All right. Good afternoon, everyone. We're all going to get there for our last panel of the day. My name is Emily Bieber and I'm a PhD student in the Department of Art History here at the University of Delaware. And I have the pleasure of introducing the participants in our fourth and final panel, rethinking the gaze. So we're going to be hearing first from Holly Flanagan, who is an English PhD student at the University of Delaware. She obtained her BA in creative writing and her MA in English from Appalachian State University. While her PhD research is currently focused on magic and contemporary fiction, disability representations in 20th century American literature, particularly the female disabled body in Toni Morrison's work, continues to occupy her research interests. This presentation is part of a larger project exploring the way that Eva pieces disability is linked to her motherhood, sexuality, economic standing, and the generational trauma of the piece women. Holly's previous research has been presented at the International Association for the fantastic in the arts and the Northeastern Modern Language Association conferences. Then we're going to hear from Halley Edelman, who is a PhD candidate and instructor in the Department of American Studies at the University of Iowa. The research considers tactile representations of animals through the perspectives of disability, aesthetics, and ecological theater. Holly's writing has appeared disability and animality, crypt perspectives and critical animal studies. Nyu Gallatin, compass research journal, UK Arts and Humanities Research Council's pets and Family Life Project, and the Dutch art magazine, mr. Motley. They hold a BA in anthropology and community health from Tufts University and MFA in illness arts from Garrett Roosevelt Academy and an MA in performance studies from NYU Tish. In 2019, Holly became a founding member of the North American Association for critical animal studies. Then we'll hear from Amanda Stuckey. Amanda is an Assistant Professor of English at central Penn College, where she teaches writing, literature and interdisciplinary courses. Research for this presentation received funding from the Wilson Special Collections Library fellowships at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Her research on the intersection of blind and low vision schooling and the literary movement of sentimentality forms the subject of her book project recovering, touch, disability, sentimentality and the 19th century felt world Word. Most recently, her work has appeared in a special issue of Disability Studies Quarterly on indigeneity and disability. So please give a warm welcome to our speakers. Good afternoon. Thank you so much the conference organizers for putting this altogether and for letting us speak on our panel today. My name is Holly Flanagan. And just for a visual description of myself, I am wearing black pants, tan top, a tan jacket, and I also wear a black comparison sleeve on my right arm. Today I am discussing a small portion of what I hope will be a much larger project on Toni Morrison's representation of the female disabled body. In her 1973 novels, sulla. Morrison's novels are known to depict complex women who both alienated and fascinate their communities. Often exploring the concept of the other body that is molded through experience with physical disability. This is also the case for the matriarchal figure Eve, a piece in Sulla, who works to not only accept her disabled body to wielded as a power. But first, a bit of background from the cover of the book, it's clear that Eva's granddaughters, Sulla, is the primary focus of this novel. But Eve, as narrative offers a rich story that arguably rivals Zola's own narrative, especially in terms of their communities fascination with her physically disabled body. The town believes that Eva allowed a train to run over one of her legs on purpose, but she refuses to clarify the events surrounding her amputation or the missing leg itself. Of course, this only leads to more gossip and Eve as missing leg creates a disabled body that cannot be ignored. Eva has been discussed in terms of her economic independence, unabashed sensuality, and the way that she both fascinates and frustrates her community. Today I will discuss how her disability in forums and empowers these characteristics. By looking towards these pieces of EBITDA narrative, I argue that Eva's amputation should not be treated as the absence of an able bodied limb, but rather the presence of a disability that informs many identity components. In recognizing Eva's missing limb as a presence, it becomes clear that Eve is disability amplifies her economic, sexual, and social power while also helping her break the ableist gaze so often directed at her. Much to the frustration of her able-bodied neighbors, IBA uncovers a subject hood that allows her to look back at the society through a disability gaze. This return of the gaze means that Eve is community as left baffled. And I would argue, even subconsciously afraid of what that returned gaze means for traditional ableist power dynamics. Before we get too far along, I do want to mention that this presentation considers two ideas of disability outlined in keywords for disability studies. The first idea is that disability has historically been brushed up against words like infirmity, abnormality, and disorder. In other words, this idea of disability is exactly how Eva's talent expects a disabled body to exist. The second option is rooted in contemporary disability theory and recognize this disability as a social and bodily condition. That is quote, shifting, elusive, and sometimes contradictory. It is more fluid than other forms of identity. In this way, the disabled body is not one that can be easily confined or categorized, making it especially frustrating for the able-bodied townspeople that Eva encounters. As we will discuss later on, the discomfort the town fuels and relation to Eva is not merely due to seeing her disability as infirmity and said they are frustrated that Eva's disabled identity refuses to fit within the normal, abnormal binary structure in a way that satisfies the ableist gaze. In order to examine how EVA is disability informs her economic standing, sexuality, and community relationships, we need to look at the initial construction of her disabled identity. Early in the novel, Morrison's narrator tells us that Eva's husband, boy, boy, leaves her in their children destitute after five years of abusive behavior, having no way to care for her children by remaining in the town, even leaves for 18 months, eventually returning a new handbag, a significant amount of money, and missing one of her legs. It's a very unique homecoming. But while events disability may or may not have been set in motion by her husband's actions. I'd like to identify how Eva's approach to herself changes with this amputation. Her return to town not only signals the beginning of her identity as a disabled woman, but it also begins and experience of economic freedom and independence that Eva had not previously known. Her husband left her with a few vegetables and a $1.65. Eva is now able to use her new money to build an entirely new home 60 feet from boy boys one bit one-room cabin that he abandoned. When boy, boy does return to visit her, evil ultimately finds comfort in the pride and the anger that she allowed herself to feel. This anger, quote, filled her with pleasant anticipation. Like when you know, you're going to fall in love with someone and you wait for the happy signs. In this sense, even amputation not only signals a physical change, but a personal transformation as well. Marking a shift from a reliance on her husband and her community to reliance on herself alone. With this beginning to her story, evens disability is already deconstructing the ableist lens. As her disabled body is not receptive to any ableist pity that her neighbors or her husband may have anticipated. However, aside from the confusion surrounding her new financial independence, the societal gossip also grows a legend around either as disability, especially as she now transports herself on a makeshift thrown created from a child's wagon and a chair. So it's a strange setup to some. Eva's transportation does not inspire laughter, but rather instills and authoritative commanding error around her while cementing the community's general unease. Here we can see a representation of what that wagon may have looked like during the time period. Though there is not any illustration in the book itself. Not only did fewer than nine people in the town remember when Eva had two legs. But the narrator also explains that quote, someone said Eva stuck it under a train and made them pay off. Another said she sold it to a hospital for $10 thousand by neither confirming or denying the myths about her disability and its relationship to her new economic power. Eva is able to establish a certain amount of narrative control over the community through the legends surrounding her disability, as well as the economic boost that may have happened as a result of her amputation. We already have a few example of EVA is missing leg functioning as a presence rather than an absence in the narrative. Presence moves beyond social speculation of how evil lost her leg. And instead her disability informed sexuality quickly take center stage, frustrating and alarming the town all over again. Instead of covering up the area that reveals her disability, even makes no attempt to hide the empty space below her thigh. She calls attention to its presence, holding the sexual interests of the towns men in part through incorporating her disability into her sexual encounters, even still refuses to clarify exactly how she gained her disabled body. But there can be no doubt that she fully accepts and even celebrates the empty space below her thigh and the sexuality and informs. Narrator tells us that, quote, whatever the fate of her loss leg, the remaining one was magnificent. It was stocking been shot at all times and in all weather events, footwear and stockings are also elaborate enough to signal that her disabled body does not subscribe to the ableist phase. What's more, Eva's attire is designed to acknowledge her disability presence beyond footwear alone. The narrator elaborates that IV is preferred style of dress writing, nor did she wear over long dresses to disguise the empty space on her left side? Her dresses were mid calf so that her one glamorous leg was always in view, as well as the long fall of space below her left thigh. Well, we don't have an exact artistic demonstration of Eva's clothing or the precise year of this clothing. The description of hemlines and stockings vaguely gestures to shorter early 20th century dresses and stocking styles like these depicted here. And I do want to note that there is an alarming lack of diversity in early 20th century ads for stockings and other clothing garments. But we do have some representations here of what other African-American with shorter hemlines might have been wearing it that time period. I was Hall highlights the description of these clouds is the moment that Morrison quote goes beyond simply rewriting disability, which is often perceived as a lack into a positive presence. Morrison does not use disability as a trigger for storytelling, but instead focuses on the material presence of both the remaining leg and the visible gap. Disability does not exist as a narrative tool, but actively signals her subject hood in her own sexuality with Eva celebrating its presence alongside her remaining leg. And through this subject hood, EVA is not only able to look at herself through a celebratory disability gaze, but this guy is also allows her to metaphorically look back at and refract the problematic able escapes through her clothing and other expressions of sexuality that we will turn to you now. In addition to her clothing, Morrison adds another description of a character, sexual experiences post amputation. The narrator explains that Eva, older she was and with one leg, had a regular clock of gentlemen callers. And although she did not participate in the act of love, there was a good deal of teasing and pecking and laughter. The sexual performance takes place on his front porch for the town to witness, further frustrating her neighbors. He passed her home on a daily basis. In this sense, her disabled sexual performances are inferior, infuriating because they make it impossible for the town to view the disabled body and sex as mutually exclusive. Once again, EVA is not following the ableist rules, a disabled body, but choosing to look back in a very public way. But because EVA does not engage in an act of love, some critics argue that EvoS newly disabled body is actually lacking sexuality. Claiming that the one-legged crone goddess and Toni Morrison Sulla, is done with sex. And if we focus on the fact that either does not engage in the act of love, which is sexes, she had experienced it before her disability. It might be easy to claim that she does indeed lead sex behind. But I would argue that this perspective is not considering her disability and form sexuality. And it's rather approaching sets along the normal, abnormal binary that eva herself is working to disrupt. For example, like the definitions of disability that we looked at earlier, disabled sexuality has also historically been defined along the lines of able-bodied normalcy. Robert McCrae, who are rights that sexuality quote, mark certain bodies. But just like disability itself, a disability studies definition of sexuality allows for quote, alternate forms of sexual experience. Therefore, Morrison's depiction of Eva's disabled sexual encounters, including the teasing and pecking and laughter, all follow this idea of non-exclusive sexual experience. In shifting from an able-bodied perspective, it's possible to view Eva's disabled sexual experiences as powerful moments that stretch the bounds of what is considered normal sex. With this in mind, viewing Eva has done with sex, disregards the many other acts of sex that she does indeed engage in. The use of clothing, flirtation, touching, and other depictions of sexuality. It's clear that Eva has an abandoned sex at all. She is simply figuring its meaning to suit her disabled body better. And if anything, the presence of her disability demands that the concept of sex bend to Eva's own gaze rather than restrict her too, It's false limits. During a conversation with her grandmother late in the novel, her granddaughter sulla declares, I don't want to make somebody else. I want to make myself. Though it is solar That makes sense. This claim, it's fair to say that it's Eva who first succeeds in this venture through her creation of a disability informed identity even constructs a renewed economic freedom and disabled sexuality, both of which challenge the ableist system of her community through a celebration of her disabled body. The celebration indicates that Eve is missing leg must be understood as a presence rather than an absence throughout her narrative. And through this active and untiring disability presents. Disability itself helps construct a subject hood that not only unravels the power of the ableist gaze, but allows her to construct a disability gaze that consistently looks back and defiance. That is, if you are going to look at Eva piece, you must see her on her terms, not yours. Thank you very much for allowing me to present a very small section of a larger project today. And I welcome any questions you may have, and I look forward to our conversation. Supposed to be a little bit of sound. We're there we go. Thank you. Hi everyone. I'm back a little bit. Okay. Be looking. There we go. Okay. Hi everyone. Hi. Hi everyone on Zoom. My name is Holly Adleman and I will be giving a talk today called the disability grays, a tactile approach to Chomsky's. Before I get started, I also just want to express my thanks to Dr. Jennifer, Sarah see MCS for hosting us. This has been so lovely. Yeah. We've been really well taken care of all the tech people, interpreters, people serving the food and setting up the space. It's been so nice. And also my panelists and everyone presenting here today, just really honored to be here. And also just the song that was playing in the background. I don't know if any of you are eighties or nineties kids, but that was a song called, Good bye better than Ezra. There we go. Okay. Sorry, just getting used to this whole situation. Okay. So that's long lives rent-free in my head because it starts out with this line walking around the house. And that's what I have been doing for the past ten years. All the while thinking about animal objects or little inanimate things sitting on my shelves that seemingly represent a certain animal species in commodity form. Driven by the contradiction between slow extinction and invisible slaughter of wild and domestic animals species. And the hyper visible animal representations of pop, popular commodity culture. I just became fixated on the inanimate animals within my visual field. So in 2015, I started a project called home tours, which is an ongoing project that consists of me entering the homes of my friends, families and colleagues to engage with their animal objects. And instead of just tracking them or, or observing them, I always ask these residents to hold the objects with me, to tell me stories about them, participate in collaborative activities with them together. Sometimes will learn more about the animal that is being represented. Or write a poem about it, or think about the material components that brought the object to this owner's home. And I do this because as an animal obsessed human, I find that many times these objects take on an aura of animals hidden in plain sight. At least within the homes that I visited. And one example could be this owl mug here that was sitting on the ledge. My grandparents old house with a ripening tomato in it. Who knows? So anyway, these animals hidden in plain sight or quote, hidden in plain sight, I was engaging with them on a purely, primarily primarily on a visual basis, like through the lens of visibility. And this is for a long time until I encountered a poem, prose poem called The tactile art by John Lee Clark. And everything changed. For those unfamiliar with John Lee Clark, He's a deaf blind poet and a pro, pro tactile language teacher based in Minnesota. And his poem, which was published in a 2019 issue of Poetry Magazine, is about his experience trying to access art spaces as a deaf blind person. He writes, and this is the texts that I have pasted up here. I just want to make sure, okay. Museums are difficult to get to. They don't want me to touch anything. They require that I make an appointment by phone no less. So my information about mainstream esthetics has largely come from ducts. They rule over gift shops, Goodwill's and garage sales. Squeaking rubber versions have long been infants. First encounter with artifice. Minnesota State bird is the loon. And many homes and stores here feature a wooden, ceramic, metal stone, plush, or glass and glass lens. Waterfowl, or a favorite of wood carvers. There's even a deaf blind Canadian who whittles, paints and sells ducklings. What they all have in common is a flat bottom. A goodly portion of their natural anatomy is taboo. They're meant to appear floating on the sill, on the sill. Waters of a tabletop, a window sill or a book or a bookshelf. I'm sorry, did I read that wrong? They're meant to roughly yeah. The hitch is that were I to handle a live duck paddling across the pond, I would be able to feel it as a whole. For water is not a tactile barrier as it is a visual one. So this is just one very short excerpt from a longer prose poem by John Lee Clark. Highly recommend. I'm sure many of you in here have encountered it, but if you haven't, it's fabulous. So objects of industrialization for those sorry. The right. Oh, I see what I did. Sorry, I'm doing this. I should have printed it out. Clark's pros details, his repeated encounters with fake ducks as they pertain to the larger issue of institutional ableism and visual privilege. He points not only to his exclusion from mainstream art spaces, but also has embodied perspective on the ducts that he encounters when he must settle for what aesthetic cultural spaces have been made available to him. So thrift shops, flea markets, antique stores. And just to reiterate, in contrast to a seeing person who would regard a fake duck with a flat bottom as representationally quote on, quote, floating a top water. A blind person encountering a fake duck with their hands would assume that the legs had been cut off or removed. This common representation of duck anatomy or misrepresentation of duck anatomy, maintains visual privilege over tactile materiality or other multimodal engagements within the aesthetic realm. Clark's poem showed me that we must move beyond this merely visual intervention into the commodification of animals. Or I must move beyond merely visual intervention into the commodification of animals. And certainly to this engagement with the tactile nature of inanimate animal objects is inherent in this is an element of performance. So for me as a performance artists, I'm asking, how can the felt aesthetics of an animal object b, of a name an animal object or any commodity or Trotsky unbind both humans and animals from for standardization and objectification. How can I engage these objects in ways that do not replicate the heteronormative white, able-bodied says patriarchal gaze. These are just some ducts at the thrift stores in my town in Iowa City. So a central aspect of these animal objects is that they bear the scars of industrial depersonalization. And these design, design decisions, as observed, with ducts, with flat bottoms, often misrepresent a species entirely or deny individual animals they're deserved subjectivity. This was kind of kind of similar to some things that reboiler was talking about in her keynote yesterday about misrepresentation. But I think this is an example of that. Argue and critiques of like the Barbie doll proportions or any commodified versions of things. They deny bodies there many diverse forms. They deny a species. There are many diverse forms. They collapse or literally with ducks at least flatten their existence as live beings simply for the purpose of them being legible to a more normative shopper. I think John Lee Clark would agree with me when I argue that the proliferation of ducts with flat bottoms and US capitalist culture mimics the enforced bodily standards expected of both human bodies and other animal species. And that's so that they will become part of commodified for a productive labor force and become these predictable, reproducible forms. And this is language that I gleaned from scholars like Lennard Davis, who has argued that we must take note of the ways that concepts and beliefs then become materialized. And this is kind of like the intersection of materiality and animals and disability that I'm trying to work with as I start thinking about a prospectus. And I I might not have. Yeah, we'll see. I'll, I'll just keep going. Um, I included these cows here because for example, on the left is a watercolor painting done by a friend of mine, Marlene Peleus, who is a Dutch watercolor artists and a certified cattle expert. And she's written encyclopedia of 1300 plus cattle breeds from all over the world. Some are still, still in existence and some are extinct. Although like breeding standards and all these things are really tax taxonomy, linnaeus and vibes. I think it's interesting because the way I grew up and I know a lot of children in the US GAAP is there's like 11 bovine one cow and it's this black and white Holstein happy cows sometimes that's like on the front of an ice cream ice cream shop or just represented in books, when in reality that's just one of so many types of bovines. Something going here. Okay. Getting back getting back to the ducts. So the photo on the left is the first rubber ducky that was used by Ernie in Sesame Street that PBS Kids show in the 60s. It's pale yellow rubber hollow and was manufactured by an old now extinct company called Alan Jay plastics. And it's currently at the National Museum of play, that toy Hall of Fame in Rochester, New York. And wall rubber duckies had been around since the 1920s. The popularity of rubber duckies came from Ernie on Sesame Street in the 70s when he sang this song, rubber ducky. It was to teach children that bathing can be fun and not a chore, especially when you have a friend like a rubber ducky and is, bathing is not something typically taught in schools. Sesame Street and many of their songs were helpful tools for parents trying to teach their children basic domestic tasks. So the American historian, lots of Larson Meier, For example, She said that these things were used for play to become a part of parenting philosophies and ducts for especially emerged as it really useful objects to promote certain parenting philosophies. And so while this, the pandemic has shown us that we should wash your hands and things like that. I also just wanted to point out the ducts are used for types of governance other than just this visual privilege over tactile privilege, ducts, duct objects. Big dogs have been used to maintain this. Hyper prioritize hygiene, cleanliness, which has criminalized a lot of people. And especially this is still something that a lot of children are growing up thinking about, especially in places like Flint, Michigan, where bathing everyday is not an actual reality. Oh no, I'm running out of time. Okay. I really wanted to get into disabled ecologies, but I don't think I'm going to have time today. But this is something that I'm really passionate about in terms of the ways that a space can be become fragmented based on being disabled within the space, say, having to move around your home because of illness in a different way, collapse on the kitchen floor out of exhaustion as opposed to on the bed. But this term, disabled ecologies, is something that I got from scenario Taylor, who's been writing about Raytheon pollution that has caused a lot of disability in the Tucson area. Thinking about actual ecologies that can be called disabled because they are suffering themselves and also making humans very sick. So let's see. I really missed timed this. I wanted to get into the dawn soap bottle. They advertise they advertise that the soap is so good because it can get oil off of ducts. We just, I'm going to leave you with a John Lee Clark quote. I call it the title of the talk that I was getting today, the grades because I was thinking about cruising and how this could be maybe generative for thinking about the queerness of being in domestic spaces and the things I do with objects. But I'm just going to have to talk to you guys about that later. But I do want to leave you with this quote because I think it's really beautiful. Tactile investigation is what uncovers the fact that the center is softer than the rim of solid chocolate. I inhabit it all the time and apply met a tactile knowledge to all my interactions with people, things, the world and myself. I have races, fun things to do for thousands and thousands of other things seemed to me. The point is that we're all in Connect in continuous conversation. Thank you. Hi. Thank you. I hopefully can be heard. I have my is not great, but I've turned off all other devices, so I hopefully have full power here. Thank you so much for being here and for allowing me to be here in this way. And thank you to all who have coordinated and collaborated to bring this all together from all of these different virtual and actual spaces. Well, my next slide, okay, and before I start, even though I am joining virtually, I did want to acknowledge where I work and live on the ancestral and unseated land of this Esquire hammock pupils. So even though I'm not present in person, That's where I'm joining you from today. Your next slide. Okay. Thank you. What does the disability gaze mean to the sight impaired, to the blind? For nineteenth-century students in United States, schools, for the blind, to gaze may have meant, in part to touch. Touch concentrated the gaze onto surfaces on to skin. According to some of the centuries earliest publications by sided educators, theorizing how low vision students might best learn to read. Postbellum state-sponsored schools for the blind in the Southern United States, in particular, confronted the problem of skin. In North Carolina's School for the Blind, for example, black and white students were kept apart, segregated despite their perceived inability to see one another's skin color. In this paper, in this presentation, I examined the implementation of segregation in North Carolina's state-sponsored school for the blind. To explore the ways in which race and disability intersected along the lines of vision and the visible. I suggest that black writers and readers posed tactility. In particular, the act of reading by touch as a way of de-stabilizing lines drawn according to visible and invisible skin color. Next slide, please. Thank you. Certainly, questions of skin evoke questions of what is visible and what gets to be invisible. Visual Studies scholar, Sean Michelle Smith summarizes a reality as true today as it was in the 19th century, that whiteness has often existed in privileged in visibility, while blackness has the presence of color, signals, the presence of race. Yet this critical conversation rarely occurs in the context of blindness, not as a medical device, such as the notion of being colorblind and not seeing race, but as an actual negotiated subject position of the 19th century. In particular view, scholars have considered the meaning and experience of blindness in the US South that largely predicated segregation practices on the visibility of race. What did it mean for low vision students to use skin to touch as navigational and mobility aid throughout the world, while also being included and excluded on the basis of this very skin. Turning to the writings of Black visitors to North Carolina's segregated spaces, as well as to the pages of textbooks embossed. To be read by cutaneous touch suggests that this method of touching to see, or what we might call the tactile gaze, actually worked to make whiteness visible. To use non-normative and non traditional reading and looking practices to expose its materiality. I'm going to interrupt myself here to say, to apologize to this slide advancer. I have messed up the slides on my transcripts, so I apologize for going off script there, but thank you for advancing the slide. On the current slide is a quotation from the Christian Recorder, which I will read out loud in just a second. In 1867, the North Carolina's school established a quote, colored Department led by white administrator Hezekiah, a. Gusher. 15 years later, God, you're sent and 1800s, 1880s, three annual report from the school to Benjamin Tucker Tanner, editor of the Philadelphia based Christian Recorder, the flagship periodical of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, featuring a special report on the status of this colored department. The recorder published a brief but telling response to receiving the report. And I have that response on the slide and I'll read it now. We are indebted to HA gusher, Secretary of the Board, for the annual report of the North Carolina Institute of the death, dumb and blind. There is a vein of the ridiculous and running such an institution as this, especially the blind portion of it upon the color line. Yet it is done just as though the blind could see. The recorders reception of the report seems to undercut gutters and other educators beliefs that segregated education was in the best interests of all students. Quote, as though the blind. During the 1870s and 1880s, the Christian Recorder published several firsthand accounts of visiting this colored department. One visit by the recorders editor himself in brief notices that praise, in brief notices that praise the work of the department and its students. Yet, these accounts also work toward defining a tactile gaze that begins to critique both constructions of blindness and constructions of site in what Henry Louis Gates Junior, others have identified as the hyper visibility of blackness during the Reconstruction era. Christian Recorder editors and contributors described visits to the North Carolina School and the race textbooks it's students used in order to challenge vision itself as the defining parameters of race construction and legibility. An anecdote published in 1878 suggests that black administrators at the North Carolina School, we're making efforts to recruit and retain students for their department. Contributor Henry, alongside reports that he quote, recently dropped in at the institution for our colored deaf and blind to visit are highly respected citizen. Mr. We duodenum, who confirms to alongside the departments growth, asserting that the prospect is very bright for a larger school. Next session, deb num offers alongside a tour of the school and alongside reports that everything was in perfect order. And that excerpt from those quotations appear on the slide in front of you alongside gives special descriptive attention. What may not have been visually apparent to some of the schools students. Taking in the physical condition of the departments buildings. Alongside notes that quote, The white washers brush was traceable on every wall and ceiling and the scrub brush hadn't left the floors. New quote that also appears on the slide in front of you. Long sides pause. In front of the whitewashed walls prompts the recorders readers to pause and behold as well. The whitewash and lung size description is a surface painted onto the walls, blending substrate and applied cover. The painters brush is traceable. Brushstrokes perhaps may be visible to the eye, yet also traceable and tactile to the hands or fingers that may brush against these walls for navigation throughout the building. The schools laws, if texture and visibility to white surface and long sides, observation. Maybe one made traceable through the eyes and through the fingertips. No longer an invisible intangible hue. The color white in this combined visual and tactile gaze achieves presence and materiality, visibility and texture. The recorders editor himself, Benjamin Franklin Lee. Recounted his own visit to North Carolina School in the 1870s, almost 20 years after the quote, color department admitted its first students. During his visit, LEA reports being quote, highly entertained by recitations and other activities of the students at the institution, as well as meeting several administrators and their families. It is possible that during his visit, LEA may have also seen or learned of the textbooks used at this and other schools for the blind. Large and large books in Boston, Roman letters intended to be read by touch. It's very difficult to detect a that these books in this two-dimensional space of a slide or a photograph. But to give a brief description, they are raised, print books embossed. And during the 19th century, the predominant mode of embossing books for low vision readers was to use roman letters rather than the Braille that we, or point systems that we're more familiar with today. So the example in front of you has definitely yellowed with age and the sharpness of the embossing has also flattened over time. But it's still a good example of the type of textbook that students at the North Carolina School in both departments would have used to learn to lead. North Carolina School was one of the few schools for the blind that operated its own embossing crests and this perimeter. So this is the title page of the first-class reader for the blind, and it was embossed in 1869. This premier rum was one of the first books issued from North Carolina's press. These books encouraged independent literacy as they trained fingertips to substitute for eyes, preserving Roman letters rather than offering a point notations like Braille. Hadley noticed these books during the visit to the color department or had he received and read reports from other schools for the blind using emboss materials. He may have come across a book like this. And he may have also noticed this striking visual differences between emboss books and the ink print. Kodak's. In particular, the lack of distinction between the material of the text and the material of the page. In terms of material in color, it's bare whiteness or aged example, yellowness. Letters read only in shadow, perhaps visually striking to this sighted observer. Literary historian Jonathan sanctions studies the role of paper is supposedly invisible substrate onto which meaning is inked and points to printers aspirations for paper whose whiteness disappears in service of making its black inked text more legible. Center and argues that this black white dualism structures not only print legibility, but also race legibility. Sanctions assessment, of course, relies both on the contrast of black and white and on functioning eyesight that can detect and make sense of this dualism and contrast. Reading and embossed book like this primer by touch defines legibility not as the distinction between contrast of black and white, but rather as sensitivity of a reader's fingertips to tracing the sharp relief of a raised letter. North Carolina's primer attempts to replicate at least the ability of sensory capacity to detect a contrast. In the case of an embossed book, a contrast between flatness and release. The tactile reading and tactile way of looking that this Premiere and other embossed folks required negates the black-white dualisms sanction identifies an ink print materials. Reading through touch. Tactile readers detect not ink print marks on a page, but the page itself, drained of ink, blending invisible and visible surfaces and bringing skin and surface into intimate contact. The embossed book invited a form of tactile reading that allowed whiteness to be seen. The recorders observation connect the color departments, whitewashed walls, and embossed books as surfaces whose whiteness is not invisible, a visual default, but whiteness that is instead visually and tactically apparent. Both long side and Lee mentioned encounters with the color departments. Superintendent, WE Deb num, whose own bodily surface generates both writers to reflect on the relationship between vision and the construction of race. Meeting with Superintendent denim Lee writes quote, and this quote is reproduced on this slide in front of you. Mr. Denham, though colored, was educated in the state school where all other students were white. We quote this word, colored because it is only applied to mark the connection between him and the Negro race. Though this could be, though this could not be detected by the ordinary methods. These ordinary methods Lee implies include postbellum visual registers of sensing and designating race. When mentioned within the context of a visit to a school premised on blindness as the absence of vision. Lee's comments point to a deeper understanding of the connections between vision and race. When race is on the skin, a parent, upon immediate visual inspection or the ordinary methods, it relies on functioning vision. But when it is not visible, when the ordinary methods fail, whether because of ambiguous skin color or because of vision impairment. It is these ordinary methods themselves that come under scrutiny. The recorder registers this ongoing suspicion of sight as a means of marking racial difference and categorization. Pointing to the ridiculousness of the North Carolina's schools dependence upon the color line also allowed the recorder to point at the fallibility of white constructions of blindness. If white administrators constructed blindness as the inability to see moments in which race is undetectable by site, whether because of visual impairment or because of ambiguous skin color, be live visual registers of race. These themes of visual and tactile reading, of gazing with eyes and with fingertips. Transform whiteness to texture. Seeing and looking with the fingertips in these accounts means materializing whiteness, making it traceable and visible as legible. And thank you and thank you to the gracious slide advancer. And I'll look forward to the conversations to follow. Hi everyone. My name is Maria Martinez and I am an art history graduate student at the University of Delaware. I'd like to do another round of applause for all of our panelists today. I want to open up the floor for questions. Hi, thanks so much for that great panel. I have a very broad question which is for Holly and Amanda about Reading and Literature for generally. So warning, Amanda, I thought that was just fantastic how you were sort of disaggregating reading from site at the very end of your talk especially and how that intersects with race. But my question for Holly and for you more broadly, we've talked a lot today about objects and about images. And we're ending in your talks in the realm of literary representation. And this required both of you in different ways, but to read descriptions of Holly and your case, descriptions of physical disability and Amanda in particular, there were these sort of stunning moments of physical description, the scrubbed walls and all of that. I just wonder if there's something that the two of you could say about how reading in these cases and literary representations might in fact shift us away from site paradoxically or do different work around the disability gaze than some of the other talks about artifacts and images have done today. I might let Amanda Tate. Okay. Sure. Thank you so much for that question. This is a question that I have. Well, okay. Not in these exact words. If you framed it much more concisely than it's been floating around in my brain. But thinking about your opening comments about disaggregating, I think is the word you used. Site from reading has been one of the guiding questions of my larger book project from which this is taken. My larger project looks at sentimental literature in the 19th century. The way the genre relies on emotional feeling to be able to enact social and political change. One of which changes was schooling for the blind and for disabled students more broadly. In reading those sentimental novels, you thinking especially about some of the greatest heads like Uncle Tom's Cabin and this need to feel right. One of the driving questions is, how does our understanding of feeling through reading or reading as feeling? Change when we sent her the position of a low vision reader who may have learned to read by touch independently using one of these textbooks. I think to me, one of the most significant changes that comes in terms of reading, literary representation comes from centring a non-normative reader and non-normative reading. And how that might allow us to read a book like Uncle Tom's Cabin differently and to think about surfaces and different ways in which touch is not just represented, but also invoked on the part of the reader in that text. Thank you for that wonderful question. And I think just to follow up with that, what I love so much about the narrator and Morrison Sulla, is that she seems to be very much coming from a disability gaze and not an able bodied gaze. I think when we work with descriptors, I can only speak just for the work that I am working on with Eva. But when we read descriptors of Eva, I think it's extremely worth noting that she's not described as using the wagon as a wheelchair. She's described as using it as more like a mobile throne. I think that, that it, it offers a very unique perspective on, especially when we talk about descriptions of tactile mess. We get more of an emotional tactile sensation with that. Instead of it is just a wagon or it is just a wheelchair. I think that the narrator in this case is offering a very clear emotional description of what may affect our approach to attack tile object in a different way and even offer a disability gaze towards that object that may not have been there. Before. That that answer is somewhat. We have a question from the Zoom. Yes. The questions from canola and ishikawa. It's for Holly. And the question is, if polygon pack for us to pass? If she quoted from seller, quote, the men wanted to see her lovely calf, that neat shoe and watch the focusing that sometimes swept down out of the distances in her eyes. And quote, it strikes me that EvoS desirability is a function of the way the missing leg redirects the male gaze from sexualized body parts and towards the calf, a shoe, her eyes. Would Holly agree that men's ambient awareness of Eva's disability has a way of making her body more holistically desirable? That's a very good question. Thank you so much. I I'm still grappling with that myself if I'm being honest, but I think in place of the word desirable, I might put almost pleasurably confusing in a way that it may frustrate the other members of the town. But at the same time, there's something very different at play here with what EPA is doing with presenting her own sexuality and with presenting her own, I guess, approach to her larger society and her body itself. So I think that that's definitely a line of thought that I may continue to grapple with. But I think at least instead of holistically desirable, which I do think that, that is at play here, but maybe there's a certain level of confusion with it too. But I'm not sure that anyone knows what to do with within this novel. And to that end, I will say, I still think that there is a great amount of able-bodied gaze at play with the men when they approach Eva, that they don't know what to do with as well. Hello. This question is for Hayley. I was wondering if you can talk more about the intersection between capitalism, ecology and disability. And just to note that I'll always volunteer to talk about my Trotsky's. Thank you. I'll have to get your e-mail. So the question from Steve was about the triangulation of capitalism. Commodities and disability are capitalism's ecology and disability. Yeah, I think it's, it's super fascinating because so much of capitalist production has ended up creating contamination, pollution, disabling labor for humans that are either making commodities or living in areas where corporate interests are more important than the humans living nearby. And so the ecologies like a sonar Taylor's project that she's been working on is a Missile plant that dumped their waste in a lagoon that then ran off into the water source for all the people living in the area. And so a lot of people became disabled or died from cancer in that area. And the local government, because the people were minority population, this is right on the scenario and desert and Tucson. They attributed their deaths to really messed up racist stereotypes like their food choices or their ways of life. And it's so there's that aspect. And then there's also just the fact that like, well, I'm not gonna make any like climate change arguments here, but just the fact that animal agriculture is such a huge cause of pollution. And so, not only are animals disabled by concentrated animal feeding operations, in the sense that they have to be like crammed together and extremely abusive living environments. You've seen those videos of animals that are forced to gain so much weight they can no longer walk, not to mention all the psychological abuse that they undergo so ecologically, there's a lot of what's Sunny Taylor calls I think crept animals. Yeah, I think that become disabled through concentrated animal feeding operations. But it's like an endless triangulation. So yeah. Thanks for asking. I would love to keep talking about that. I have a question for Amanda about paper. So I have to confess that I am really interested in the history of printing, but I don't know enough about printing for the blind. Although I know there's a lot of interests in this. But the paper at angle is especially towards the end of your talk, is really fascinating. As I understand it. 19th century paper tends to age it really badly because you, There's a shift from the use of linen and cloth to make what we think of as rag paper. And once you get to the late, mid to late 19th century, you have wood pulp and that's why it tends to yellow and start to look so crummy if you look at a nineteenth-century book today. So my question is about the kinds of texts you're describing with the raised lettering. I'm wondering if maybe for most people this may be minutia. But what is interesting is that you're having us think about the phenomenology of reading, right? The way that you have to touch the paper in a certain way to experience it. So on the one hand, my question is, what kind of paper did they need for that? Was it normal printing paper or was it something different? Was that harder to get in the South? Does it make a difference? In other words, the materiality of that particular kind of paper. But that's my question. But just as a side note, I would just add that the phenomenological aspect of your talk is really interesting because paper in general as opposed to disappear, right, in order for the reading process to work. Alright, I think that's kinda what you're saying about Jonathan sanctions work and other peoples, that paper is always supposed to be the thing that you don't notice, right? At least when, when reading is based on vision. So, but obviously when it's a tactile process, paper has to be present right in order for it to work. So so yeah, just questions more generally, if you have any other thoughts about the kind of paper that's needed for these kinds of texts. Thank you so much for that question. That actually has come up quite a few times. Like what type of paper is this? And it's been difficult for me to track down perhaps because they don't have the same. I'm not maybe asking the right questions to be able to find. That's like resource, like maybe receipts from paper suppliers or that type of material. But what is interesting is that in the 1860s was a turning point for printing for the blind solely based on this issue of paper. Before that date or that decade. Most, all printing had taken place in, for schools for the blind that happened to own embossing process. After that date, the American Printing House for the Blind was established in Louisville, Kentucky. And that became kind of a clearinghouse for all printing of most, actually most printing, not all of materials for low vision readers. Well into the 20th century. Actually. The reason Louisville was chosen for that location was because it was near a river and near a well-functioning paper mill. So in one sense that the paper, maybe the minutia. But it's also, was a driving factor for why this clearing house was established, was because of. Resources of paper that were there to answer that or to address that question from a different angle. The picture I showed you was a book that was actually used when I started this research at Perkins School for the Blind and the American antiquarian society. I was looking at specimens that both archives had, had collected and preserved, so not in circulation, not in use by students. Those books are pristine, especially for books that are meant to be touched. They have aged much better than the ones that are actually used. That's a really another sort of interesting archival question of what are we looking at? Are we looking at it detects that someone actually read by touch? Or are we looking at a specimen that an archive saved, right to be studied later? So I hope that begins to address your question, but yeah, the act of the paper disappearing is one that I can think about all the time. Because when you think about tactile reading, you're reading the paper, right? And it's one side of the paper, so it really changes the way we engage with paper. So I hope that begins to address your question. Thank you so much for asking. Hi. Thank you all. I'm Holly. I couldn't help but think there is actually a much deeper way in which your project connects to material culture study in the US, which is your reference to a Holstein cows. As my understanding is that a large percentage of Holstein cows that live on this earth right now trace their lineage to Henry Francis du Ponts Winter Tour, breeding operations and others here in the room can probably clarify that more. So Dupont was not only a prolific collector of American decorative arts and architecture, but also Farmer and breeder of cows. So if we can kind of spin that out a little bit, we can think that Collecting was a form of standardizing American history. Or we can think of it as in any case, a productive Act that was also linked to the establishment of a huge American industrial entity. Although HF to prompt was not involved in his family's company, he certainly was a part of it. There's a lot of collecting in the family in general. So we can think of then collecting us productive. But your use of the word Chomsky suggests another kind of collecting, which is usually like degraded and not consider it to be Academic, right? So I don't know, I was thinking in your project, your larger projects and how you see animals and these kinds of animals. And I think in particularly like a disabled engagement with them as fundamentally unproductive, is that part of the story or is there a tension there? Because if you become, your collection can also become a form of productivity. Also, like building knowledge, building expertise, or authority over the genre of objects. I just want to admit this as like a end of conference like brain neuro divergent moment that I'm having also because I didn't know that these necessarily connect either, but something to think about. Thank you. I think it was that a question or anything? Yeah. I mean, I that's yeah, that's super interesting. I think. I'm always curious to talk to people who have collections of things, especially animal objects. Because then someone will say, you know, I just love butterflies. Everyone gets me butterflies stuff and I'm like, Oh cool. Like what type of butterflies or like, what do where do those butterflies live or what do they eat, or how did they mate? And there's like 0 curiosity about the actual lived butterflies. And it's almost like the commodified version of the animal has taken on such a life of its own that that's the collection. And so I guess in that sense, like I'm I'm trying not to collect anything for more than storytelling purposes or It's a good question, it's a good challenge for me to think about, but ideally it would lead to more sharing or just Appreciation for different ways you can move around these objects like pretending that your home is a stage and you're an actor, and all of a sudden you have this prop. Whereas it was formerly just dusty and nothing was happening with it. So hopefully it can create moments that can't really be collected in the archive and can create more performative moments, like spontaneous moments. It doesn't know that says anything to your question, but yeah, it's it's very interesting about the DuPont connection. Thanks. Holly has a question. This is for Hayley. And we can continue to have this conversation later if you'd rather, but I was very interested. I think that's the first time I've heard rubber ducky be used as an academic, an academic conference, and I really enjoyed it. But I wonder they use, especially in in shows such as Sesame Street, when more like anthropomorphic animals are used or what in your view, might that do to a developing sense of animals subjectivity? In, I guess like early learners of what that entails. That's really interesting. I think about. So I think it was asking about what an anthropomorphized or like a modified version of an animal. Object is an object. What it does to a growing child's brain? I think about this a lot because, you know, if, if, uh, if some people are having a baby and they say, we're not going to look up. We're not going to find out what the gender of the baby is going to be or the sex, however you want to call it. Then at the baby shower, everyone ends up bringing fox, a femora, or anything related to animals because they can't bring a pink, pink gifts or blue gifts. So they settle on Bill, genderless animal. And I think that happens a lot in children's books, happens a lot with toys. I mean, there's, there's a whole lot to say about teddy bears and like Teddy Roosevelt and what that's trying to do. But I just think there's I lose, I lose a lot of people with this cuvette. But I think there's a lot of violence being committed through commodified animal objects and for children. And I don't think it's quite as innocent as it often appears. And I know a lot of times it's not intentional. But it's like the second that I start thinking more and more about a lot of these objects. Not only like what materials are put into them, in what environments have been degraded in order for them to be made. But also like the humans that are forced to mass produce rubber duck ease across, across the globe. It's just like, it's a very strange paradox that like, that's the first prop that this little actor gets to use in their performance of life. And we're going to close our question-and-answer session with gen as our last question asker. Oh, sorry. I was chilled by Halley's comment. I'm sorry. Having drilled into everyone, we have to talk into the microphone was like, Oh, yeah, this was just a really quick comment also for Holly. And as best as making your brilliant connection between the various breeding efforts that would deter and collecting efforts that went after. It just made me think about the ways that the words Chomsky and Kitsch and the kinds of ways that those have been studied as cultural artifacts have really privileged the sort of over abundance of visual data as being one of the markers of that category of objects. So I don't know, I was thinking about that in relation to your touching and whether as with the rubber ducky that was so well loved that you were showing us with early. It just made me think about the ways that, that overabundance of visuality often translates into a lot of actual decorative feature or things that can be touched or things that can be held. So there's the falseness that I think you are getting out with your flat bottoms of the duck, which, which would be typical of kitsch. But then I'm also interested in the ways that, that kind of overabundance of visuality actually translates to more tactility. So I would love to hear you think and maybe this is something for after the conference too bit about the ways that those are sometimes reinforcing and not always antagonistic, the visual and the tactile. That's an amazing question. I'm going to think about it and send you an email. Because it's true. Yeah, it's true. That that brings us to the closing of our last panel. I'd like to invite Jen and j up here for closing remarks. Okay. Hi, everyone. When you know where the end of a conference when I'm blazers got coming up here, I'm going to call it and then I know I speak for both the bus as well as Wendy and Sarah. This has been an incredible compounds. Can we give him a round of applause one more time for everyone? No, I'm really tired. I, yeah, I echo j's bags. I feel full of ideas as I hope you do as well. I think I just wanted to take a cue from riba intrapreneurs discussion that launched our time together, which is just being reminded again and again about the power of collaboration and the things that become possible as we start to think differently and work together. And I certainly have felt that way with this conference, being able to do this with day. And we're Sarah and having multiple voices and perspectives even kind of built into the framework of the conference creation. For me that's really carried through throughout our time today, which is the not-so-great full transition to say that that conversation can continue for anyone who would like to join us for a post-conference social at the historic New York Deer Park tavern. Everyone is welcome. Anyone is welcome to join us. If anyone arrives before me, you should just let them know that we do indeed have a reservation. It's not just just in case they have table space there for anybody who would like to come. And I like to say that we envision a hybrid conference. The key thing about having that, that's fully manner, being a great idea team and event planner. So I wanted to say thank you to the IT team or hiding in the corner over there. Because we've been getting a lot of compliments about how well we've handle does that the boundary framework for this conference. So I know it's not possible without technology and without the labor of their staff here. So we're very grateful for that. I think that's about it. Shall we ring a bell?
The Disability Gaze: Panel Four, Rethinking the Gaze
From Kelly O'Rourke August 01, 2022
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The Center for Material Culture Studies (CMCS) at the University of Delaware shares video of its third biennial conference, “The Disability Gaze: Material and Visual Approaches.” The symposium was a a hybrid event held virtually and in-person at UD’s STAR campus.
Panel Four, "Rethinking the Gaze," took place on April 30, 2022. The panel was moderated by Emily Beeber and María Carrillo-Marquina. Speakers and their talks are listed in order of appearance:
Holli Flanagan: Making One’s Self: Eva Peace’s Disabled Power in Toni Morrison’s Sula
Hallie Abelman: The Disability Graze: A Tactile Approach to Tchotchkes
Amanda Stuckey (virtual): The “Tactile Gaze” and Nineteenth-Century Print Materials for the Blind
Closed captioning is available via the CC button on your screen.
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- August 03, 2022
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