In the popular imagination, the Middle Ages are still perceived as a period in human history in which superstition, intolerance, and oppression controlled the lives of anyone who was perceived as 'different' from the rest of society. These prejudiced views of the past appear in modern histories of disability and have perpetuated the popular assumptions that illnesses and impairments were believed to be the result of sin or supernatural forces and that people with disabilities were marginalized, abused, and oppressed by the their societies. This dissertation challenges these contemporary perspectives of impairment and disability by exploring social and religious constructions of disability in the Anglo-Saxon period (600-1100) of medieval England. Drawing on modern disability theories, the chapters of this dissertation examine the material evidence, religious discourses, and literary representations of impairment and disability in order to highlight the dominant cultural perceptions concerning impairment and the treatment of people with impairment and disabilities. Contrary to the modern assumption that people with disabilities are and have always been marginal to their communities, this study reveals that there was no single perspective on impairment in Anglo-Saxon England and that people with physical impairments were socially accepted and active participants in their communities. In addition to exploring cultural conceptions and constructions of disability, this dissertation attempts to demonstrate various ways of considering disability in Anglo- Saxon England in order to present new approaches for the study of disability that are more specific to the medieval period and avenues of inquiry to facilitate further studies of disability in the Middle Ages and the development of a more accurate and complete history of disability.