TPE Book Celebration and Conversation with Steve Kuusisto and Elizabeth Bearden at NYU (In-Person & Online)

Co-sponsored by the Modern and Contemporary Colloquium and the Center for Disability Studies at NYU There Plant Eyes: A Personal and Cultural History of Blindness (Pantheon, 2021) is now out in paperback! To mark the occasion, author M. Leona Godin (NYU) will be joined by Stephen Kuusisto (Syracuse University) and Elisabeth Bearden (University of Wisconsin, Madison) to read from their… Read more

Blindness and Insight from ‘King Lear’ to ‘Jane Eyre’ – First Day of Class!

For the first time, I’m designing my own course for NYU: “Blindness and Insight from King Lear to Jane Eyre”! Those who’ve read There Plant Eyes may guess some of the subject matter, but I’ll go a little more deep theory in the classroom. This link is to the current course offerings, in the English dept, but you have to… Read more

NY Times & Inside Edition, Books & Bakes, Scent &Architecture, Hyacinths & Timberlines, and AP open for submissions!

New beginnings collide with old haunts in recent months as Alabaster and I settle back into New-York-City living. A sudden teaching gig landed me back at NYU, helping out a favorite former professor as the oldest TA in the world, . And on the other side of things, I was honored that the New York Times let me weigh in… Read more

Machiavelli: From Grad School to the Stage to Bullying Trump, Essay 25 of #52essays2017

Sometimes I feel like I confuse friends and family with my chameleon approach to life, but in my own mind, grad school led me to the stage which led me back to the page, where I started so long ago before the eye disease. I’d like to think that my changeability stems from the need to adapt and adjust to… Read more

Bobst Library, the Education of the Blind, and The Buffoon of Saint-Ovide, Essay 21 of #52essays2017

When I started my grad degree at NYU, I was given, for my nearly exclusive use, a little padded cell in the basement of Bobst Library where, in the beginning, I read books on the history of the education of the blind alongside postmodern theorists. It was black, or I remember it as such because of the black acoustic foam… Read more