Personal and cultural histories of blindness
IN the previous chapter, “Sanctified by Affliction, or Not,” Godin discusses the discrimination and biases felt by many blind people in their personal lives—from dating and marriage and children—to the lack of representations in the ...
In 1988, a socio-linguist at the university of Pennsylvania posted a note on the departmental bulletin board announcing she had moved her late husband’s personal library into an unused office. Anyone who wanted any of ...
I first encountered Alice Eakes in her Huff Post opinion piece: “Yes, Blind People Read Books. We Write Them, Too.” I immediately knew I wanted to meet her. But I’m shy, so I quoted her ...
I remember reading this story of sighted misadventure many years ago, and re-found it in my quest for another H. G. Wells story “The Flowering of the Strange Orchid,” which we published at Aromatica Poetica. ...
In the previous chapter, “Helen Keller in Vaudeville and in Love,” Godin incites readers to think about how notions of the virginal blind oppressed Helen Keller and stifled her dreams of becoming a wife and ...
In the previous endnotes, “The Tap, Tapping of Blind Travelers,” we spent time with the science of echolocation and the poetry and practicality of the tapping cane as well as a little of the history ...
While the previous chapter, “Braille and His Invention,” investigated the history of the tactile alphabet that was so key in blind education, this chapter turns its attention to the low-tech technology of the white cane—as ...
In the previous chapter, “Performing Enlightenment,” Godin examined the origins—historical and philosophical—of the first school for the blind. We continue the tale of the early systematic education of the blind that began in Paris and ...
In “Chapter 7: The Molyneux Man,” we investigated the philosophy and science of “restoring sight,” which does not always turn out to be the obvious gift that many sighted (and blind) people might think. In ...
Reading American Notes is how Helen Keller’s mother learned that her deafblind child could be educated. In that travel narrative, Charles Dickens wrote about his meeting with Laura Bridgman (the first deafblind person to be ...
