{"id":7823,"date":"2022-04-22T15:16:24","date_gmt":"2022-04-22T20:16:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin-new\/?post_type=campus_story&p=7823"},"modified":"2022-04-22T15:16:24","modified_gmt":"2022-04-22T20:16:24","slug":"uw-la-crosses-susan-crutchfield-shares-expertise-on-helen-keller-with-popular-radio-show","status":"publish","type":"campus_story","link":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/story\/uw-la-crosses-susan-crutchfield-shares-expertise-on-helen-keller-with-popular-radio-show\/","title":{"rendered":"UW-La Crosse\u2019s Susan Crutchfield shares expertise on Helen Keller with popular radio show"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Photo
In 2005, UWL Associate Professor of English Susan Crutchfield published an article about Helen Keller’s short-lived career in vaudeville. Surprisingly, Crutchfield was contacted this spring by one of the most popular radio shows in America \u2014 Radiolab, which wanted to interview her for an upcoming episode.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 2005, Susan Crutchfield used a UW-La Crosse research grant to produce and publish an article about Helen Keller\u2019s short-lived career in vaudeville.<\/p>\n

The article generated some initial buzz, but in the 17 years since, Crutchfield assumed it had gone to rest in a quiet, mostly forgotten corner of the internet.<\/p>\n

Then she received a call from one of the most popular radio shows in America.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe call was totally out of the blue,\u201d says\u00a0Crutchfield, an associate professor of English at UWL<\/a>.<\/p>\n

She was contacted by a writer from Radiolab, a show produced by WNYC and heard by hundreds of thousands of people each week. “I told them I would answer their questions, but since it was going back almost 20 years, I wasn\u2019t sure how useful it would be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Crutchfield\u2019s research and clips from her interview were featured in the show\u2019s March 11, 2022, episode,\u00a0\u201cThe Helen Keller Exorcism.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0The show explores one deafblind woman\u2019s complex relationship with the memory of Helen Keller.<\/p>\n

Crutchfield\u2019s expertise \u2014 which extends beyond Keller and into the broader portrayal of people with disabilities in literature, drama and film \u2014 was particularly useful during the portion of the show reflecting on Keller\u2019s time as a performer.<\/p>\n

Most people are familiar with the story of Keller\u2019s childhood: a young girl, deaf and blind, learning to read and write with the assistance of her teacher and companion, Anne Sullivan.<\/p>\n

Fewer know that, as older women in need of money, Keller and Sullivan performed their story in theaters across the United States and Canada \u2014 a topic examined in Crutchfield\u2019s 2005 article,\u00a0\u201c\u2018Play[ing] her part correctly\u2019: Helen Keller as a Vaudevillian Freak.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Crutchfield concludes that, because prevailing socioeconomic conditions limited career opportunities for women and people with disabilities, Keller had to abandon her political aspirations and embrace a theater circuit she may have otherwise avoided.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the more important things about her adulthood is her political activism. She was very much on the side of workers’ rights, unionism and even socialism,\u201d Crutchfield explains. \u201cVaudeville was this job that she and Anne Sullivan Macy took because they didn\u2019t have another way to make a good living. They were both getting older. Anne\u2019s health had never been great. And the lecture tours they had done in the past were too draining.\u201d<\/p>\n

Crutchfield says she was delighted to see that her article and insights proved useful to a show with so many listeners and so much name recognition. She was impressed, she says, by the way producers wove her contributions into the fabric of the larger, more complicated story.<\/p>\n

The overall experience can offer lessons for researchers from other subject areas, Crutchfield says.<\/p>\n

First, note-taking and documentation is vitally important. While the physical documents Crutchfield collected during her original research were long ago discarded, the notes she had saved on her computer allowed her to bridge gaps in her memory.<\/p>\n

Second, good research is valuable, even if the payoff isn\u2019t obvious or immediate.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m thrilled that it got this kind of public audience \u2014 not just scholars, but other folks who listen to the show,\u201d Crutchfield notes. \u201cIt\u2019s gratifying to know that, when I published this, it didn\u2019t just sit there with nobody reading it. The thing this really impressed upon me is that research lasts.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Written by UW-La Crosse<\/p>\n

Link to original story: https:\/\/www.uwlax.edu\/news\/posts\/research-lasts\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2005, Susan Crutchfield used a UW-La Crosse research grant to produce and publish an article about Helen Keller\u2019s short-lived career in vaudeville. The article generated some initial buzz, but in the 17 years since, Crutchfield assumed it had gone to rest in a quiet, mostly forgotten corner of the internet. Then she received a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":7825,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","institution":[104],"story_category":[],"class_list":["post-7823","campus_story","type-campus_story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","institution-uw-la-crosse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/campus_story\/7823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/campus_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/campus_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7823"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"institution","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/institution?post=7823"},{"taxonomy":"story_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/story_category?post=7823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}