MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

In his advocacy for the Pennsylvania Institution for the Instruction of the Blind (PIIB) in 1833, the school’s founder Julius Friedlander (1803-1839) expounded “The basis of a scientific cultivation of the mind, is knowledge of our vernacular language … therefore, if we have grammars in the tangible characters for the use of the blind, written in the same manner as if intended for those who can see … will [he] not be able to communicate the knowledge acquired therein not only to his brethren, … but even to those blessed with sight.”

In antebellum United States, Philadelphia served as a center for printing for the blind starting with the establishment of PIIB in 1833. Friedlander, along with his fellow administrators in this burgeoning educational field, recognized the centrality of reading and tactile books in the instruction of the visually impaired. Nonetheless, the social and cultural politics of the period privileged sight over touch in the printing for the blind, including at PIIB. Raised line types that resembled the Roman alphabet predominated over dot systems, like Braille, for much of the 19th century.

This paper examines the printing for the blind associated with PIIB to challenge our presumptions about the relationship between sight, reading, and knowledge. These raised-printed works richly document not only the sociopolitically charged history of the education, but also the visual culture of the visually impaired. The aesthetics and cultural complexities of these utilitarian, yet still artistic printed works will be analyzed within the context of the interdisciplinary connections between disability studies, the history of printing, and the sensory turn in the field of visual culture.