Helen Selsdon

Left to right: editors Cheryl Kamei-Hannan, M. Cay Holbrook, Ph.D., and Tessa S McCarthy at today's launch of Foundations of Education, Third Edition On March 3, 1887—130 years ago to the day—Annie Sullivan arrived in Tuscumbia, Alabama. The minute Annie met six-year-old Helen Keller, she began to sign into her hand, laying the foundation for Helen’s education. Not four weeks later, the now famous moment at the water pump took place, and Helen understood for the first time that everything…

Image: Helen Keller walks in her garden in Westport, Connecticut, 1950. It is wintertime. Keller is seen smiling, facing the camera. She wears a long coat and woolen hat. She holds a wooden branch railing with her left hand. As the new year approaches, it’s a good time to review the progress that is being made to digitize the Helen Keller Archive. This is a mammoth task, and we are well on our way to accomplishing the work of preserving and disseminating online the over 80,000 items in the…

Helen Keller reading braille at her home in Westport, Connecticut. October 1965. I am delighted that the fifth in our series of posts focusing on the Helen Keller Digitization Project is from Mara Mills New York University Associate Professor of Media, Culture and Communication. Mara’s post - on the continued importance of human transcribers - is fascinating and I encourage everyone to read it. Many thanks, Mara! On Helen Keller’s birthday this year, archivist Helen Selsdon wrote a piece…

Image: Left to right, Helen Keller standing with Polly Thomson at the door to their home in Easton, Connecticut, circa 1955. AFB is thrilled to publish the third in our series of posts focusing on newly digitized items in the Helen Keller Archival Collection. This week’s post is from historian David Serlin, an associate professor in the Department of Communication at the University of California-San Diego. Enormous thanks to David for contributing such a fascinating, thoughtful, and thought-…

We are delighted that our next post in this series of posts devoted to the Helen Keller Digitization project is contributed by Susan Pearce, a volunteer transcriber, and a very valued member of our "Captains of Transcription" team. From Susan Pearce, transcriber: This is an unbelievably interesting project. I have been getting to know Helen Keller better. Miss Keller travelled the world and affected so many people's lives. What has been wonderful to transcribe are the handwritten letters…

Today, Monday June 27th, 2016—is Helen Keller’s 136th birthday. What better way to celebrate her legacy than by focusing our attention on the Helen Keller Digitization Project? As the result of a grant awarded in May 2015 by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) began the task of capturing 80,000 items in the Helen Keller Archival Collection. Using digital photography, correspondence, photographs, architectural drawings, oversize print materials…

Friday May 27th 2016, President Barack Obama will be the first sitting President of the United States to set foot in Hiroshima since the atomic bomb devastated that city 71 years ago Wednesday October 13th 1948, Helen Keller was America’s First Goodwill Ambassador to Japan after the Second World War Helen wrote the following letter to her good friend Nella Braddy Henney on a train from Hiroshima to Fukuoka on October 14th, 1948, the day after her visit to the devastated city. The letter…

Helen Keller was always a vocal supporter for the rights of children. In 1923, she wrote a fundraising letter on behalf of the National Playground and Recreation Association of America. In it she passionately advocated for the need for outdoor spaces where children could run around safely and enjoy themselves. Keller instinctively understood that play is as important to the healthy development of a child as is study indoors. Read her words below — they are as applicable today as when she…

Dear Annie, Happy birthday! Today, we celebrate your legacy and excellence as an educator. You insisted that your student, Helen Keller, could learn and accomplish just as much as any seeing and hearing child could — and you were right. You were a tough teacher — when Helen misspelled a word in an essay or letter, you made her rewrite the entire text — but you also had a finely tuned insight into a child’s psychology. You instantly recognized that Helen was a very bright child who just…