The Cure Gone Awry: Gender, Dis/ability, and the Ailing Empire in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, is a book-length study of medicinal metaphors, discussions of disability and bodily integrity, as well as references to failed doctors in by humanist authors such as Petrarch, Boccaccio, and Machiavelli. In this project I analyze literary descriptions of illness, dis/ability, and the prescription of cures to theorize about what examinations of the gendered body portend both for the individual and for the nation, particularly in discourses surrounding gender, race, health, and national unity.