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This book traces the transnational history of blind education and tactile literacy in East Asia from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, revealing how Braille traveled, transformed, and took root across linguistic and cultural frontiers. Through detailed case studies from China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, it explores how teachers, missionaries, and blind readers adapted Western models of instruction into local traditions of learning and touch. The chapters follow the movement of tactile reading systems from colonial encounters to national reforms, showing how technology, disability, and literacy were reshaped in the process and reimagined within local political, religious, and linguistic frameworks.
Drawing on the cultural history of disability, critical work on special education and exclusion, and recent global approaches to archival research, this timely monograph discusses Enlightenment theories of perception, nineteenth-century debates over tactile typography, the moral framing of blindness in Christian missionary discourse, as well as premodern Asia and region-specific case studies on how tactile writing systems and blind education were introduced under different colonial regimes. Themes of translation, modernization, and inclusion run throughout, offering new insights into the global circulation of knowledge and the making of disability education. By examining the cultural politics behind reading by touch, Braille Eastward invites readers to rethink literacy, technology, and difference in the modern world, making it an invaluable read for academics and students in disability studies, East Asia history, education history, postcolonial studies, material culture, as well as educators, cultural historians, and researchers interested in translation, embodied knowledge, and the politics of inclusion.
List of contents
1. Introduction.- Part I Western Initiatives.- 2. Europe: From Myth to Method.- 3. Britain: The Search for Legibility.- 4. United States: Competing to Be Read.- Part II East Asian Contexts.- 5. Livelihoods of the Blind: Work and Survival in East Asia.- 6. Learning Blind Trades: Knowledge and Training in East Asia.- Part III Localizing Tactile Scripts.- 7. China: The Uneven Path to Literacy.- 8. Japan: Hybrid Innovation and Standardization.- 9. Taiwan: Missionary and Colonial Adaptations.- 10. Korea: Language and National Identity.- 11. Conclusion.
About the author
Tasing Chiu
is Professor of Medical Sociology and Social Work at Kaohsiung Medical University, Taiwan. His research explores disability, technology, and social justice in East Asia. Author of numerous articles on blindness and disability history, he has served as visiting scholar at Academia Sinica, Taiwan, and Rikkyo University, Japan.
Summary
This book traces the transnational history of blind education and tactile literacy in East Asia from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, revealing how Braille traveled, transformed, and took root across linguistic and cultural frontiers. Through detailed case studies from China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, it explores how teachers, missionaries, and blind readers adapted Western models of instruction into local traditions of learning and touch. The chapters follow the movement of tactile reading systems from colonial encounters to national reforms, showing how technology, disability, and literacy were reshaped in the process and reimagined within local political, religious, and linguistic frameworks.
Drawing on the cultural history of disability, critical work on special education and exclusion, and recent global approaches to archival research, this timely monograph discusses Enlightenment theories of perception, nineteenth-century debates over tactile typography, the moral framing of blindness in Christian missionary discourse, as well as premodern Asia and region-specific case studies on how tactile writing systems and blind education were introduced under different colonial regimes. Themes of translation, modernization, and inclusion run throughout, offering new insights into the global circulation of knowledge and the making of disability education. By examining the cultural politics behind reading by touch,
Braille Eastward
invites readers to rethink literacy, technology, and difference in the modern world, making it an invaluable read for academics and students in disability studies, East Asia history, education history, postcolonial studies, material culture, as well as educators, cultural historians, and researchers interested in translation, embodied knowledge, and the politics of inclusion.
