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.

Deaf people in New Zealand are often little known outside their own culture. People of the Eye brings their world to life in personal histories translated into English with a series of photographs of the deaf community. The storytellers are both old and young, and they reflect both the diversity and commonality of deaf experience; the painful lives of a generation brought up forbidden to use sign language contrasted with the confidence of young people using New Zealand Sign Language as they attend school and assert "deaf pride." The differences between children growing up in deaf families and those who struggle with identity as deaf children in hearing families are illuminating. These are stories of joy and sadness, confusion and resolution, and regret and optimism.

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.

The deaf are outsiders in a world largely created and controlled by those who hear. Based on intensive interviewing, observation, and the personal experience of the author (whose parents are deaf), Outsiders in a Hearing World examines the lives of deaf people within a social and historical context. It examines the communities created by deaf people and the identities of their members, and describes and analyzes the everyday interactions between the deaf and the hearing. Drawing on the works concerning other outsiders, this book not only increases our understanding of deafness and the deaf, but of outsiders in general.

Deaf around the World is a compendium of work by scholars and activists on the creation, context, and form of sign languages, and on the social issues and civil rights of Deaf communities. Renowned contributors such as James Woodward, Yerker Andersson, and Paddy Ladd offer new histories and overviews of major topics. Each chapter is followed by a response from a pre-eminent thinker in the field. The volume includes studies of sign languages and Deaf communities in Australia, Brazil, Britain, China, France, Germany, Ghana, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Myanmar, Nicaragua, South Africa, Southeast Asia, Sweden, Thailand, and the United States.

This edited book presents an detailed analysis of the experience of deaf people as a bilingual-bicultural minority group in America. An overview of mainstream research on bilingualism and biculturalism is followed by specific research and conceptual analyses which examine the impact of cultural and language diversity on the experiences of deaf people. The book ends with poignant personal reflections from deaf community members. The contributors include prominent deaf and hearing experts in bilingualism, ASL and Deaf culture, and deaf education.

If teachers want to educate deaf learners effectively, they have to apply evidence-informed methods and didactics with the needs of individual deaf students in mind. Education in general -- and education for deaf learners in particular -- is situated in broader societal contexts, where what works within the Western world may be quite different from what works beyond the Western world. By exploring practice-based and research-based evidence about deaf education in countries that largely have been left out of the international discussion thus far, this volume encourages more researchers in more countries to continue investigating the learning environment of deaf learners, based on the premise of leaving no one behind. Featuring chapters centering on 19 countries, from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Central and Eastern Europe, the volume offers a picture of deaf education from the perspectives of local scholars and teachers who demonstrate best practices and challenges within their respective regional contexts. This volume addresses the notion of learning through the exchange of knowledge; outlines the commonalities and differences between practices and policies in educating deaf and hard-of-hearing learners; and looks ahead to the prospects for the future development of deaf education research in the context of recently adopted international legal frameworks. Stimulating academic exchange regionally and globally among scholars and teachers who are fascinated by and invested in deaf education, this volume strengthens the foundation for further improvement of education for deaf children all around the world.

Bragg (English, Gallaudet U.) has collected a selection of sources including political writings and personal memoirs covering topics such as eugenics, speech and lip-reading, the right to work, and the controversy over separation or integration. This book offers a glimpse into an often overlooked but significant minority in American culture, and one which many of the articles asserts is more like an internal colony than simply a minority group. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR