Lenses on Blindness: Essays on Vision Loss in Media, Culture, Religion and Experience

by Sharon Packer , M.D. (Editor)

Overview

Blindness, or vision loss, is a major medical concern that has also drawn the attention of artists, writers, musicians, mythologists, filmmakers, religions, philosophers and others. Covering everything from pop culture to high culture, this text is an illuminating anthology of essays examining various representations of blindness.

Comprehensive in scope, this collection of essays analyzes depictions and explorations of blindness in many pieces of media. Essays explore blindness in horror films, science fiction literature, high art, superhero fiction, Jewish and indigenous traditions, music and more. This book aims to show how a world of darkness can hold so much light.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781476682303
Publisher:	McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Publication date:	03/02/2023
Pages:	225
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.46(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Sharon Packer, M.D., is a New York City psychiatrist and an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Preface
Sharon Packer, M.D.
Introduction
Sharon Packer, M.D.
Sound Over Sight: Depicting Blindness in Horror Films (From a Sound Specialist’s Perspective)
Jeffrey Bullins
A Blind Boyhood: Reflections by a Poetry Professor
Reja-e Busailah
Blindness in Science Fiction: From Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to Star Trek’s La Forge—and Much More
Jason W. Ellis
Looking at the Unseeing: Blindness in the History of
Carlos Espí Forcén
Visual Loss in Cinema: A Psychiatrist’s Viewpoint
Fernando Espí Forcén
Unsighted Superheroes: Insights from Comics, Films and
Jaq Greenspon
Pastoral Counseling and Impending Blindness: Vision Loss and a Quest for Meaning
Curtis W. Hart
Blinded on the Battlefield: True Superhero Stories of Mikhail Margolin and Al Schmid
George Higham
Blindness in the Jewish Tradition: From Written Text to Oral Law to Contemporary Medical Practice
Jerome M. Karp and Howard L. Forman
Native Stories About Vision and Impairment: Western Medicine Meets Aboriginal Mythos
Andrew J. McLean
Blind African American Musicians: Insights from a Social Psychiatrist
H. Steven Moffic
Idioms and Ideas: Meanings and Metaphors
Sharon Packer, M.D.
Through the Eye(s) of Tiresias: From Thebes and Beyond
Caleb Puckett
“Close your eyes and see”: Blindness and Literature
Eric Sandberg
Blindness as Holocaust Metaphor: Elie Wiesel’s A Beggar in Jerusalem and The Forgotten
Eric J. Sterling
In Darkness and Light: The Meanings of Blindness in the West
Brenda S. Gardenour Walter
Out of Sight: Body and Building from Medical Architecture to ­Post-Modern Haptic Space
Brenda S. Gardenour Walter
Filmography
Bibliography
About the Contributors
Index