The lecture will focus on blind women's hyper-visibility, invisibility, and dialogue with the gaze, focusing on their awareness of and reactions to the gaze operated upon them as blind and women. Based on her doctoral research on blind women's gender identity and the representations of blindness and sight in the Israeli public sphere, Dr. Hammer will address the ways blind women verbalize their seemingly "Panoptic' condition, of living in a state of permanent, heightened visibility absent the ability to return the gaze, presenting the complexities inherent in visual relations and the relations between gender, disability, and the visual field.

The talk will follow interviews Dr. Hammer conducted with blind women in Israel, discussion their responses to the gaze and negotiation of visual power, expressing the agency embedded within "staring relations."