniz’s Examination of the Christian Religion
Prof Lloyd Strickland has produced a new critical edition of Examen religionis Christianae, one of the most important theological writings by the German polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.
The new edition includes previously unpublished material drawn from the Leibniz’s drafts as well as the reaction of a near-contemporary scholar. Written in 1686, Examination of the Christian Religion explores topics such as the love of God, sin and evil, and the afterlife. But more importantly it focuses on issues contested by the Catholics and Protestants of Leibniz’s day, such as divorce, the sacraments, and purgatory. Prof Strickland compiled the new translation working from Leibniz’s unfinished, handwritten draft and the original Latin manuscript, and it includes passages the author deleted. Also included for the first time is commentary by eighteenth century historian Johann Daniel Gruber. Previously unpublished, Gruber’s marginal comments made on a fair copy of Examen are the first critical response to the text, almost a century before it was published, and capture the concerns of an orthodox Lutheran.