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Author Kim Nielsen will discuss her book, Beyond The Miracle Worker: The Remarkable Life Of Anne Sullivan Macy And Her Extraordinary Friendship With Helen Keller, on the eve Anne Sullivan's birthday.

About The Book: Born in 1866 to poverty-stricken Irish immigrants, Anne suffered part of her childhood in the Massachusetts State Almshouse at Tewksbury. Seeking escape, in love with literature, and profoundly stubborn, she successfully fought to gain an education at the Perkins School for the Blind. She went on to teach Helen Keller, who became a loyal and lifelong friend. As Anne floundered with her own blindness, ill health, depression, and marital strife in her later years, she came to lean on her former student for emotional, physical, and economic support. While Anne is remembered primarily as Helen Keller’s teacher and a straightforward educational superhero, the real story of this brilliant, complex, and misunderstood woman has never been completely told.... until now.

About The Author: Kim E. Nielsen is a Professor of Disability Studies, History, and Women’s & Gender Studies at The University of Toledo. Since earning her Ph.D. in History from the University of Iowa in 1996, Nielsen’s scholarship has centered on historical debates about who is fit to participate in civic life; using gender, disability, and changing notions of competency as her tools of analysis. A Disability History of the United States, Nielsen’s latest book, is the first analysis of disability throughout United States history and covers the period prior to European arrival through the present. Other books include Beyond the Miracle Worker: The Remarkable Life of Anne Sullivan Macy and Her Extraordinary Friendship with Helen Keller; Helen Keller: Selected Writings (NYUP, 2005); The Radical Lives of Helen Keller (NYUP, 2004); and Un-American Womanhood: Anti-Radicalism, Anti-Feminism, and the First Red Scare (OSUP, 2001).

 Sponsored by the Friends of the Tewksbury Library. Presented in collaboration with the Public Health Museum.

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