front cover of Teaching from the Heart and Soul
Teaching from the Heart and Soul
The Robert F. Panara Story
Harry G. Lang
Gallaudet University Press, 2007

The Sixth Volume in the Deaf Lives Series

Robert F. Panara lost his hearing from spinal meningitis in 1931 at the age of ten. However, he could read and write, and with his friends’ help, Bob (as he was known), made it through high school. His new solitude created a new passion – reading, reading, and reading. The stage was set for the emergence of one of the great deaf educators in modern time, a life fully captured in Harry G. Lang’s Teaching from the Heart and Soul: The Robert F. Panara Story.

Bob Panara’s many achievements began after his discovery of Gallaudet College in the 1940s. There, he wrote “The Significance of the Reading Problem,” which first expressed his belief that teaching “comes from the heart and soul.” The article secured him his first job at the New York School for the Deaf in White Plains. Bob returned to teach at Gallaudet College from 1948 until 1965, when he left to help found the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) and the National Theatre of the Deaf (NTD) — all in the same year. He continued to expand arts and literature at NTID until his retirement in 1987.

Bob Panara’s genius resides in the people he inspired with his vivacious teaching style. He believed ardently in involving students, that they should “be the book.” Former students tell story after story about his fabulous interpretations of drama and poetry, a legacy confirmed by his own story in Teaching from the Heart and Soul.

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front cover of Tell Me How It Reads
Tell Me How It Reads
Tutoring Deaf and Hearing Students in the Writing Center
Rebecca Day Babcock
Gallaudet University Press, 2012

Deaf students are attending mainstream postsecondary institutions in increasing numbers, raising the stakes for the complicated and multifaceted task of tutoring deaf students at these schools. Common tutoring practices used with hearing students do not necessarily work for deaf people. Rebecca Day Babcock researched and wrote Tell Me How It Reads: Tutoring Deaf and Hearing Students in the Writing Center to supply writing instructors an effective set of methods for teaching Deaf and other students how to be better writers.

       Babcock’s book is based on the resulting study of tutoring writing in the college context with both deaf and hearing students and their tutors. She describes in detail sessions between deaf students, hearing tutors, and the interpreters that help them communicate, using a variety of English or contact signing rather than ASL in the tutorials. These experiences illustrate the key differences between deaf-hearing and hearing-hearing tutorials and suggest ways to modify tutoring and tutor-training practices accordingly. Although this study describes methods for tutoring deaf students, its focus on students who learn differently can apply to teaching writing to Learning Disabled students, ESL students, and other students with different learning styles. Ultimately, the well-grounded theory analysis within Tell Me How It Reads provides a complete paradigm for tutoring in all writing centers.

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front cover of Telling Deaf Lives
Telling Deaf Lives
Agents of Change
Kristin Snoddon
Gallaudet University Press, 2014
In July 2012, the 8th Deaf History International (DHI) Conference featured 27 presentations from members of Deaf communities around the world who related their own autobiographies as well as the biographies of historical Deaf individuals. The presenters came from 12 different countries, but their stories traverse many other locales. Thus, they created a transnational phenomenon of widespread interest in the collection, documentation, and dissemination of Deaf history by and for members of the deaf community. Telling Deaf Lives: Agents of Change brings together the best of the DHI Conference offerings in this volume.

     Due to the dearth of formal research on deaf people, Deaf community historians drove the preservation of the stories in this collection. Their diversity is remarkable: Melissa Anderson and Breda Carty describe the Cosmopolitan Correspondence Club, a group of Deaf individuals who corresponded in the early 20th century from Australia to Western Europe to the United States; Ulla-Bell Thorin recounts first-hand growing up deaf in Sweden and her process in authoring six memoirs; Harry Lang reflects on writing biographies of numerous Deaf Americans in the arts and science; Akio Suemori profiles the first Deaf president of a Japanese school for the Deaf; Tatiana Davidenko writes about her Deaf family’s experience during the World War II siege of Leningrad; Theara Yim and Julie Chateauvert look at the evolution of ASL poetry by analyzing works of prominent ASL poets Clayton Valli, Peter Cook, and Kenny Lerner. These and the other contributions here enshrine Deaf people in collective memory by virtue of disseminating and preserving their stories.
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front cover of To the Lexicon and Beyond
To the Lexicon and Beyond
Sociolinguistics in European Deaf Communities
Mieke Van Herreweghe
Gallaudet University Press, 2004

Volume 10 of the series explores sociolinguistics in various European Deaf communities. Editors Van Herreweghe and Vermeerbergen present a wide array of research inspired by the Sociolinguistics Symposium 14 held at Ghent University, Belgium, in April 2002. Noted contributors from Finland, Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Spain and the United Kingdom offer insights gleaned from the languages of their countries.

Part One of this five-part volume investigates multilingualism and language contact among Finland-Swedish Deaf People. Part Two looks at regional variation and the evolution of signs in Flemish Sign Language, as well as gender-influenced variation in Irish Sign Language. Language policy and planning receives consideration in the third part, with a study of sign language lexical variation in the Netherlands and an analysis of the risks of codification in Flemish Sign Language. Part Four examines the implementation of bilingual programs for deaf students throughout Europe, and updates research on language use visually oriented in Swedish Deaf education classrooms.

The final part of To the Lexicon and Beyond: Sociolinguistics in European Deaf Communities presents data on language attitudes, including a census of sign language users in Spain that reveal a changing language community. The last chapter of this fascinating assembly assays British Deaf communities and language identity in relation to issues of transnationality in the 21st century.

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front cover of Total Communication
Total Communication
Structure and Strategy
Lionel Evans
Gallaudet University Press, 1982
Total communication, a method utilizing a combination of visual and auditory cues in an attempt to maximize comprehension, has long been a focus of debate by the deaf community, families of deaf children, and education professionals. For perhaps the first time, this book documents total communication’s historical and philosophical roots and analyzes the strengths and limitations of total communication's elemental parts and their salient linguistic properties.
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front cover of Turn-Taking, Fingerspelling, and Contact in Signed Languages
Turn-Taking, Fingerspelling, and Contact in Signed Languages
Ceil Lucas
Gallaudet University Press, 2002
From Reviewer's Bookwatch, a publication of The Midwest Book Review Compiled and edited by Ceil Lucas, Turn-Taking, Fingerspelling, and Contact in Signed Languages is the eighth volume in the outstanding Gallaudet University Press "Sociolinguistics in Deaf Communities series." The ten contributors bring to their work an expertise in their subject matter and an ability to present their material with a careful balance of scholarship and accessibility. The essays include Kristin J. Mulrooney's "Variation in ASL Fingerspelling"; Bruce A. Sofinski's "So, Why Do I Call This English?"; Paul Dudis' "Grounded Blend Maintenance as a Discourse Strategy"; Mieke Van Herreweghe's "Turn-Taking Mechanisms and Active Participation in Meetings with Deaf and Hearing Participants in Flanders." The final article, "Deaf People in Bilingual Speaking Communities: The Case of Deaf People in Bareclona," is the impressive and collaborative work of Esperanza Morales-Lopez, Delfina Agliaga-Emetrio, Jesus Amador Alonso-Rodriguez, Rosa Maria Boldu-Menasanch, Julia Garrusta-Ribes, and Victoria Gras Ferrer. Turn-Taking, Fingerspelling, and Contact in Signed Languages is a welcome and strongly recommended addition to Signing and Sign Language academic reference collections and supplemental reading lists. Ceil Lucas is Professor of Linguistics in the Department of Linguistics and Interpretation at Gallaudet University.
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