Annotated Bibliography and Semi-Official Tweethis Statement

Thanks to an illuminating, albeit brief, exchange with Rachel, I've figured out the little bit of pith that I needed for my thesis statement. Here it is.

Though Gloucester can be seen as just another stereotypical manifestation of the Oedipal view of blindness, it is really only in his blinding that we find these elements. In fact, Gloucester in his blindness is presented as a capable human being.

And now, on to the annotated bibliography, which is probably not nearly as thorough as Paul's.

Social Graph

1. My husband, Neal Silvester. He is one of the few people I can depend on to listen to me no matter what, and he offers me a fresh perspective when I get too immersed in the academia side of my research. He pulls me back to the original text no matter what, and that's a good strength to have on my team.

2. My mom and her friend Genie. See my post talking about the connections I made through Facebook. I haven't heard back from the people I messaged yet, but I plan to give them a friendly reminder today to see if they have any thoughts on the questions I asked.

3. My coworkers at the Religious Studies Center. I work with a couple of very capable English majors and other very smart people at my work, and I've already briefly introduced them to my topic. They seemed really interested in it, so it's totally possible that they could have good ideas for what to include in my paper.

New Media

This is the part I've been most struggling with. There aren't a lot of people blogging about my specific topic, but I have found some very evocative blog posts that I want to comment on.

1. "'The Power of Shakespeare in Any Medium': The American Print House for the Blind Production of Much Ado About Nothing," by Kathi E. B. Ellis. Though this post doesn't talk much about literary criticism and theory, it does mention how many members of the production used Braille scripts, and it got me thinking back to the audio versions of the play we listened to. I'm probably going to see if I can find an audio version of King Lear and see how they interpreted both the blinding of Gloucester and the cliffs of Dover scene. Although these scenes revolve around blinding and blindness, they rely a lot on the sight of the audience to understand the spectacle and the intended emotional effect.

2. "How Blindness Is Often Depicted," by Bridgit Kuenning-Pollpeter. This is a remarkable blog post that cleverly juxtaposes a depiction of the supposed horrors of blindness on Law and Order with the everyday life of a blind woman and her fiance. I highly recommend reading it to get a sense of the two depictions of blindness I'm going to be comparing in King Lear: the fear of blindness that plagues most of the world and the humanity that blind people want to be accorded.

3. "Sight and Blindness in Shakespeare," by Sylvia Morris. Though this is much more of a traditional reading of blindness in literature, one not really informed by disability studies, it provides several interesting links to the history of sight and how it has been valued throughout the past few centuries. This could prove really interesting as a contrast to my research.

Social Networks

1. There's the possibility of going to the Goodreads group that everyone else in the class has been flocking to, but I don't think it's a good fit for me and my project. Still, I'll try posting something there and seeing what happens.

2. There are a few groups on LinkedIn that are communities of the blind. I'm a little bit wary to get in contact with these groups, though, simply because I don't want to look like I'm using them as mere data points in my project. These aren't really literature groups; they're people who deal with blindness every day, and I don't know if I'll be interpreted as ungracious if I stop by.

3. Academia.edu actually has a thriving disability studies community, and its blindness community is nothing to sneeze at. There are a wealth of people I could talk to here, and I'm excited to have stumbled across this source.

Traditional Sources

1. Georgina Kleege, Sight Unseen. This book has been my go-to source for literary stereotypes of the blind, and it really helped me dive into the field of disability studies. Though Kleege is legally blind, she still watches movie and takes part in visual culture, making her a valuable bridge between two worlds. Her comments are insightful if challenging, sometimes, but her book has been very helpful for reorienting my viewpoint on blindness in literature.

2. "'I Stumbled When I Saw: Interpreting Gloucester's Blindness in King Lear," by Robert B. Pierce. Pierce takes much the same approach I do to King Lear, trying to work through the way that blindness is used in it. My work will in a way be building off his; he points to the interaction of the blind Gloucester and the mad Lear as a way of breaking away from the traditional presentation of the blind in literature, and his discussions of blind stereotypes are useful. My thesis will hopefully bring his work to a more pointed conclusion.

3. "Smelling Their Way to Dover: A Blind Director's Take on Blind Gloucester," by David Richman. This piece is fascinating and evocative, immediately issuing a challenge to the sighted reader that the fear of blindness is restricted to the sighted. I don't agree with Richman's staging of the cliffs of Dover scene, which he wants to make as darkly humorous as possible in order to highlight the emotions the audience feels about the violent blinding of Gloucester, but I will probably be pushing back against this piece in my own work.

4. "Justifying the Unjustifiable: The Dover Cliff Scene in King Lear," by Winfried Schleiner. This older article, from 1985, takes on the staging of the cliffs of Dover scene of King Lear, using Renaissance psychology and medicine to explain why the scene should be staged on a small hill and not on a flat stage. This sounds like quite a tangential point to make, but Schleiner is a defender of the Dover scene in a way that I want to be. He doesn't take it to be a farce but an act of love from son to father, and I want to include some of that dynamic in my paper.

So that's what I have right now. Time to start synthesizing ideas!