This chapter investigates how we have come to know what we know, in the United States, about the terms “ability” and “disability” through the story of Helen Keller and her teacher…
Abstract
Purpose
This chapter investigates how we have come to know what we know, in the United States, about the terms “ability” and “disability” through the story of Helen Keller and her teacher Anne Sullivan Macy. What is the narrative of Helen Keller as told through children’s literature? How might the ways in which her life is presented contribute to stereotypes of what it means to be disabled? What, if any, are the ways in which authors of these books resist writing about her as someone who “overcame” her disabilities? How is Helen Keller’s relationship with her teacher, Anne Sullivan, portrayed and what might this representation contribute to the concepts of dependence and interdependence?
Method/Approach
This project provides a sociological analysis of common themes through a content analysis of 20 children’s books on Helen Keller.
Findings
The theme of the widely circulating “story of the water pump moment” (when Keller realizes that hand movements signify language) depicts a one-sided relationship of Helen Keller and her teacher Anne Sullivan Macy. This informs the narrative representations of Anne Sullivan Macy as “miracle worker” and Helen Keller as “miracle child.” Another theme is the “complexities of resistance,” which shows how these narratives uphold the stereotype that Helen Keller needed to “overcome” her disabilities while also resisting this notion and showing how she also helped Anne Sullivan Macy.
Implication/Value
This demonstrates how widely circulating stories such as those about Helen Keller shape what we know about what it means to be abled or disabled, challenges simplistic binary understandings of the disability experience, and points to the power of narratives to shape systems of beliefs.
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Reproduces the three winning entries in the Scottish schools essaycompetition. Entrants were asked to choose a character from a book andto write about what that character means to…
Abstract
Reproduces the three winning entries in the Scottish schools essay competition. Entrants were asked to choose a character from a book and to write about what that character means to them.
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ARNOLD BENNETT was a man of two worlds. In the terms of Max Beerbohm's cartoon “Old Self” was plump, wealthy, self‐assured, a landmark of the London scene, a familiar of press…
Abstract
ARNOLD BENNETT was a man of two worlds. In the terms of Max Beerbohm's cartoon “Old Self” was plump, wealthy, self‐assured, a landmark of the London scene, a familiar of press magnates, the owner of a yacht; “Young Self” was thin, ambitious, far‐sighted, industrious, secretly terribly anxious to justify himself to himself and decidedly provincial.
THE Conference of the Library Association may be described as one without a press. The greatest dailies had the barest references to it, a fact which is surprising and lends us…
Abstract
THE Conference of the Library Association may be described as one without a press. The greatest dailies had the barest references to it, a fact which is surprising and lends us matter for reflection. If an admittedly national service, almost universal in application, can be completely ignored in its annual gatherings, what is to be thought? Is it that libraries are now so normal a part of the social landscape that they may be taken for granted? Are they so insignificant that they do not merit notice? Alternatively, were our proceedings too dull for the dramatic necessities of the reporter? Or, finally, was it because the general publicity of the L.A. is not aggressive, is indeed inert? These questions every librarian and library authority may ask and have a right to the answer.
THE note of the Conference at Harrogate was the question of unemployment in relation to libraries. The arguments advanced were intended for the wider public rather than for…
Abstract
THE note of the Conference at Harrogate was the question of unemployment in relation to libraries. The arguments advanced were intended for the wider public rather than for librarians, and reproduced a now fairly familiar argument that the issues of books from libraries have increased by leaps and bounds since the beginning of the depression. It is quite clear that many men who normally would not read quite so much have turned to books for consolation and guidance. The fact that branch libraries were closed at Glasgow as an economy measure, and were afterwards re‐opened under the force of public opinion, would emphasize the opinion generally held that in times of economic stress it may be an even greater economy to increase expenditure upon libraries than to curtail it. This argument is, of course, in a region which the average material mind of our governors cannot always reach. It is nevertheless true, and the Conference provided ample evidence of its truth.
Jussara dos Santos Raxlen and Rachel Sherman
In the 1970s and 1980s, studies of the unpaid household and family labor of upper-class women linked this labor to class reproduction. In recent years, however, the topic of class…
Abstract
In the 1970s and 1980s, studies of the unpaid household and family labor of upper-class women linked this labor to class reproduction. In recent years, however, the topic of class has dropped out of analyses of unpaid labor, and such labor has been ignored in recent studies of elites. In this chapter, drawing primarily on 18 in-depth interviews with wealthy New York stay-at-home mothers, we look at what elite women’s unpaid labor consists of, highlighting previously untheorized consumption and lifestyle work; ask what it reproduces; and analyze how women themselves interpret and represent it. In the current historical moment, elite women face not only the cultural expectation that they will work for pay, but also the prominence of meritocracy as a mechanism of class legitimation in a diversified upper class. In this context, we argue, elite women’s unpaid labor serves to reproduce “meritocratic” dispositions of children rather than closed, homogenous elite communities, as identified in previous studies. Our respondents struggle to frame their activities as legitimate and productive work. In doing so, they not only resist longstanding stereotypes of “ladies who lunch” but also seek to justify and normalize their own class privileges, thus reproducing the same hegemonic discourses of work and worth that stigmatize their unpaid work.
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Pamela L. Alreck and Robert B. Settle
The marketer’s principal objective is typically to build a relationship with buyers, rather than merely to make a single sale. Ideally, the essence of that relationship consists…
Abstract
The marketer’s principal objective is typically to build a relationship with buyers, rather than merely to make a single sale. Ideally, the essence of that relationship consists of a strong bond between the buyer and the brand. Outlines six strategies for building that relationship: linking the brand to a particular need; associating it with a pleasant mood; appealing to subconscious motives; conditioning buyers to prefer the brand through reward; penetrating perceptual and cognitive barriers to create preference; and providing attractive models for buyers to emulate. The choice of an individual strategy or combination depends mainly on the nature of the branded product or service. The success of the strategy depends heavily on the marketer’s understanding of the preference building and bonding process.
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THE article which we publish from the pen of Mr. L. Stanley Jast is the first of many which we hope will come from his pen, now that he has release from regular library duties…
Abstract
THE article which we publish from the pen of Mr. L. Stanley Jast is the first of many which we hope will come from his pen, now that he has release from regular library duties. Anything that Mr. Jast has to say is said with originality even if the subject is not original; his quality has always been to give an independent and novel twist to almost everything he touches. We think our readers will find this to be so when he touches the important question of “The Library and Leisure.”