Personal and cultural histories of blindness
In the previous chapter, “The Invisible Gorilla and Other Inattentions,” Dr. M. Leona Godin considers the blind scientist and what blindness can offer science. In this final chapter, she discusses negotiating blind memes—meaning “cultural replicators,” ...
In the previous chapter, “The Scylla and Charybdis of Stigma and Superpowers,” M. Leona Godin explored how entrenched ableism and ocularcentrism encourages the sighted world to think of blind people in extremes: either super-sensed or ...
In the previous chapter, “The Secret Life of Art and Accessibility,” Godin explores the irony of how even careers in sound arts—from opera to audio editing—have been historically inaccessible, although things are changing. Now we ...
In the previous chapter, “Portrait of the (Working) Writer as Blind,” Dr. M. Leona Godin discusses discrimination in the publishing world and how it reflects the biases of our culture that would rather pity blind ...
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 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 ...
