LAST UPDATED: 11/3/11
DEAF HERITAGE MONTH is celebrated from March to April because two highly significant Deaf American events happened during this part of the year:
on April 16, 1864, Abraham Lincoln signed a charter for Gallaudet University
(which opened in April, 1871); the "Deaf President Now!" protest occurred in March, 1988, which
resulted in I. King Jordan becoming the university's first deaf president.
A PROUD CO-SPONSOR OF THE FORTHCOMING FILM:
Listen to You, Listen to Me, Listen to Every Man, Woman, and Child
A Community Theatre Deaf/Hearing Experience
The
central intention of these pages is to educate, as well as to celebrate,
enjoy, amuse and critique. The focus is upon people who work with, play
with, live with or are themselves individuals who have hearing disabilities.
This site recognizes the fact that a person might function best with communication
through a sign language, a spoken language, some combination of either,
or something else. There
are roughly 28 million Americans with severe to profound hearing loss;
it is not known how many have slighter disabilities. It is also unknown
how many people (with or without hearing loss, in the United States, Canada
or elsewhere) who use American Sign Language as their primary language,
though estimates have been made that between 550,000 and 1 million people
claim ASL as their native language. Many folks, with various types of
hearing disabilities, of all ages live in the northeast Ohio region, and
there are many different kinds of communities tied to audiology issues.
For example, there are those who are deaf (with a small
case "d") and those who are Deaf (with an upper case "D").
The former is anyone who is technically deaf, the latter, the Deaf, are
those who identify themselves with a culture, regardless of hearing (dis)ability.
Thus, someone who has about a 40% hearing ability but no sign language
skills is less likely to be (or even want to be) a member of the Deaf
community than the hearing child of deaf parents who are fluent in American
Sign Language. (And by the way, there are roughly 150 different sign languages
all over the world. The
study of Deaf cultures can be quite an experience, including the studies:
the differences between visually-based languages and audiology based languages/cultures,
of the poetics and dramatics of a visually based language, of the natures
of cultural exclusion and inclusion (and the effects), of language and
language acquisition, of the arts of communication, of the frustrations
and humors of miscommunication, and of so much more that I cannot even
pretend that I've listed everything here. However, to only recognize
Deaf culture communities is to suppress, repress and oppress those who
do not use sign language and yet, because of some form of hearing (dis)ability,
some people are socially outcasted (even if only sometimes) by mainstream
hearing communities. Members
of the hard-of-hearing, deaf, and Deaf communities are a people who are
not really tied together as much through a lack of hearing ability as
they are by an acceptance by mainstream society (especially the medical
community) as being "abnormal" (whatever that means)!
Such folks are also connected through a passionate drive to successfully
communicate -- be it through sign languages, pen and paper, lip-reading
and voicing, or whatever else it might take to gain and give meaning.
After
all, most of us are able to recognize that some of the most DEAF people
have perfectly good hearing ability. In
other words, these pages are an attempt to celebrate everyone
-- regardless of hearing ability or disability -- coming and going in
all sorts of directions.SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Please send comments and suggestions to Dr. Carol L. Robinson (postmedievalist@cyberspacerobinson.net).