The last sixty years have been a time of tumultuous change in the American deaf community. Two deaf figures who made a great difference during this period were Frank Bowe and Jack Gannon, who passed away in 2007 and 2022, respectively. Bowe was a prominent disability rights leader, helping to secure more rights for deaf and all disabled Americans,…

This article argues that poetry written by nineteenth-century British and American deaf poets played an important role in the period's sign language debates. By placing the publication of this poetry in the context of public exhibitions of deaf students, I suggest that the poetry was mobilized to publicly defend the linguistic and intellectual…

George Veditz's "The Preservation of the Sign Language" was a popular film about the deaf language. Sixty five years later, in 1977, Veditz's film was retrieved and screened at the opening of a conference on the research and teaching of American Sign Language. Despite the age and the condition of the film, the screening held the audience…

Studies the attitudes toward deaf society of two new deaf Gallaudet students who had been raised in an "oralist" tradition with biases against deaf culture. Their attitudes are compared with those of a deaf graduate oralist who had become acculturated into the deaf community. (PJM)

Reports on an investigation into the gestural repertoire of a deaf child raised in an oral environment. (AM)

Suggests how insights from Paul Bohannon's book, "How Culture Works" (1995), could be used to address such questions as, "How do deaf people learn their culture?" and "How do deaf children learn (what) culture?" Bohannon's idea of cultural dynamics is applied to deaf culture to trace how that culture evolved, how it…

Personal experience of deafness and related sociological, educational, and psychological views are used to explore the question: How does a deaf individual develop the concept of self through social interaction and in dealing with standard English at school? Ways for deaf children in school to learn standard English are also discussed. (24…