Recovering Reading within the Students’ Magazine

ABSTRACT: From 1838 until 1844, the Pennsylvania Institution for the Instruction of the Blind published the Students’ Magazine , a periodical embossed in roman letters designed to be read by touch. The Students’ Magazine features em-bossed “Selections” from inkprint publications as well as embossed “Original Contributions” by student writers. This article examines the first four years of the periodical’s publication, considering both the content of its embossed offerings as well as formal changes in individual submissions and in the periodical’s overall format. It suggests that the periodical’s content reflected assimilationist aims of nineteenth-century blind education, disseminating didactic pieces that sought to minimize visual impairment. The periodical’s form, however, begins to register the experiences of vision-impaired audiences, suggesting the surprising ways that touch-based literacy altered literary and periodical conventions. With this overview, this article invites a broader conversation about the intertwined roles of form and content in periodicals produced for and by disabled audiences.