- Short Contents
- About the Editors
- Contributors
- The Promises (?) of Deaf Education:: From Research to Practice and Back Again
- The History of Language and Communication Issues in Deaf Education
- Legal Advocacy for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Children in Education
- Preparing Teachers of Students Who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing
- Effective Instruction for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Students:: Teaching Strategies, School Settings, and Student Characteristics
- Supporting Students in General Education Classrooms
- Current and Future Technologies in the Education of Deaf Students
- Evidence-based Curricula and Practices That Support Development of Reading Skills
- Will Cochlear Implants Close the Reading Achievement Gap for Deaf Students?
- The Demands of Writing and the Deaf Writer
- Mathematics Instruction and Learning of Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Students:: What Do We Know? Where Do We Go?
- Deaf Children with Severe Multiple Disabilities:: Etiologies, Intervention, and Assessment
- Reflections on Identity
- Deaf Studies in the 21st Century:: “Deaf-gain” and the Future of Human Diversity
- Cochlear Implants:: Family and Young People’s Perspectives
- The Impact of Early Identification of Deafness on Hearing Parents
- How Does Speech Intelligibility Affect Self and Others’ Perceptions of Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing People?
- Emerging Sign Languages
- Early Language Acquisition and Adult Language Ability:: What Sign Language Reveals About the Critical Period for Language
- Communication Choices and Outcomes During the Early Years:: An Assessment and Evidence-based Approach
- Early Communication in Sign and Speech
- Language Acquisition and Critical Periods for Children Using Cochlear Implants
- Newborn Screening and Earlier Intervention with Deaf Children:: Issues for the Developing World
- Prelinguistic Vocalizations in Infants and Toddlers with Hearing Loss:: Identifying and Stimulating Auditory-guided Speech Development
- Children and Youth Who Are Hard of Hearing:: Hearing Accessibility, Acoustical Context, and Development
- Performance Outcomes for Adult Cochlear Implant Users
- Play and Theory of Mind:: Indicators and Engines of Early Cognitive Growth
- Learning Disabilities in Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Children
- Executive Function, Cognitive Control, and Sequence Learning in Deaf Children with Cochlear Implants
- Working Memory, Deafness, and Sign Language
- Paradigm Shifts, Difficult Truths, and an Increasing Knowledge Base in Deaf Education
- Author Index
- Subject Index
Abstract and Keywords
This article provides an overview of the field of Deaf Studies, as it has emerged in the latter part of the 20th century, and then provides a new rhetorical frame for future directions that this field may take in the 21st century. Historically, Deaf Studies and Deaf communities have been put on the defensive, as they have been constructed within frames of “deafness as lack” and “disability.” Within these constructions, attempts to rid society of deafness have been conducted as “progress,” whether through 19th- and early 20th-century eugenics, or contemporary medical interventions and denial of signed languages in deaf education. The result has been a precipitous decline in the usage of sign language among deaf children at a time when, ironically, research shows cognitive benefits of sign language for hearing children. A vigorous response to the human right of sign language education for deaf children can best be found in reframing deafness, not as a lack, but as a form of human diversity capable of making vital contributions to the greater good of society. We refer to this notion as the opposite of hearing loss: Deaf-gain. This article explores the cognitive, creative, and cultural aspects of Deaf-gain, with specific examples, from discoveries about the human capacity for language, advances in visual learning, and creative insights into architecture, literature, and collectivist cultural patterns. In the end, deaf people may be seen through a lens of human diversity and, therefore, worth valuing as they are, without recourse to ‘normalization.’
Keywords: bioethics, Deaf-gain, Deaf studies, human diversity, language death
H-Dirksen L. Bauman is Professor of Deaf Studies at Gallaudet University. He is the co-editor of the book/DVD project, Signing the Body Poetic: Essays in American Sign Language (University of California Press, 2006), editor of Open Your Eyes: Deaf Studies Talking (University of Minnesota Press, 2008) and co-editor of Deaf-Gain: Raising the Stakes for Human Diversity, (University of Minnesota Press, 2014). He is also co-author of Transformative Conversations: A Guide to Formation Mentoring Communities among Peers in Higher Education (Jossey-Bass, 2013). He currently serves as Co-Executive Editor of the Deaf Studies Digital Journal (dsdj.gallaudet.edu).
Joseph J. Murray Department of ASL and Deaf Studies Gallaudet University Washington, DC
Access to the complete content on Oxford Handbooks Online requires a subscription or purchase. Public users are able to search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter without a subscription.
Please subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you have purchased a print title that contains an access token, please see the token for information about how to register your code.
For questions on access or troubleshooting, please check our FAQs, and if you can''t find the answer there, please contact us.
- Short Contents
- About the Editors
- Contributors
- The Promises (?) of Deaf Education:: From Research to Practice and Back Again
- The History of Language and Communication Issues in Deaf Education
- Legal Advocacy for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Children in Education
- Preparing Teachers of Students Who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing
- Effective Instruction for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Students:: Teaching Strategies, School Settings, and Student Characteristics
- Supporting Students in General Education Classrooms
- Current and Future Technologies in the Education of Deaf Students
- Evidence-based Curricula and Practices That Support Development of Reading Skills
- Will Cochlear Implants Close the Reading Achievement Gap for Deaf Students?
- The Demands of Writing and the Deaf Writer
- Mathematics Instruction and Learning of Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Students:: What Do We Know? Where Do We Go?
- Deaf Children with Severe Multiple Disabilities:: Etiologies, Intervention, and Assessment
- Reflections on Identity
- Deaf Studies in the 21st Century:: “Deaf-gain” and the Future of Human Diversity
- Cochlear Implants:: Family and Young People’s Perspectives
- The Impact of Early Identification of Deafness on Hearing Parents
- How Does Speech Intelligibility Affect Self and Others’ Perceptions of Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing People?
- Emerging Sign Languages
- Early Language Acquisition and Adult Language Ability:: What Sign Language Reveals About the Critical Period for Language
- Communication Choices and Outcomes During the Early Years:: An Assessment and Evidence-based Approach
- Early Communication in Sign and Speech
- Language Acquisition and Critical Periods for Children Using Cochlear Implants
- Newborn Screening and Earlier Intervention with Deaf Children:: Issues for the Developing World
- Prelinguistic Vocalizations in Infants and Toddlers with Hearing Loss:: Identifying and Stimulating Auditory-guided Speech Development
- Children and Youth Who Are Hard of Hearing:: Hearing Accessibility, Acoustical Context, and Development
- Performance Outcomes for Adult Cochlear Implant Users
- Play and Theory of Mind:: Indicators and Engines of Early Cognitive Growth
- Learning Disabilities in Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Children
- Executive Function, Cognitive Control, and Sequence Learning in Deaf Children with Cochlear Implants
- Working Memory, Deafness, and Sign Language
- Paradigm Shifts, Difficult Truths, and an Increasing Knowledge Base in Deaf Education
- Author Index
- Subject Index