Woeful Afflictions

Woeful Afflictions PDF Author: Mary Klages
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 1512807893
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
From Tiny Tim to Helen Keller, disabled people in the nineteenth century were portrayed in sentimental terms, as afflicted beings whose sufferings afforded ablebodied people opportunities to practice empathy and compassion. In all kinds of representations of disability, from popular fiction to the reports of institutions established for the education and rehabilitation of disabled people, the equation of disability and sentimentality served a variety of social functions, from ensuring the continued existence of a sympathetic sensibility in a hard-hearted, market-driven world, to asserting the selfhood and equality of disabled adults. Unique in its focus on blindness and its examination of the interplay between institutional discourse and popular literature, Woeful Afflictions offers a detailed historical analysis of the types of cultural work performed by sentimental representations of disability in public reports and lectures, exhibitions, novels, stories, poems, autobiographical writings, and popular media portrayals from the 1830s through the 1890s in the United States. Woeful Afflictions combines contemporary scholarship on sentimentalism with the most recent works on the cultural meanings of disability to argue that sentimentalism, with its emphasis on creating emotional identifications between texts and readers, both reinforces existing associations between disability and otherness and works to rewrite those associations in portraying disabled people, in their emotional capacities, as no different from the ablebodied. This book will interest anyone concerned with disability studies and the social construction of the body, with the history of education and of public institutional care in the United States, and with autobiographical writings.

Woeful Afflictions

Woeful Afflictions PDF Author: Mary Klages
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 1512807893
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 260

Get Book Here

Book Description
From Tiny Tim to Helen Keller, disabled people in the nineteenth century were portrayed in sentimental terms, as afflicted beings whose sufferings afforded ablebodied people opportunities to practice empathy and compassion. In all kinds of representations of disability, from popular fiction to the reports of institutions established for the education and rehabilitation of disabled people, the equation of disability and sentimentality served a variety of social functions, from ensuring the continued existence of a sympathetic sensibility in a hard-hearted, market-driven world, to asserting the selfhood and equality of disabled adults. Unique in its focus on blindness and its examination of the interplay between institutional discourse and popular literature, Woeful Afflictions offers a detailed historical analysis of the types of cultural work performed by sentimental representations of disability in public reports and lectures, exhibitions, novels, stories, poems, autobiographical writings, and popular media portrayals from the 1830s through the 1890s in the United States. Woeful Afflictions combines contemporary scholarship on sentimentalism with the most recent works on the cultural meanings of disability to argue that sentimentalism, with its emphasis on creating emotional identifications between texts and readers, both reinforces existing associations between disability and otherness and works to rewrite those associations in portraying disabled people, in their emotional capacities, as no different from the ablebodied. This book will interest anyone concerned with disability studies and the social construction of the body, with the history of education and of public institutional care in the United States, and with autobiographical writings.

Acts of Conspicuous Compassion

Acts of Conspicuous Compassion PDF Author: Sheila C. Moeschen
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472118862
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
Illuminates the relationship between performance and the American charity movement

Telethons

Telethons PDF Author: Paul K. Longmore
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190262079
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
Marshaling two decades' worth of painstaking research, Paul Longmore's book provides the first cultural history of the telethon, charting its rise and profiling the key figures--philanthropists, politicians, celebrities, corporate sponsors, and recipients--involved.

The Book of Revelation

The Book of Revelation PDF Author: Shirley Jackson Case
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Bible
Languages : en
Pages : 48

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Book Description


Plotting Disability in the Nineteenth-Century Novel

Plotting Disability in the Nineteenth-Century Novel PDF Author: Clare Walker Gore
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474455034
Category : Disabilities in literature
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
This book takes an exciting new approach to characterisation and plot in the Victorian novel, examining the vital narrative work performed by disabled characters.

The Ugly Laws

The Ugly Laws PDF Author: Susan M. Schweik
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814783619
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 446

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Book Description
In the culture of the modern West, we see ourselves as thinking subjects, defined by our conscious thought, autonomous and separate from each other and the world we survey. Current research in neurology and cognitive science shows that this picture is false. We think with our bodies, and in interaction with others, and our thought is never completed. The Fiction of a Thinkable World is a wide-ranging exploration of the meaning of this insight for our understanding of history, ethics, and politics Ambitious but never overwhelming, carrying its immense learning lightly, The Fiction of a Thinkable World shows how the Western conception of the human subject came to be formed historically, how it contrasts with that of Eastern thought, and how it provides the basic justification for the institutions of liberal capitalism. The fiction of a world separated from each of us as we are separated from each other, from which we make our choices in solitary thought, is enacted by the voter in the voting booth and the consumer at the supermarket shelf. The structure of daily experience in capitalist society reinforces the fictions of the Western intellectual tradition, stunt human creativity, and create the illusion that the capitalist order is natural and unsurpassable. Steinberg’s critique of the intellectual world of Western capitalism at the same time illuminates the paths that have been closed off in that world. It draws on Chinese ethics to show how our actions can be brought in accord with the world as it is, in its ever-changing interaction and mutual transformation, and sketches a radical political perspective that sheds the illusions of the Western model. Beautifully conceived and written, The Fiction of a Thinkable World provides new ways of thinking and opens new horizons.

Eradicating deafness?

Eradicating deafness? PDF Author: Marion Andrea Schmidt
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526138190
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
How did American geneticists go from fearing the dysgenic effects of deaf intermarriage to considering modern biotechnology a threat for Deaf culture? This book provides insight into changing ideas of what deafness is, what science and medicine should achieve, and to the transformative effect of exchange between scientists and deaf communities.

Seizing Freedom

Seizing Freedom PDF Author: David R. Roediger
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1781686106
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
Forceful and detailed account of the struggle for “freedom” after the American Civil War How did America recover after its years of civil war? How did freed men and women, former slaves, respond to their newly won freedom? David Roediger’s radical new history redefines the idea of freedom after the jubilee, using fresh sources and texts to build on the leading historical accounts of Emancipation and Reconstruction. Reinstating ex-slaves’ own “freedom dreams” in constructing these histories, Roediger creates a masterful account of the emancipation and its ramifications on a whole host of day-to-day concerns for Whites and Blacks alike, such as property relations, gender roles, and labor.

New Orleans Journal of Medicine

New Orleans Journal of Medicine PDF Author: Louisiana State Medical Society
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Medicine
Languages : en
Pages : 1016

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Book Description


The Routledge Companion to Literature and Disability

The Routledge Companion to Literature and Disability PDF Author: Alice Hall
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351699679
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 831

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Book Description
The Routledge Companion to Literature and Disability brings together some of the most influential and important contemporary perspectives in this growing field. The book traces the history of the field and locates literary disability studies in the wider context of activism and theory. It introduces debates about definitions of disability and explores intersectional approaches in which disability is understood in relation to gender, race, class, sexuality, nationality and ethnicity. Divided broadly into sections according to literary genre, this is an important resource for those interested in exploring and deepening their knowledge of the field of literature and disability studies.