Reflections: The Life and Writings of a Young Blind Woman in Post-Revolutionary France

In the 1820s, several years before Braille was invented, Therese-Adele Husson, a young blind woman from provincial France, wrote an audacious manifesto about her life, French society, and her hopes for the future. Through extensive research and scholarly detective work, authors Catherine Kudlick and Zina Weygand have rescued this intriguing woman and the remarkable story of her life and tragic death from obscurity, giving readers a rare look into a world recorded by an unlikely historical figure.
Reflections is one of the earliest recorded manifestations of group solidarity among people with the same disability, advocating self-sufficiency and independence on the part of blind people, encouraging education for all blind children, and exploring gender roles for both men and women. Resolutely defying the sense of otherness which pervades discourse about the disabled, Husson instead convinces us that that blindness offers a fresh and important perspective on both history and ourselves.
In rescuing this important historical account and recreating the life of an obscure but potent figure, Weygand and Kudlick have awakened a perspective that transcends time and which, ultimately, remaps our inherent ideas of physical sensibility

Author: Therese-Adèle Husson
Publisher: New York University Press
Published: 02/01/2002
Pages: 144
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.76lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.56d
ISBN: 9780814747469

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 10/22/2001 pg. 62
Library Journal 11/15/2001 pg. 76

About the Author
Kudlick, Catherine: - Catherine J. Kudlick is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Davis, and author of Cholera in Post-Revolutionary Paris: A Cultural History.Weygand, Zina: - Dr. Zina Weygand is a researcher at the Laboratoire Brigitte Frybourg pour l'insertion Sociale des Personnes Handicape'es at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Me'tiers in Paris and is author of numerous articles on the history of blind people in France.