This Disability Studies course will explore vision as culture. Even though vision is typically understood as the physiological process of seeing the world, this course will show that culture is necessary for any form of perception, including seeing. After all, it is culture — how we live, the customs and norms we live by, our understanding of reality — that implicitly defines the world before any perception of it takes place. This suggests that it is not the eyes that see, but instead it is people who see. Thus, this course will explore the cultural processes and practices of vision including how we look, how we are looked at, how we see and, how we are seen. Not only will this course deal with vision understood as culture, but it will also explore the consequences of such an understanding, its effect on social identity and marginality as well as how vision, when framed as culture, can change our pedagogy and politics.

The culture of vision is addressed through an examination of theorists and narratives that highlight the features, norms, and values of vision with a particular focus on that which is typically considered its opposite, namely blindness. Blindness, especially as it appears in popular culture, education, and the arts will be our primary guide for this examination. Central to this work is an understanding of the phenomenon of Blind Spots as the point where not only the culture of vision but also the culture of blindness meets. We will treat this meeting as the production of active spaces of wonder and intrigue.

Quotes from theorists whose work engages the act of perception will serve as our entry into, and exploration of, Blind Spots. This pedagogical approach to Blind Spots shifts inquiry from explanation to exploration, from "why?" to "how?" — opening rich possibilities for learning from what vision cannot see or know and orienting to blindness itself as a form of perception.