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Damned for Their Difference
The Cultural Construction of Deaf People as Disabled
Jan Branson
Gallaudet University Press, 2002

Until the recent recognition of Deaf culture and the legitimacy of signed languages, majority societies around the world have classified Deaf people as “disabled,” a term that separates all persons so designated from the mainstream in a disparaging way. Damned for Their Difference offers a well-founded explanation of how this discrimination came to be through a discursive exploration of the cultural, social, and historical contexts of these attitudes and behavior toward deaf people, especially in Great Britain.

       Authors Jan Branson and Don Miller examine the orientation toward and treatment of deaf people as it developed from the 17th century through the 20th century. Their wide-ranging study explores the varied constructions of the definition of “disabled,” a term whose meaning hinges upon constant negotiation between parties, ensuring that no finite meaning is ever established. Damned for Their Difference provides a sociological understanding of disabling practices in a way that has never been seen before.

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Deadly Charm
The Story of a Deaf Serial Killer
McCay Vernon
Gallaudet University Press, 2010

From the day he was born, Patrick McCullough faced hardships and reacted with untempered anger. His mother, a soon-to-be-divorced military wife, was late to realize that he was deaf and never learned how to handle his outbursts. Eventually, she abandoned him by petitioning for him to be a ward of the state. Stints in mental institutions and dismissals from several schools punctuated the rest of McCullough’s early years. Despite this severe childhood, no one could have predicted the outcome of his life described in Deadly Charm: The Story of a Deaf Serial Killer.

Authors McCay and Marie Vernon present a compelling story about McCullough, a strikingly handsome man with a winning personality. His charm was endearing, but his incendiary temper resulted in increasing aggression and abuse. Eventually, he was convicted for the murder of two men. Yet, McCullough ingratiated himself with the court and served only seven years in prison. Once free again, he resumed his pattern of sweetness and mayhem. He beguiled sympathetic women whom he then abused and stalked. Finally, his rage culminated in a crescendo of destruction. Deadly Charm depicts a deaf serial killer driven by frustration and violence and leaves much to consider. Did McCullough’s deafness exacerbate his lethally violent nature? Perhaps his vicious impulses could have been constrained if his time in mental institutions had been more productive than his time in prison.
 

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A Deaf Adult Speaks Out
Leo Jacobs
Gallaudet University Press, 1989
Leo Jacobs has written a unique and personal account of what it is like to be deaf in a hearing world. He speaks out on such issues as mainstreaming and its effect on deaf children and the Deaf community, total communication versus oralism, employment opportunities for deaf adults, and public policy toward deaf people.

This new edition includes an update of services by and for deaf people, and an expanded chapter on legislation and social issues that have had an impact on the Deaf community in the last ten years.
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Deaf and Disability Studies
Interdisciplinary Perspectives
Susan Burch
Gallaudet University Press, 2010

This collection presents 14 essays by renowned scholars on Deaf people, Deafhood, Deaf histories, and Deaf identity, but from different points of view on the Deaf/Disability compass. Editors Susan Burch and Alison Kafer have divided these works around three themes. The first, Identities and Locations, explores Deaf identity in different contexts. Topics range from a history of activism shaped by the ableism of Deaf elites in the United States from 1880–1920, to a discussion of the roles that economics, location, race, and culture play in the experiences of a Deaf woman from northern Nigeria now living in Washington, D.C.

     Alliances and Activism showcases activism organized across differences. Studies include a feminist analysis of how deaf and hearing women working together share responsibility, and an examination of how intra-cultural variations in New York City and Quebec affect deaf-focus HIV/AIDS programs. The third theme, Boundaries and Overlaps, explicitly addresses the relationships between Deaf Studies and Disability Studies. Interviews with scholars from both disciplines help define these relationships. Another contributor calls for hearing/not-deaf people with disabilities to support their Deaf peers in gaining langue access to the United Nations. Deaf and Disability Studies: Interdisciplinary Perspectives reveals that different questions often lead to contrary conclusions among their authors, who still recognize that they all have a stake in this partnership.


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Deaf and Hard of Hearing Learners with Disabilities
Foundations, Strategies, and Resources
Caroline Guardino
Gallaudet University Press, 2021
Professionals and families must be prepared to support the unique needs of deaf and hard of hearing learners with one or more disabilities, as they constitute approximately half the population of deaf and hard of hearing pre-K through 12th grade students. There is an ongoing need for up-to-date strategies and resources to effectively meet the needs of these students. Caroline Guardino and Joanna E. Cannon address this gap with Deaf and Hard of Hearing Learners with Disabilities: Foundations, Strategies, and Resources. This comprehensive volume presents an overview of the existing literature and provides research-based strategies that can be implemented when working with these individuals.

       The disabilities covered in this volume include developmental delays, autism spectrum disorder, intellectual and learning disabilities, deafblindness, emotional and behavioral disorders, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and a variety of high incidence syndromes. Contributors share best practices using an open-minded, asset-based approach. They examine the literature within each disability category, as well as demographics/characteristics, intervention/identification, placement, communication/language, psychosocial issues, assistive technologies/accommodations, assessments, and transition/post-secondary outcomes. Each chapter begins with learning objectives and concludes with a list of resources and discussion questions. A supplemental instructor’s manual provides valuable material for each chapter, including: (a) sample answers to the discussion questions, (b) investigation activities with grading rubrics, (c) quiz banks, (d) interpreted and captioned summary videos, and (e) PowerPoint slides. Deaf and Hard of Hearing Learners with Disabilities is an essential book for courses at the undergraduate and graduate level, and in workshops and webinars for in-service teachers, professionals, and families.
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Deaf Empowerment
Emergence, Struggle, and Rhetoric
Kathy Jankowski
Gallaudet University Press, 1997
Employing the methodology successfully used to explore other social movements in America, this meticulous study examines the rhetorical foundation that motivated Deaf people to work for social change during the past two centuries. In clear, concise prose, Jankowski begins by explaining her use of the term social movement in relation to the desire for change among Deaf people and analyzes the rhetoric they used, not limited to spoken language, to galvanize effective action.

     Central to Deaf Empowerment is the struggle between the dominant hearing society and Deaf people over the best means of communication, with the educational setting as the constant battleground. This evocative work first tracks the history of interaction between these two factions, highlighting the speaking majority’s desire to compel Deaf people to conform to “the human sciences” conventionality by learning speech. Then, it sharply focuses on the development of the Deaf social movement's ideology to seek general recognition of sign language as a valid cultural variation. Also, the influence of social movements of the 60s and 70s is examined in relation to the changing context and perception of the Deaf movement, as well as to its rhetorical refinement.

     Deaf Empowerment delineates the apex of effective Deaf rhetoric in describing the success of the Deaf President Now! protest at Gallaudet University in 1988, its aftermath, and ensuing strategies. It concludes with an assessment of the goal of a multicultural society and offers suggestions for community building through a new humanitarianism. Scholars of social movements and Deaf studies will find it to be a uniquely provocative addition to their libraries and classrooms.
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Deaf Epistemologies, Identity, and Learning
A Comparative Perspective
Goedele A. M. De Clerck
Gallaudet University Press, 2016
Goedele A. M. De Clerck presents cross-cultural comparative research that examines and documents where deaf flourishing occurs and how it can be advanced. She spotlights collective and dynamic resources of knowledge and learning; the coexistence of lived differences; social, linguistic, cultural, and psychological capital; and human potential and creativity.
       Deaf Epistemologies, Identity, and Learning argues for an inclusive approach to the intrinsic human diversity in society, education, and scholarship, and shows how emotions of hope, frustration, and humiliation contribute to the construction of identity and community. De Clerck also considers global to local dynamics in deaf identity, deaf culture, deaf education, and deaf empowerment. She presents empirical research through case studies of the emancipation processes for deaf people in Flanders (a region of Belgium), the United States (specifically, at Gallaudet University in Washington, DC), and the West African nation of Cameroon. These three settings illuminate different phases of emancipation in different contexts, and the research findings are integrated into a broader literature review and subjected to theoretical reflection.
       De Clerck’s anthropology of deaf flourishing draws from her critical application of the empowerment paradigm in settings of daily life, research, leadership, and community work, as she explores identity and well-being through an interdisciplinary lens. This work is centered around practices of signed storytelling and posits learning as the primary access and pathway to culture, identity, values, and change. Change driven by the learning process is considered an awakening—and through this awakening, the deaf community can gain hope, empowerment, and full citizenship. In this way, deaf people are allowed to shape their histories, and the result is the elevation of all aspects of deaf lives around the world.
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Deaf Epistemologies
Multiple Perspectives on the Acquisition of Knowledge
Peter V. Paul
Gallaudet University Press, 2012

Epistemology is the study of how “knowledge” is formed. Standard epistemology isolates the “known” from the “knowers,” thereby defining “knowledge” as objectively constant. Multiple epistemologies suggest that individuals learn in different ways shaped by life factors such as education, family, ethnicity, history, and regional beliefs. In this groundbreaking volume, editors Peter V. Paul and Donald F. Moores call on ten other noted scholars and researchers to join them in examining the many ways that deaf people see and acquire deaf knowledge.

       This collection considers three major groups of deaf knowledge perspectives: sociological and anthropological, historical/psychological and literary, and educational and philosophical. The first explores the adoption of a naturalized, critical epistemological stance in evaluating research; the epistemology of a positive deaf identity; how personal epistemologies can help form deaf education policies; and valuing deaf indigenous knowledge in research. The next part considers dueling epistemologies in educating deaf learners; reforms in deaf education; the role of deaf children of hearing parents in creating Deaf epistemologies; and the benefit of reading literature with deaf characters for all students. The final part explores the application of the Qualitative-Similarity Hypothesis to deaf students’ acquisition of knowledge; a metaparadigm for literacy instruction in bilingual-bicultural education; collaborative knowledge-building to access academia; and examination of the benefits and disadvantages of being deaf.

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The Deaf Experience
Classics in Language and Education
Harlan Lane
Gallaudet University Press, 2006
The seminal study of the antecedents of Deaf culture is now back in print. Edited by renowned scholar Harlan Lane, The Deaf Experience: Classics in Language and Education presents a selection of the earliest essays written by members of the nascent French Deaf community at the time of the Enlightenment, a rich period of education for deaf people.

The fifth volume in the Gallaudet Classics in Deaf Studies series features works written from 1764 up to1840. Pierre Desloges offers a stirring paean to sign language in an excerpt from his book, the first ever published by a deaf person. Saboureux de Fontenay and Jean Massieu, two prominent leaders, relate their respective experiences in autobiographical accounts. In separate essays, Charles-Michel de l’Epée and Roch-Ambroise Sicard describe systems for teaching manual French, followed by a critique of these methods by Roch-Ambroise Bébian, a well-known hearing friend of Deaf people during that era. Ferdinand Berthier, a renowned Deaf teacher and writer in the 19th century, concludes with a history of Deaf people up to that time.

The Deaf Experience shows clearly how this extraordinary era of French deaf education influenced the adoption of the manual method by the first schools for deaf students in America, in sharp contrast to the oral movement that repressed sign-language-centered education for nearly a century afterward. Deaf studies scholars and students alike will welcome the return of this invaluable resource.
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The Deaf Experience
Classics in Language and Education
Harlan Lane
Harvard University Press, 1984

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Deaf Heritage
A Narrative History of Deaf America
Jack R. Gannon
Gallaudet University Press, 2012

Now, Jack R. Gannon’s original groundbreaking volume on Deaf history and culture is available once again. In Deaf Heritage: A Narrative History of Deaf America, Gannon brought together for the first time the story of the Deaf experience in America from a Deaf perspective. Recognizing the need to document the multifaceted history of this unique minority with its distinctive visual culture, he painstakingly gathered as much material as he could on Deaf American life. The result is a 17-chapter montage of artifacts and information that forms an utterly fascinating record from the early nineteenth century to the time of its original publication in 1981.

Deaf Heritage tracks the development of the Deaf community both chronologically and by significant subjects. The initial chapter treats the critical topics of early attempts at deaf education, the impact of Deaf and Black deaf teachers, the establishment of schools for the deaf, and the founding of Gallaudet College. Individual chapters cover the 1880s through the 1970s, mixing milestones such as the birth of the National Association of the Deaf and the work of important figures, Deaf and hearing, with anecdotes about day-to-day deaf life. Other chapters single out important facets of Deaf culture: American Sign Language, Deaf Sports, Deaf artists, Deaf humor, and Deaf publications. The overall effect of this remarkable record, replete with archival photographs, tables, and lists of Deaf people’s accomplishments, reveals the growth of a vibrant legacy singular in American history.

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Deaf History and Culture in Spain
A Reader of Primary Documents
Benjamin Fraser
Gallaudet University Press, 2009

In this landmark reader, Benjamin Fraser offers in five parts 44 Spanish documents dating from 1417 to the present, translated for the first time to trace the turbulent history of Deaf culture in Spain. Part I: The Birth of Oralism and Deafness as Metaphor illustrates the predominant impression of deafness as isolation, exemplified by Teresa de Cartagena writings in 1455-60 about deafness as an island. Part II: The Return to Deaf Education highlights writers who wished to restore “the Spanish ‘Art’” of educating deaf students. Lorenzo Hervás y Panduro wrote The Spanish School of Deafmutes, or Method of Teaching Them to Write and Speak the Spanish Language in 1795. Yet, Madrid’s Royal School for Deaf-Mutes, which opened in 1805, taught deaf students using methodical signs adopted from France’s Abbé de l’Epée.

Readings in Part III :The Contemporary Deaf Experience reveal considerations from the 1970s to the ‘90s of Deaf culture and linguistics similar to those in the United States, typified by the works of Inés Polo and Félix-Jesús Pinedo Peydró. The fourth part, The Recognition of Deaf Language and Culture, marks the expansion of academic research in Spain. María Angeles Rodríguez González spearheaded Spanish Sign Language (LSE) linguistics in 1992 with her publication Sign Language. The final part, A Selection of Deaf Poetry, concludes these documents with verse  in Spanish spoken dialects rather than LSE, indicating that the evolution of the Deaf experience in Spain continues on its own path today.

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The Deaf History Reader
John Vickrey Van Cleve
Gallaudet University Press, 2007

The Deaf History Reader presents nine masterful chapters that bring together a remarkably vivid depiction of the varied Deaf experience in America. This collection features the finest scholarship from a noteworthy group of historians, including Reginald Boyd, Barry A. Crouch, Mary French, Brian H. Greenwald, Harlan Lane, Harry G. Lang, Kent R. Olney, Richard Pillard, Jill Hendricks Porco, Michael Reis, and volume editor John Vickrey Van Cleve.

The incisive articles collected here include an exploration of the genesis of the Deaf community and early evidence of the use of sign language; a comparison of a failed, oralist school for deaf students in Virginia to the success of the American School for the Deaf in Hartford, Connecticut; the development of Deaf consciousness among people who carried a dominant gene for deafness; a biographical sketch of Mary Ann Walworth Booth, an accomplished deaf woman who lived on the Western frontier; an account of Deaf agency in the Indiana Institution and the Evansville Day School; the early antecedents of mainstreaming deaf children despite the objections of their parents; a profile of Alexander Graham Bell that contrasts his support of eugenics to his defense of Deaf rights; the conflicting actions of supervisors of the Pennsylvania Society for the Advancement of the Deaf; and finally, the critical role played by deaf people in the Chicago Mission for the Deaf’s success in maintaining the Deaf community for more than five decades. The remarkably rich range of topics treated in The Deaf History Reader assure its future status as a standard resource for all Deaf scholars and students.

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Deaf History Unveiled
Interpretations from the New Scholarship
John Vickrey Van Cleve
Gallaudet University Press, 1999
Deaf History Unveiled features 16 essays, including work by Harlan Lane, Renate Fischer, Margret Winzer, William McCagg, and other noted historians in this field. Readers will discover the new themes driving Deaf history, including a telling comparison of the similar experiences of Deaf people and African Americans, both minorities with identifying characteristics that cannot be hidden to thwart bias.

       Other studies track societal paternalism toward deaf people in Italy, Hungary, and the United States. Adding to its intrigue, the new research in this milestone study provides evidence for previously uncredited self-determination of Deaf people in establishing education, employment, and social structures common throughout the Northern Hemisphere. Historians, teachers, and students alike will prize Deaf History Unveiled as a singular collection of insights that will change historical perspectives on the Deaf experience worldwide.
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Deaf Identities in the Making
Local Lives, Transnational Connections
Jan-Kåre Breivik
Gallaudet University Press, 2005
In his revolutionary new book, Jan-Kåre Breivik profiles ten Norwegian Deaf people and  their life stories within a translocal/transnational framework. Breivik notes that, unlike hearing people, who form their identities from familial roots and local senses of place, deaf individuals often find themselves distanced from their own families and akin to other deaf people in far locations. His study records emerging deaf identities, which he observes are always in the making, and if settled, only temporarily so. To capture the identification processes involved, he relies upon a narrative perspective to trace identity as temporarily produced through autobiographical accounts or capsule life stories. As a result, he has produced striking, in-depth accounts of how core questions of identity are approached from different deaf points of view.

The ten stories in Deaf Identities in the Making reveal deaf people who would like a stronger link to the Deaf world. Each story sheds different light on the overriding, empowering master narrative that has become an integral feature of the deaf community. Like success stories from other minorities, the Deaf life story reinforces the collective empowerment process in a Deaf social milieu. Because of these revelations, Breivik’s findings easily reverberate globally in conjunction to the striking similarities of deaf lives around the world, particularly those connected with the experiences of being translocal signers who have struggled for identity in an overwhelmingly hearing context.
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Deaf Identity and Social Images in Nineteenth-Century France
Anne T. Quartararo
Gallaudet University Press, 2008

Since the French Revolution in1789, Deaf French people have struggled to preserve their cultural heritage, to win full civil rights, and to gain access to society through their sign language. Anne T. Quartararo depicts this struggle in her new book Deaf Identity and Social Images in Nineteenth-Century France. In it, she portrays the genesis of the French Deaf community, examines its identity as a minority culture, and analyzes how deaf people developed their cultural heritage, a deaf patrimonie that has been historically connected to the preservation of French sign language.

Quartararo begins by describing how Abbé de l’Epée promoted the education of deaf students with sign language, an approach supported by the French revolutionary government, which formally established the Paris Deaf Institute in 1791. In the early part of the nineteenth century, the school’s hearing director, Roch-Ambroise-Auguste Bébian, advocated the use of sign language even while the institute’s physician Dr. Jean-Marc-Gaspard Itard worked to discredit signing.

In this meticulous study, Quartararo details the many variations in deaf education from 1830 to1930. She describes the banquet movement in the 1830s led by Ferdinand Berthier, Alponse Lenoir, and Claudius Forestier, which celebrated sign language and fostered the deaf association known as the Société Centrale. Quartararo also recounts how hearing educators at the Milan Congress in 1880 universally adopted oralism as the way to defeat deafness, and prohibited sign language in deaf schools. French deaf people refused to submit to this attack upon their cultural heritage, however, and an explosion of social activity among deaf people between 1880 and 1900 created a host of active deaf groups in all corners of the country. Deaf Identity and Social Images paints a unique, rich tapestry of the resilience of French deaf people in defending their culture through the most trying century in their history.

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Deaf in America
Voices from a Culture
Carol A. Padden and Tom Humphries
Harvard University Press, 1988

Written by authors who are themselves Deaf, this unique book illuminates the life and culture of Deaf people from the inside, through their everyday talk, their shared myths, their art and performances, and the lessons they teach one another. Carol Padden and Tom Humphries employ the capitalized "Deaf" to refer to deaf people who share a natural language—American Sign Language (ASL—and a complex culture, historically created and actively transmitted across generations.

Signed languages have traditionally been considered to be simply sets of gestures rather than natural languages. This mistaken belief, fostered by hearing people’s cultural views, has had tragic consequences for the education of deaf children; generations of children have attended schools in which they were forbidden to use a signed language. For Deaf people, as Padden and Humphries make clear, their signed language is life-giving, and is at the center of a rich cultural heritage.

The tension between Deaf people’s views of themselves and the way the hearing world views them finds its way into their stories, which include tales about their origins and the characteristics they consider necessary for their existence and survival. Deaf in America includes folktales, accounts of old home movies, jokes, reminiscences, and translations of signed poems and modern signed performances. The authors introduce new material that has never before been published and also offer translations that capture as closely as possible the richness of the original material in ASL.

Deaf in America will be of great interest to those interested in culture and language as well as to Deaf people and those who work with deaf children and Deaf people.

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Deaf in DC
A Memoir
Madan Vasishta
Gallaudet University Press, 2011

In his first memoir, Madan Vasishta described being a deaf boy in his homeland India, where “deaf” meant someone who is not human. After rising from herding cattle to being a respected photographer in Delhi, his first memoir concluded with his acceptance at Gallaudet College far away in America. Vasishta’s new memoir begins with his arrival in Washington, DC in 1967 with $40.00 in his pocket and very little knowledge of the new worlds he was entering.

Vasishta faced myriad challenges from the outset— he knew no American Sign Language and could not speech read, yet he found himself thrust into classes at Gallaudet two weeks into the semester. Cultural differences mystified him, such as how all American car accidents were someone else’s fault even when one’s car hits a stationary object. He was amazed that his fellow students did not deride him for his mistakes, unlike in India where he would have been scorned for his weakness. After five years, he returned home to India for a visit and was stunned to learn that he no longer fit in, that “even if you do not have an American Dream, the American Dream will have you.”

Deaf in DC follows Vasishta through half a century living in America. He witnessed the transformation from facing bias as a deaf, foreign man of color who could not get a job despite having a Ph.D., to receiving five offers as a school superintendent in the wake of the Civil Rights movement and Deaf President Now. His new memoir reflects a genuine worldview informed by the sage perceptions of a person who has lived widely in many worlds.

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Deaf in Delhi
A Memoir
Madan Vasishta
Gallaudet University Press, 2006
In 1952, after two weeks of typhoid fever and the mumps, 11-year-old Madan Vasishta awoke one night to discover that he could no longer hear. He was horrified because in India, the word for “deaf” in all three main languages, Punjabi, Urdu, and Hindi, denoted someone who was not really human. But he was young, brash, and irrepressible, and his autobiography Deaf in Delhi: A Memoir reveals how his boundless optimism enabled him to persist and prevail.

Vasishta’s story reflects the India of his youth, an emerging nation where most people struggled with numbing poverty and depended upon close family ties, tradition, and faith to see them through. His family’s search for a cure took him to a host of medical specialists and just as many sadhus and mahatmas, holy men and priests. The school in his small village was ill-prepared to educate deaf students then, so he herded the family cattle, usually the work of hired servants. Vasishta refused to accept this as his final lot in life and fantasized constantly about better jobs. Eventually, he moved to Delhi where his dream of becoming a photographer came true. He also discovered the Delhi Deaf community that, with his family, helped him to achieve an even higher goal, traveling to America to earn a degree at Gallaudet College.

Vasishta, a natural raconteur, imbues Deaf in Delhi with the ever-present ebullience that served him so well in his journey. Readers will savor his good humor and honest observations and look forward to his next book with great relish.
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Deaf Lives in Contrast
Two Women's Stories
Mary V. Rivers
Gallaudet University Press, 2008

The Eighth Volume in the Deaf Lives Series

Deaf Lives in Contrast: Two Women’s Stories might seem to bring together polar opposites in the broad range of deaf experience. Yet, as these narratives unfold, the reader will recognize that common threads run through them despite their different circumstances.

Mary V. Rivers, who came from a “dirt poor” Cajun family in Louisiana, was only 17 when she married Bruce Rivers, a member of the U.S. Air Force during World War II. She bore three children in quick succession, all boys, and traveled with them to Europe with her husband. When her third son Clay was nearly two, however, she learned that he was deaf. From that time on, she devoted her life to securing a good education for Clay.

Dvora Shurman’s parents, deaf Jewish immigrants from Russia, met in Chicago after World War I. Both were educated orally, declaring “I am not born deaf. Signing only for born-deaf.” They did sign, but they also wanted hearing children, stemming from their own sense of devaluation. Shurman lived a dual life in the deaf and hearing worlds. She saw herself as her deaf parents’ ears, their voice to the hearing world, and as sharing with her mother the task of being mother.

The resonating theme that echoes with both of these women centers on their resentment of the treatment received by their deaf loved ones. Early in her life, Shurman adopted a slogan with her sister, “‘It's Not Fair,’ to rebel against the shaming, the demeaning, our family suffered.” After years of struggling for her son, Rivers asserts that “deaf people have a right to prove themselves as first class citizens.” Their uncommon stories reveal that they share more in common, a belief in equal rights for all, deaf and hearing.

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The Deaf Mute Howls
Albert Ballin
Gallaudet University Press, 1998

Originally published in 1930, The Deaf Mute Howls flew in the face of the accepted practice of teaching deaf children to speak and read lips while prohibiting the use of sign language. The sharp observations in Albert Ballin’s remarkable book detail his experiences (and those of others) at a late 19th-century residential school for deaf students and his frustrations as an adult seeking acceptance in the majority hearing society.

       The Deaf Mute Howls charts the ambiguous attitudes of deaf people toward themselves at this time. Ballin himself makes matter-of-fact use of terms now considered disparaging, such as “deaf-mute,” and he frequently rues the “atrophying” of the parts of his brain necessary for language acquisition. At the same time, he rails against the loss of opportunity for deaf people, and he commandingly shifts the burden of blame to hearing people unwilling to learn the “Universal Sign Language,” his solution to the communication problems of society. From his lively encounters with Alexander Graham Bell (whose desire to close residential schools he surprisingly supports) to his enthrallment with the film industry, Ballin’s highly readable book offers an appealing look at the deaf world during his richly colored lifetime.

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Deaf People Around the World
Educational and Social Perspectives
Donald F. Moores
Gallaudet University Press, 2009

In Deaf People Around the World: Educational and Social Perspectives, the leading researchers in 30 nations describe the shared developmental, social, and educational issues facing deaf people filtered through the prism of unique national, regional, ethnic, and racial realities. Editors Donald F. Moores and Margery S. Miller have organized this remarkable collection in five major sections: Asia/Pacific, the Middle East and Africa, Europe, North and South America, and International Developments, which includes the International Committee on Sports for the Deaf and the World Federation of the Deaf.


More than 50 internationally recognized scholars provide a historical view of the education and treatment of deaf people in their respective countries. They examine a wide range of issues, including current academic placement; communication modes used in schools; the recognition of sign languages; the curricula of the deaf schools versus that of regular schools; for secondary and postsecondary opportunities; the status of deaf adults; deaf teachers; special laws if any; the preparation of teachers, psychologists, therapists, and other special personnel who work with deaf clients; and current trends and
developments in their countries.


Deaf People Around the World reveals that deaf people generally have gained a sense of confidence, empowerment, and global awareness of their shared experience. Many have seen significant improvement in their lives from greater educational and professional opportunities. Finally, more deaf leaders argue that the pathological model of deafness must be abandoned to continue this marked progress for deaf people around the world.

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Deaf People in Hitler's Europe
Donna F. Ryan
Gallaudet University Press, 2002

Inspired by the conference “Deaf People in Hitler’s Europe, 1933–1945,” hosted jointly by Gallaudet University and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1998, this extraordinary collection, organized into three parts, integrates key presentations and important postconference research.

Henry Friedlander begins “Part I: Racial Hygiene” by analyzing the assault on deaf people and people with disabilities as an integral element in the Nazi attempt to implement their theories of racial hygiene. Robert Proctor documents the role of medical professionals in deciding who should be sterilized or forbidden to marry, and whom the Nazi authorities would murder. In an essay written especially for this volume, Patricia Heberer details how Nazi manipulation of eugenics theory and practice facilitated the justification for the murder of those considered socially undesirable.

“Part II: The German Experience” commences with Jochen Muhs’s interviews of deaf Berliners who lived under Nazi rule, both those who suffered abuse and those who, as members of the Nazi Party, persecuted others, especially deaf Jews. John S. Schuchman describes the remarkable 1932 film Misjudged People, which so successfully portrayed the German deaf community as a vibrant contributor to society that the Nazis banned its showing when they came to power. Horst Biesold’s contribution confirms the complicity of teachers who denounced their own students, labeling them hereditarily deaf and thus exposing them to compulsory sterilization. The section also includes the reprint of a chilling 1934 article entitled “The Place of the School for the Deaf in the New Reich,” in which author Kurt Lietz rued the expense of educating deaf students, who could not become soldiers or bear “healthy children.”

In “Part III: The Jewish Deaf Experience,” John S. Schuchman discusses the plight of deaf Jews in Hungary. His historical analysis is complemented by a chapter containing excerpts from the testimony of six deaf Jewish survivors who describe their personal ordeals. Peter Black’s reflections on the need for more research conclude this vital study of a little-known chapter of the Holocaust.

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Deaf People in the Criminal Justice System
Selected Topics on Advocacy, Incarceration, and Social Justice
Debra Guthmann
Gallaudet University Press, 2021
The legal system is complex, and without appropriate access, many injustices can occur. Deaf people in the criminal justice system are routinely denied sign language interpreters, videophone access, and other accommodations at each stage of the legal process. The marginalization of deaf people in the criminal justice system is further exacerbated by the lack of advocates who are qualified to work with this population. Deaf People in the Criminal Justice System: Selected Topics on Advocacy, Incarceration, and Social Justice is the first book to illuminate the challenges faced by deaf people when they are arrested, incarcerated, or navigating the court system. This volume brings interdisciplinary contributors together to shed light on both the problems and solutions for deaf people in these circumstances.
 
       The contributors address issues such as accessibility needs; gaps regarding data collection and the need for more research; additional training for attorneys, court personnel, and prison staff; the need for more qualified sign language interpreters, including Certified Deaf Interpreters who provide services in court, prison, and juvenile facilities; substance use disorders; the school to prison nexus; and the need for advocacy. Students in training programs, researchers, attorneys, mental health professionals, sign language interpreters, family members, and advocates will be empowered by this much-needed resource to improve the experiences and outcomes for deaf people in the criminal justice system.

       This book has been made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the human endeavor. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this book do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
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Deaf President Now!
The 1988 Revolution at Gallaudet University
John B. Christiansen
Gallaudet University Press, 1995

Deaf President Now! reveals the groundswell leading up to the history-making week in 1988 when the students at Gallaudet University seized the campus and closed it down until their demands were met. To research this probing study, the authors interviewed in-depth more than 50 of the principal players.

This telling book reveals the critical role played by a little-known group called the "Ducks," a tight-knit band of six alumni determined to see a deaf president at Gallaudet. Deaf President Now! details how they urged the student leaders to ultimate success, including an analysis of the reasons for their achievement in light of the failure of many other student movements. This fascinating study also scrutinizes the lasting effects of this remarkable episode in "the civil rights movement of the deaf." Deaf President Now! tells the full story of the insurrection at Gallaudet University, an exciting study of how deaf people won social change for themselves and all disabled people everywhere through a peaceful revolution.

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Deaf Professionals and Designated Interpreters
A New Paradigm
Peter C. Hauser
Gallaudet University Press, 2008
Deaf Professionals and Designated Interpreters: A New Paradigm defines a new model that depends upon strong partnerships between the growing number of deaf experts and their interpreters. Editors Peter C. Hauser, Karen L. Finch, and Angela B. Hauser have called upon more than a score of widely respected researchers to discuss the new dynamics of interpreting for deaf professionals.
 
       Divided into two parts, this volume first delineates Designated Interpreting, in which interpreters team with deaf professionals to advance a shared point of view. Chapters in this section include the linguistics of the partnership (Look-Pause-Nod); the varying attitudes and behavior of deaf professionals and their interpreters; interaction in the work-related social setting to ensure equal participation; interpreting as affected by conversational style and gender factors; academic and educational interpreting for deaf academics; and adjusting company policies with professional interpreter guidelines.
 
       Part II, Deaf Professional and Designated Interpreter Partnerships, offers relevant examples of interpreting for deaf professionals in real estate, contemporary art, medicine, business administration, education, mental health, film-making, and information technology. These anecdotal chapters demonstrate the critical complexity of the relationships between professionals and interpreters, a revolutionary transformation that will be appreciated by interpreter preparation programs, instructors, interpreters, and their clients alike.
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Deaf Space in Adamorobe
An Ethnographic Study in a Village in Ghana
Annelies Kusters
Gallaudet University Press, 2015
Shared signing communities consist of a relatively high number of hereditarily deaf people living together with hearing people in relative isolation. In the United States, Martha’s Vineyard gained mythical fame as a paradise for deaf people where everyone signed up until the 19th century. That community disappeared when deaf people left the island, newcomers moved in, married locals, and changed the gene pool. These unique communities still exist, however, one being the Akan village in Ghana called Adamorobe. Annelies Kusters, a deaf anthropologist, traveled to Adamorobe to conduct an ethnographic study of how deaf and hearing people live together in the village. In her new book, Kusters reveals how deaf people in Adamorobe did not live in a social paradise and how they created “deaf spaces” by seeking each other out.

      Deaf Space in Adamorobe reveals one example of the considerable variation in shared signing communities regarding rates of sign language proficiency and use, deaf people’s marriage rates, deaf people’s participation in village economies and politics, and the role of deaf education. Kusters describes spaces produced by both deaf and hearing people as a cohesive community where living together is an integral fact of their sociocultural environments. At the same time, Kusters identifies tension points between deaf and hearing perspectives and also between outside perspectives and discourses that originated within the community. Because of these differences and the relatively high number of deaf people in the community, Kusters concludes it is natural that they form deaf spaces within the shared space of the village community.
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Deaf Sport
The Impact of Sports within the Deaf Community
David A. Stewart
Gallaudet University Press, 1991

Deaf Sport describes the full ramifications of athletics for Deaf people, from the meaning of individual participation to the cultural bonding resulting from their organization. Deaf Sport profiles noted deaf sports figures and the differences particular to Deaf sports, such as the use of sign language for score keeping, officiating, and other communication.

     This important book analyzes the governing and business aspects of Deaf sport, both local deaf groups and the American Athletic Association of the Deaf and the World Games for the Deaf. It shows the positive psychological and educational impact of Deaf sport, and how it serves to socialize further the geographically dispersed members of the Deaf community.

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Deaf to the Marrow
Deaf Social Organizing and Active Citizenship in Viet Nam
Audrey C. Cooper
Gallaudet University Press, 2017
In Deaf to the Marrow, public anthropologist Audrey C. Cooper examines the social production and transformation of ideas about language, bodies, and state-structured educational institutions in southern Viet Nam. Focusing on the reform period (1986 to the present), Cooper describes the ways that signed-language practices, ideologies, policies, and programming shape and are shaped by Deaf people’s social engagement in and around Ho Chí Minh City.
       Drawing on research data and work with Vietnamese Deaf colleagues covering an eight-year span, Cooper develops ethnographic and language-centered accounts of Deaf social organizing. These accounts illuminate the ways that Deaf citizens are assuming self-determining roles, or active citizenship, in decisions of local, national, and international importance. By placing Deaf social action in the historical context of state development and modernization projects, Cooper shows how educational structuring reflects dominant, spoken-language-centered views of Vietnamese Deaf people and signed languages. She also addresses the impact of international aid agendas on education, especially those related to disability. Deaf to the Marrow examines perspectives largely ignored in Deaf education, Deaf studies, signed-language linguistics, and anthropological literatures, thereby contributing to scholarship on language and sociopolitical formation broadly and the study of Deaf people’s citizenship practices specifically.
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The Deaf Way II Anthology
A Literary Collection by Deaf and Hard of Hearing Writers
Tonya M. Stremlau
Gallaudet University Press, 2002

In July 2002, the second Deaf Way Conference and Festival took place at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., attracting more than 5,000 people worldwide. Researchers, artists, performers, and others converged to create a singular blend of scholarship and social interaction, which inspired The Deaf Way II Anthology.

       The Deaf Way II Anthology brings together stellar contributions by 16 international writers who are deaf or hard of hearing. This remarkable collection features poetry, essays, short stories, and one play, all of which offer thought-provoking perspectives on elements from the personal universes of these gifted authors. Many are United States writers well-known for their past publications, such as Douglas Bullard, Willy Conley, Christopher Heuer, and Raymond Luczak, while the outstanding work of John Lee Clark, volume editor Tonya Stremlau, Melissa Whalen, and several others have been collected for the first time in this volume. The international contributions further distinguish this anthology, ranging from poetry by Romanian Carmen Cristiu, verse by Sibylle Gurtner May from Switzerland, to a play by Nigerian Sotonwa Opeoluwa.

       All of the writers showcased in The Deaf Way II Anthology portray the Deaf experience with unmatched authenticity, presenting a perfect introduction to the Deaf world. Simultaneously, their work demonstrates that deaf and hard of hearing people can write at the highest aesthetic level and offer invaluable insights on the complete human spectrum.

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The Deaf Way II Reader
Perspectives from the Second International Conference on Deaf Culture
Harvey Goodstein
Gallaudet University Press, 2006

This extraordinary volume features the very best of the scholarship presented at the Deaf Way II, the second international Deaf gathering in 2002 in Washington, DC. More than 100 contributors from countries as far afield as Brazil, Cyprus, Denmark, Great Britain, Greece, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Nigeria, Russia, South Africa, Spain, and Thailand share their research on a broad spectrum of disciplines joined together by the common Deaf experience.

The Deaf Way II Reader addresses every facet of the human condition from a Deaf World perspective in 65 unique studies, including all plenary addresses. Editor Harvey Goostein has organized these articles in 12 parts: Advocacy and Community Development; Economics; Education; Family; Health and Mental Health; History; Language and Culture; Literature; Recreation, Leisure, and Sports; Sign Language and Interpreting; Technology; and Youth. Each treatise examines one aspect of the deaf experience within a particular community or country. Together, they reveal how deaf people throughout the world live, study, work, and play, as well as how they relate to their families and the dominant hearing societies in which most of them reside. The Deaf Way II Reader provides a fascinating compendium of current knowledge that can, in the words of Deaf Way II host I. King Jordan, “help make the world a better place for deaf people.”

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The Deaf Way
Perspectives from the International Conference on Deaf Culture
Carol J. Erting
Gallaudet University Press, 1994
The Deaf Way documents the vast scholarly and artistic endeavors that took place in July 1989 when more than 6,000 deaf people from around the world met at Gallaudet University to celebrate Deaf culture. More than 150 articles by world-renowned experts examine every aspect of Deaf life in societies across the globe. This outstanding volume is divided into ten distinct sections: Deaf Culture Around the World, Deaf History, The Study of Sign Language in Society, Diversity in the Deaf Community, Deaf Clubs and Sports, The Deaf Child in the Family, Education, Deaf/Hearing Interaction, Deaf People and the Arts, and Deaf People and Human Rights Issues.
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front cover of Disability Rights and Religious Liberty in Education
Disability Rights and Religious Liberty in Education
The Story behind Zobrest v. Catalina Foothills School District
Bruce J. Dierenfield and David A. Gerber
University of Illinois Press, 2020
In 1988, Sandi and Larry Zobrest sued a suburban Tucson, Arizona, school district that had denied their hearing-impaired son a taxpayer-funded interpreter in his Roman Catholic high school. The Catalina Foothills School District argued that providing a public resource for a private, religious school created an unlawful crossover between church and state. The Zobrests, however, claimed that the district had infringed on both their First Amendment right to freedom of religion and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

Bruce J. Dierenfield and David A. Gerber use the Zobrests' story to examine the complex history and jurisprudence of disability accommodation and educational mainstreaming. They look at the family's effort to acquire educational resources for their son starting in early childhood and the choices the Zobrests made to prepare him for life in the hearing world rather than the deaf community. Dierenfield and Gerber also analyze the thorny church-state issues and legal controversies that informed the case, its journey to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the impact of the high court's ruling on the course of disability accommodation and religious liberty.

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Disabling Pedagogy
Power, Politics, and Deaf Education
Linda Komesaroff
Gallaudet University Press, 2008

Traditionally, deaf education has been treated as the domain of special educators who strive to overcome the difficulties associated with hearing loss. Recently, the sociocultural view of deafness has prompted research and academic study of Deaf culture, sign language linguistics, and bilingual education. Linda Komesaroff exposes the power of the entrenched dominant groups and their influence on the politics of educational policy and practice in Disabling Pedagogy: Power, Politics, and Deaf Education.

Komesaroff suggests a reconstruction of deaf education based on educational and social theory. First, she establishes a deep and situated account of deaf education in Australia through interviews with teachers, Deaf leaders, parents, and other stakeholders. Komesaroff then documents a shift to bilingual education by one school community as part of her ethnographic study of language practices in deaf education. She also reports on the experiences of deaf students in teacher education. Her study provides an analytical account of legal cases and discrimination suits brought by deaf parents for lack of access to native sign language in the classroom. Komesaroff confronts the issue of cochlear implantation, locating it within the broader context of gene technology and bioethics, and advocates linguistic rights and self-determination for deaf people on the international level. Disabling Pedagogy concludes with a realistic assessment of the political challenge and the potential of the “Deaf Resurgence” movement to enfranchise deaf people in the politics of their own education.

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Discovering Sign Language
Laura Greene
Gallaudet University Press, 1981
Children learn about different kinds of hearing loss, different sign systems, and the evolution of sign language in other countries, sign language games, and "How the Seasons Came to Be," a story in sign.
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