Leah Pope Parker

We don't take teaching seriously enough.

New Workshop Series: Call for Participants Saints Outside Hagiography We invite expressions of interest to participate in a new series of online workshops examining how saints and holy people are represented outside the classic form of the single-text hagiography, what Thomas J. Heffernan calls the ‘sacred biography’. This group aims to bring together scholars interested in saints and sanctity across global history and culture, to explore how they are constructed in other forms—poetry, visual art, sermons, letters, monuments, drama, chronicles, liturgy, objects, didactic literature, and others—in an informal, work-in-progress format focused on discussion of primary sources from any historical period. We envision each meeting consisting of 1-2 brief presentations, with the text or object and a short description or summary (max 500 words) circulated in advance along with one or two questions for discussion. If you have a historical source or item related to sanctity that you would like to bring to an interdisciplinary forum, please get in touch with Laura Moncion (laura.moncion@philosophie.uni-tuebingen.de) and Alicia Smith (alicia.smith@uib.no) by 15 January 2026 with a brief description, your career stage and institutional affiliation if any. Guidelines: • The chronological and geographical scope is intentionally open. We are happy to receive proposals that argue for definitions of saint / sanctity outside the mainstream. • Speakers are free to contest whether a text is ‘outside hagiography’ or ‘not a classic hagiography’—the goal is to study saints and the construction of saint/sanctity beyond canonical textual forms, including troubling our understanding of those forms. • If your source is not in English, you will need to include an English translation.

Calling anyone interested in saints, sanctity, and the weird and wonderful world of primary sources outside the conventional hagiography form! ❤️‍🔥

My book is now available open access on project muse, with OAPen launch coming soon. Hard copies should start going out this week (if they have not already): you can get yours for 50% off with code SAR50.

I think the term "college and career readiness" is an incredibly well-intentioned shift in education that has left many, many high school students disengaged + disconnected from their learning.

They deserve to learn things that have value + enrich their lives in the present—not just the future.

Two golden pastries with slashes revealing pizza sauce and toasty cheese.

It’s hand pie season! Thus: pepperoni pizza hand pies.

Looking forward to an exciting conversation with colleagues who study disability in other historical periods AND practitioners in present-day communities. #disability #SkyStorians

'Light of the Everlasting Life' uncovers how Old English literature drew on images of disabled and “aberrant” bodies to envision resurrection, salvation, and the promise of eternal life.
@parkerchronicle.bsky.social
@uofmpress.bsky.social
#DisabilityStudies
buff.ly/LikZHmw

Light of the Everlasting Life: Disability and Crip Eschatology in Old English Literature <P> From disability metaphors to narratives structured around bodies presented as aberrant, early medieval English thoughtworlds conveyed the promise of resurrection and the hope of salvation through ...

Been dipping into this OPEN ACCESS offering by @parkerchronicle.bsky.social recently and there's lots here that will interest #DisHist folks working on any period, not only those in the #MedievalSky crew.

www.fulcrum.org/concern/mono...

The real experiment is how many scientists will keep returning to the site to keep track of what they think is the experiment.

Yf you are walkinge arounde and you see i) a squirrel or ii) a crowe or iii) a catte, you muste saye "hey buddy" these are the rules

ICYMI: CfP for ICMS Kalamazoo 2026
@kzooicms.bsky.social
May 14-16, 2026
Deadline: Sept. 15
#medievalsky #skystorians #disability
The Society for the Study of Disability in the Middle Ages invites proposals for papers by emerging scholars in medieval disability studies. 1/

Poster text is as follows: Call for Papers: ICMS 2026, May 14–16, Western Michigan University. Naturing Bodies, Embodying Nature. This session seeks to explore the intersections of embodiment and environment in the Middle Ages, considering how bodies—organic and inorganic, human and non-human, material and immaterial—constitute, shape, and envelop one another. By “naturing” bodies, we seek to erode neat divisions between humans and the natural world to uncover the earthy entanglements linking humans to the environments they shape and are shaped by. Attuning to John Scotus Eriugena’s claim that nature is the name “for all things, for those that are, and those that are not,” we invite papers that reflect on the fundamentally relational ontology of humans, non-humans, and environments. Abstracts up to 300 words can be submitted to the ICMS proposal portal before September 15.

With the organizers' permission, here's a great #icms2026 CFP on "Naturing Bodies, Embodying Nature." I'm not going this year but would def attend this session!

Apply: wmich.edu/medievalcong...
Contact: Hunter Phillips (hap48[at]cornell.edu), Asher Courtemanche (ac2457[at]cornell.edu)
#MedievalSky

I’m organizing this session, so feel free to DM questions or inquiries.

NB: This is a *hybrid* session, so you do not need to be able to get to Kalamazoo, MI next May to participate!

Guidelines and submission: wmich.edu/medievalcong... /end

Paper proposals on any topic relating to disability, disease, health, and/or medicine and engaging with the methods of disability studies will be welcomed, on any period between c. 500–1500, on any geographical area, and in any scholarly field. 3/

Presenters may be emerging in terms of their career (e.g., graduate students or early-career researchers) or emerging by bringing their research into a new direction (i.e., newly engaging with disability studies). Priority will be given to new scholars and approaches. 2/

ICYMI: CfP for ICMS Kalamazoo 2026
@kzooicms.bsky.social
May 14-16, 2026
Deadline: Sept. 15
#medievalsky #skystorians #disability
The Society for the Study of Disability in the Middle Ages invites proposals for papers by emerging scholars in medieval disability studies. 1/

Fascinated that In Our Time is one of the BBC’s most popular podcasts among under 35s. The young people demand three academics and a peer discussing Demosthenes, apparently. And they’re right to do so.

I was fortunate to have some surprise funding that covered the very reasonable cost of my index, but I would absolutely have found it worthwhile to pay out-of-pocket and will budget accordingly for the next book.

Index page of Light of the Everlasting Life from “Christus medicus trope” to “dumbness/muteness (see speech, impaired).” The entry under “disability” reads “disability: defined, 10–11, 13; intersections with gender, 7–8, 193–94, 195; intersections with queerness, 8–9; intersections with race and ethnicity, 7–8, 148–49, 183–84; as marker of identity, 20, 21–23, 31, 126, 128; medieval conceptualization of, overview, 11, 14–15; scholarship on medieval, 15–17; social/cultural vs. medical model for, 10, 86n44. See also embodied difference; entries at crip.”

You can see Shannon’s work on my index in the #OpenAccess ebook (doi.org/10.3998/mpub...) and pictured here. Seriously, how do you make a useful index entry on “disability” in a book that’s entirely about disability?? I highly recommend hiring a professional to figure that out for your book.

I’ve heard that you should write your own #index, so you can advance your argument. But an excellent indexer will see your argument and support it, with an index that also works properly like an index. I respect that expertise! Shannon’s also great with medieval names, languages, and manuscripts!

Li Indexing Dedicated to writing thorough, accurate, and elegant indexes that are delivered on time.

Looking for an indexer for your book? I benefitted immensely from working with Shannon Li (www.li-indexing.com), not just because she took indexing off my plate while I checked proofs, but also because she crafted an index that helped me make my argument.
#BookSky #SkyStorians #MedievalSky

Front cover of Leah Pope Parker's "Light of the Everlasting Life: Disability and Crip Eschatology in Old English Literature", with a saint with a golden halo nestled within a beautiful gilded border on a pale manuscript background

From disability metaphors to narratives structured around bodies presented as aberrant, early medieval English thoughtworlds conveyed the promise of resurrection and the hope of salvation through crip and disabled bodies. Light of the Everlasting Life argues that early medieval Christian eschatology, as manifested in Old English literary texts, was a crip eschatology: a theology of the afterlife that relied upon disabled bodies and concepts related to disability in order to convey promises of resurrection and salvation. In addition to demonstrating how literature manifested theological approaches to the afterlife, Leah Pope Parker articulates the ways of thinking about bodies and disability that were available to ordinary early medieval people, many of whom experienced their bodies in ways that resonate with what we call disability today, but who rarely appear in the historical record. By analyzing Old English texts, including Alfredian translations, Ælfric’s saints’ lives, and poetry from the Exeter and Vercelli Books, Parker introduces novel ways of characterizing disability’s effects in literature. “Spiritual prosthesis” reveals rhetorical, narrative, and theological reliance upon disability to convey the promise of a Christian afterlife. “Systems of aberrance” emerge as a result, in which bodies marked as deviant—including disabled, monstrous, heroic, saintly, and dead bodies—form a network of embodiments that reinforce the narratives they inhabit and that of Christian salvation history. Locating crip eschatology in early medieval literature, Light of the Everlasting Life rewrites standard histories of disability, of the body, and of medieval Christian eschatology.

Cannot wait to read @parkerchronicle.bsky.social's new book, "Light of the Everlasting Life: Disability and Crip Eschatology in Old English Literature"

👉 Open Access here press.umich.edu/Books/L/Ligh...

#MedievalSky #CripSky

Thank you!! The trick to the cat jokes is they might only be funny to me. I’m a medievalist, not a comedian.

What wonderful synchronicity to have our books out in the same year. I’m looking forward to reading yours!

Officially published today!

There are exactly two (2) intentional cat jokes in this book. I make no guarantees about the number of additional unintentional cat jokes.

"Light of the Everlasting Life" by @parkerchronicle.bsky.social is now available! This new addition to the Corporealities series explores disability representations and the afterlife in Old English literature. Start reading: buff.ly/SgNgGOx

This is fantastic. Share widely.

An open box of neatly stacked copies of Light of the Everlasting Life. A brown tabby cat sits next to the box, looking at the camera, thoroughly unimpressed.

Remember how parents used to take pictures of kids with newspapers when History™️ was on the front page? Very proof-of-life vibes?

Here’s proof of how alive and thrilled Æthelthryth is on the day a box of my book arrived! Happy birthday to me!

doi.org/10.3998/mpub... #MedievalSky #DisabilitySky

The top half of the cover of Light of the Everlasting Life, showing part of the portrait of Æthelthryth, with Winchester Cathedral in the blurry background. It is a very hot, sunny day, and people are enjoying the cathedral grounds.

Part of the first page of chapter two in Light of the Everlasting Life, held open in front of the stone outline marking the Winchester Old Minster’s foundations in grass. The text reads: Two St. Swithun’s Crutches Healing Miracle Narratives and the Relics of Disability Near the end of his late-tenth-century homily on St. Swithun, Ælfric of Eynsham (ca. 955-ca. 1010) describes a practice that does not appear in any of his Latin sources: cure seekers leaving crutches as votive offerings at the shrine of St. Swithun at Winchester. [Look, the picture also includes most of the subsequent block quotation, but the AC is out on this train back to London and I have been in this forced sauna situation too long to be able to handle figuring out eths and thorns on my phone. It’s the line about the Old Minster being all bedecked in crutches and stools of people who’ve been healed and they couldn’t even hang half of them up.]

Took my early copy of the book on a walkabout to Winchester Cathedral, built partly on top of the Old Minster, home of St Swithun’s crutch-covered shrine from ch 2. Also where the cover portrait of St Æthelthryth was made! doi.org/10.3998/mpub... #MedievalSky #DisabilitySky @uofmpress.bsky.social

Thank you!

A brown tabby cat curls belly up on carpet next to a physical copy of Light of the Everlasting Life.

A light-skinned person with curled light brown hair that is just entering the awkward stage of growing out an undercut smiles and excitedly scrunches up their shoulders while looking at the back of Light of the Everlasting Life.

It’s a real physical book! Æthelthryth seems to enjoy seeing her patron saint adorning the advance copy. Cats and saints front and center! doi.org/10.3998/mpub...
#MedievalSky #SkyStorians #DisabilitySky