Vision Loss through Many Lenses: Insights from Myth, Media, Music, Medicine & More

While vision loss directly concerns medical and mental health professions, this theme also attracts the attention of artists and scholars from many disciplines. This collection falls under the rubric of "medical humanities" and includes essays on vision loss or blindness in visual arts, literature, music, comics, film, myth, history, religion, philosophy, sociology and more--but it does not include medical or mental health issues per se. Some topics are already accounted for but open topics include memoirs by persons who lost their vision; masculinity in blind samurai warrior series; blindness as a metaphor for color-blindness in Civil Rights era films; music by and about blind persons; why groups such as Blind Boys of Alabama proliferated in Southern U.S.A.; disability debates invoked by  Oliver Sack's Island of he Colorblind; dance by or about persons w/ visual loss; portrayals of vision-impaired females in film; poetry by or about vision-impaired persons; Catholic/Protestant/Hindu/Muslim/Jewish attitudes toward vision loss; healing shrines and patron saints and miracle cures for vision loss; East Asian attitudes toward vision loss; philosphical debates about blindness and cognition; etc. We are open to other innovation ideas. If you are uncertain if your topic is still available, pl send a short 1-2 sentence query plus a short bio. Otherwise, pl send a short precis of 200-400 words along with a short bio &/or resume. Abstracts due 12-15-19. Papers of 3,000-4,000 words (w/ 5-15 citations) in University Chicago style due June 1, 2020 (first draft). Final drafts due August 30, 2020.  Remumeration includes 1 book/essay. This essay collection is already in contract with a respected academic publisher.