Vera Keller, History, and 2024–25 OHC Faculty Research Fellow.

For many today, the European Renaissance defined an impossible human ideal against which we have been measured and found lacking. I offer a new interpretation, contending that disability was centered in the period in forgotten ways. Individuals who demonstrated adaptive abilities, such as armless artists who painted with their feet, represented the acme of Renaissance art. This view of an adaptable human/technology interface had a dark side, shaping new ideas about labor and endurance in the emergent Industrial Revolution.