{"title":"Helen Keller and the Burden of Wonder.","authors":"David Serlin","doi":"10.1353/pbm.2024.a942081","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This essay examines the concept of \"wonder\" in relation to the life of deafblind author and activist Helen Keller (1880-1968), who was often billed in popular media as the \"Eighth Wonder of the World.\" For Keller, being known as a \"wonder\" was not always a positive attribute: the term, far from being neutral, conceals the uneven power dynamic between the one doing the wondering and the one who inspires the wonder. Using excerpts from a range of sources-from Keller's second autobiography The World I Live in (1908) to hotelier Conrad Hilton's autobiography Be My Guest (1957)-the author argues that Keller was never a passive object of other people's wonder but a proactive agent of her own wonder-making. In the end, Keller endured the burden of being known as the \"Eighth Wonder\" while also resisting its cumulative effects.</p>","PeriodicalId":54627,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives in Biology and Medicine","volume":"67 4","pages":"588-594"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8000,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Perspectives in Biology and Medicine","FirstCategoryId":"3","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/pbm.2024.a942081","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"HISTORY & PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This essay examines the concept of "wonder" in relation to the life of deafblind author and activist Helen Keller (1880-1968), who was often billed in popular media as the "Eighth Wonder of the World." For Keller, being known as a "wonder" was not always a positive attribute: the term, far from being neutral, conceals the uneven power dynamic between the one doing the wondering and the one who inspires the wonder. Using excerpts from a range of sources-from Keller's second autobiography The World I Live in (1908) to hotelier Conrad Hilton's autobiography Be My Guest (1957)-the author argues that Keller was never a passive object of other people's wonder but a proactive agent of her own wonder-making. In the end, Keller endured the burden of being known as the "Eighth Wonder" while also resisting its cumulative effects.
期刊介绍：
Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, an interdisciplinary scholarly journal whose readers include biologists, physicians, students, and scholars, publishes essays that place important biological or medical subjects in broader scientific, social, or humanistic contexts. These essays span a wide range of subjects, from biomedical topics such as neurobiology, genetics, and evolution, to topics in ethics, history, philosophy, and medical education and practice. The editors encourage an informal style that has literary merit and that preserves the warmth, excitement, and color of the biological and medical sciences.
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