Deaf culture has become fairly well established in academia and to a lesser degree in mainstream public consciousness. However, Holly Elliot offers a unique perspective on Deaf culture and identity in Teach Me To Love Myself. Elliot begins her narrative by sharing her experience as a bicultural person: someone who had straddled the worlds of the hearing and of the Deaf. Her biculturalism allows Elliot to build bridges instead of barriers, engendering cross-cultural communication. As such, Teach Me to Love Myself offers a tremendously valuable contribution to the evolving and nuanced discourse on Deaf culture.
Elliot had been both hearing and Deaf, but made a conscious decision to “move from the hearing to the Deaf world,” (Kindle Edition). The very notion that Elliot could “move” suggests the notion of the liminal in Deaf identity as well as a conflict between the different worlds in which a Deaf individual resides. Elliot’s description of moving between the world of the hearing and the world of the Deaf closely resembles what W.E.B. DuBois describes as “double consciousness” (p. 2). Just as blackness had been presented as a disability, so too had Deafness. The pathology model of Deafness enforces a problematic double consciousness; the cultural model of Deafness allows the individual to “merge the double self into a better and truer self,” (DuBois, 1994, p. 2). Elliot taught herself how to love herself by taking that first crucial step in embracing Deaf culture rather than longing to be counted among the hearing. Once she did so, she ceased to struggle in double consciousness. She reframed Deafness to show that the phonocentric society is guilty of ethnocentrism in more ways than one. Elliot’s book even raises the further question of intersectionality in Deaf culture to show how power and privilege are meted out. In other words, phonocentrism is another form of ethnocentrism.
One of the features of a phonocentric society is hearization. Hearization is the process...
Deaf Culture Deaf President Now! "Deaf President Now!" summarized the student protests of March 1998, of the appointment the 7th hearing President of Gallaudet University. This video was very moving; it showed students fervently campaigning for the removal of the newly appointed hearing President of Gallaudet University Mrs. Zinser. The Gallaudet community felt it was time to have a deaf President. The protest spanned nearly a week, there were no classes held as
These churches include the Pilgrim Lutheran Church of the Deaf, International Deaf Mission, Los Angeles Deaf Church., Holy Angeles Catholic Church of the Deaf and the Grace Bible Church of the Deaf, to mention a few. There is also a presence of the Jewish deaf community. When it comes to education, the Los Angeles area has a sizable program at the California State University Northridge with a National Center
Deaf individuality itself is highly valued in the Deaf community. Members seem to concur that hearing people can never completely obtain that identity and become an experienced member of the deaf community. Even with deaf parents and a native grasp of ASL the hearing person will have missed the familiarity of growing up deaf, including residential school. For a lot of members of the deaf community, speech and thinking like
There is "evidence that deaf children benefit from early exposure to sign language points to the need for in-depth sign language training for parents and other caregivers, with special attention to underserved populations such as those in rural areas," (Marschuck 2001 p 9). Parents should not rely on external schools at later developmental stages, when the damage to the child's cognitive and linguistic abilities could have already been done. Chomsky's
Deaf There has been a dearth of literature on the training and development of deaf and hard of hearing employees. This research attempts to highlight gaps in the research and suggest methods of improving deaf awareness in the fields of human resources and organizational development. The Americans With Disabilities Act requires all organizations to make reasonable accommodations to the workplace environment, policy, and procedure for deaf and hard of hearing employees.
Equally destructive is the attitude that communicating with the Deaf person may involve more time and effort than one wishes to expend" (Zieziula, 1998, p. 193). Moreover, and perhaps one of the most important challenges related to this issue, a large percentage of deaf individuals do not trust the hearing society. "Historically, the dominant hearing culture has relegated deaf people to social categories such as "handicapped" and "outsider." The history
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