Virtual Monster Book Tour for ‘There Plant Eyes’ (June 2021) * Links to Videos
Thanks to those of you who joined me for one or more of my virtual book tour events in June! If you missed one or you just need to repeat or share one you’ve already ...
10 The Tap-Tapping of Blind Travelers (TPE Hyperlinked Endnotes)
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 ...
9 Braille and His Invention (TPE Hyperlinked Endnotes)
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 ...
8 Performing Enlightenment (TPE Hyperlinked Endnotes)
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 ...
Charles Dickens * ‘American Notes’ * Boston & Laura Bridgman
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 ...
Chapter 7: The Molyneux Man (TPE Hyperlinked Endnotes)
The empirical impulse as philosophized and practiced by Galileo, Bacon, and Hooke (Chapter 5), and as poeticized by Milton (Chapter 6), came into fruition by the end of the seventeenth century culminating, perhaps, in the ...
Chapter 6 Darkness Visible (TPE Hyperlinked Endnotes)
John Milton is in some ways the heart of There Plant Eyes. After all, the title comes from a passage in his 1667 Paradise Lost–read the short passage from the famous invocation to the Muse ...
Darren Harbour, “The Inspirer,” Demands Inclusion in the Pro Wrestling Ring
In “Sanctified by Affliction, or Not” (Chapter 12 of There Plant Eyes), we meet Darren Harbour, a blind actor, dancer, model, stand-up comedian, massage therapist, and wrestler. Yes, you heard right: Darren is a wrestler ...
Chapter 5 “Telescopes, Microscopes, Spectacles, and Speculations” (TPE Hyperlinked Endnotes)
Chapter 5, “Telescopes, Microscopes, Spectacles, and Speculations,” brings There Plant Eyes into the world of Early Modern science. Galileo, Bacon, Hooke, and Descartes are just some of the authors we meet in this chapter that ...
Chapter 4 “Out, Vile Jelly!” (TPE Hyperlinked Endnotes)
Continuing our consideration of blindness as punishment and moral corrective discussed in Chapters 2 and 3, “Out, Vile Jelly!” is a deep dive into one iconic example of blinding, namely the violent plucking of the ...
Chapter 3: “I Once Was Blind, but Now I See” (TPE Hyperlinked Endnotes)
In Chapter 3, Godin explores the Greek-inflected Christian origins of the saintly blind and blindness as corrective tropes that expand and subtly change ideas of compensation and punishment as discussed in Chapters 1 and 2. ...