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.

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.

As the ASL-English interpreting field has become professionalized, there is a growing disconnect between interpreters and the Deaf consumers they serve. Whereas interpreting used to be a community-based practice, the field is growing into a research-based profession that begins in a classroom rather than in the Deaf community. Despite the many gains being made in the interpreting services profession, with an emphasis on the accuracy of the interpreted work, the perspectives of Deaf individuals are rarely documented in the literature. Opportunities for enhanced participation and full inclusion need to be considered in order for Deaf people to best represent themselves to the hearing, nonsigning public as competent and intelligent individuals.

       Deaf Eyes on Interpreting brings Deaf people to the forefront of the discussions about what constitutes quality interpreting services. The contributors are all Deaf professionals who use interpreters on a regular basis, and their insights and recommendations are based on research as well as on personal experiences. These multiple perspectives reveal strategies to maximize access to interpreted work and hearing environments and to facilitate trust and understanding between interpreters and Deaf consumers. Interpreter educators, interpreting students, professional interpreters, and Deaf individuals will all benefit from the approaches offered in this collection.

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.

Now, for the first time, a collection featuring 17 widely respected scholars depicts the everyday practices of deaf interpreters in their respective nations. Deaf Interpreters at Work: International Insights presents the history of Deaf translators and interpreters and details the development of testing and accreditation to raise their professional profiles. Other chapters delineate the cognitive processes of Deaf interpreting; Deaf-Deaf interpreter teams; Deaf and hearing team preparation; the use of Tactile American Sign Language by those interpreting for the Deaf-Blind community; and conference interpreting and interpreting teams.
 
Along with volume coeditors Robert Adam, Christopher Stone, and Steven D. Collins, contributors include Markus Aro, Karen Bontempo, Juan Carlos Druetta, Senan Dunne, Eileen Forestal, Della Goswell, Juli af Klintberg, Patricia Levitzke-Gray, Jemina Napier, Brenda Nicodemus, Debra Russell, Stephanie Sforza, Marty Taylor, and Linda Warby. The scope of their research spans the world, including many unique facets of interpreting by deaf people in Argentina, Australia, Canada, England, Finland, Ireland, Sweden, and the United States, establishing this work as the standard in this burgeoning discipline.

This in-depth collection by 17 renowned international scholars that details a developmental framework to maximize academic success for deaf students from kindergarten through grade 12. Part One: The Context commences with an overview of the state of general education and that of deaf learners, followed by a state-of-the art philosophical position on the selection of curriculum. Part Two: The Content considers critical subjects for deaf learners and how to deliver them, including mathematics, print literacy, science, social studies, and physical education. This section also addresses the role of itinerant services, as well as how to teach Deaf culture, provide for students with multiple disabilities, and facilitate school-to-work transitions.

 

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.

In this volume, editor Cynthia B. Roy presents a stellar cast of cognitive linguists, sociolinguists, and discourse analysts to discover and demonstrate how sign language users make sense of what is going on within their social and cultural contexts in face-to-face interactions. In the first chapter, Paul Dudis presents an innovative perspective on depiction in discourse. Mary Thumann follows with her observations on constructed dialogue and constructed action. Jack Hoza delineates the discourse and politeness functions of hey and well in ASL as examples of discourse markers in the third chapter.

Laurie Swabey investigates reference in ASL discourse in the fourth chapter. In Chapter 5, Christopher Stone offers insights on register related to genre in British Sign Language discourse, and Daniel Roush addresses in Chapter 6 the “conduit” metaphor in English and ASL. Jeffrey Davis completes this collection by mapping out the nature of discourse in Plains Indian Sign Language, a previously unstudied language. The major thread that ties together the work of these varying linguists is their common focus on the forms and functions of sign languages used by people in actual situations. They each provide new keys to answering how thoughts expressed in one setting with one term or one utterance may mean something totally different when expressed in a different setting with different participants and different purposes.