Max-Planck-Institut zur Erforschung multireligiöser und multiethnischer Gesellschaften
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity
Innovations in Deaf Studies
Annelies Kusters, Maartje De Meulder, Dai O‘Brien
Max Planck Institute for the Study
of Religious and Ethnic Diversity
Max-Planck-Institut zur Erforschung multireligiöser und
multiethnischer Gesellschaften
1
Context of the book
• Book to be published by Oxford University Press: Innovations
in Deaf Studies: The Role of Deaf Scholars
• Deaf Studies: the study of deaf people’s communities,
networks, artforms, histories, language practices, ontologies
and epistemologies (although broader definition includes sign
linguistics, brain research and so on)
• Field exists since late 1970s, mainly UK and USA
• Deaf Studies courses exist on BA-level (many) and MA-level
(very few) – also summer schools. Often in context of sign
linguistics or sign language interpreting training
• Deaf Studies researchers work in these Deaf Studies / sign
language research centres or independently
NameTitle
2
– Who are the people involved in Deaf
Studies and why are they doing it?
– Why and how do they study the topics that
they are studying?
Name: Title
3
Deaf Studies and hearing hegemony
• Fact: majority of Deaf Studies research is hearing-led (leadership,
frameworks, methods, theory-building)
• Related to oppression of sign languages in deaf educational settings:
generations of deaf people have obtained overall lower levels of formal
education
• White domination unthinkable in Black studies, male domination
unthinkable in Women’s studies
• White domination in Maori Studies => one of the few indigenous groups
to set up a framework for ethical research WITH their community
(inspired one of the book chapters)
Name: Title
4
A history of “the deaf scholar” in Deaf Studies
• Originally: language models, research assistants,
cultural guides, bridges (but there are exceptions!)
• Often non-academic educational/employmental
history
• Hearing principal investigators: differences in: rates of
involvement with deaf researchers and issues in deaf communities, levels
of signing proficiency, attitudes towards deaf researchers and deaf
communities (Baker-Schenk & Kyle 1990)
Name: Title
5
“The big picture”
• Trowler and Turner (2002) and McDermid (2009)
investigated power differences and inequalities in
teams of deaf and hearing teachers/researchers in
the UK and US.
• Harris (2015) and O’Brien and Emery (2013) talk
about the need for deaf scholars to “seize academic
power” and propose a number of strategies.
• it is vital that hearing academics face up to the
context within which Deaf studies operates; that is, a
sociocultural-political society in which d/Deaf people
do not enjoy equality (O’Brien and Emery 2013)
Name: Title
6
• more and more deaf scholars are in positions of
researcher (rather than assistants), and thus on the
same level in academic hierarchies, will
contribute to redressing the abovementioned
sociopolitical/hierarchical imbalances
• AND we believe that their involvement will further
influence the course that Deaf Studies and its
theoretical framing and methodology is taking
• And we argue: their engagement marks the start of
the third wave in Deaf Studies
Name: Title
7
Key concept in the book: Deaf ontologies
• Deaf ontologies = deaf ways of being
• Oppression/inequalities AND positive
experiences/community
• Central to many deaf people’s experience:
visucentrism
• What happens if deaf researchers engage in the study
of deaf ontologies, informed by their own deaf
ontologies? (the combined experience and
study of ‘being deaf’)
Name: Title
8
Questions guiding the book:
• What are the implications of deaf ontological positioning for
the conduct of research (including 1. research
methodologies and 2. theoretical framings)?
• What kind of innovations do deaf scholars deem necessary or
desirable in the discipline of Deaf Studies?
• What is the role of the academy in society, and more
specifially: how do deaf scholars relate to research
participants and deaf communities?
Name: Title
9
The book
The 15 book chapters explore the following themes:
• What would a deaf-led Deaf Studies look like?
• The future of Deaf Studies in the humanities
• Deaf ontologies in deaf education; theology; bioethics and
deaf queers
• Ties between Deaf scholarship and Deaf community
• Positionality, reflexivity, intersectionality, ethics and language
practices during ethnographic research
• Experiments with methodology: visual methods, autoethnography
Name: Title
10
What we are (not) doing here
• We are NOT
– Saying that hearing people cannot do Deaf Studies research
– Aiming to create a false dichotomy between deaf and hearing
researchers in Deaf Studies
– Devaluing or discouraging hearing scholars’ contributions
• We are
– Exploring what kind of research deaf scholars produce, informed by
their experience of being deaf
– Putting their research in the spotlight
– Aiming to create potential for new ways or collaboration with hearing
researchers
Name: Title
11
The three waves in Deaf Studies
• Not: teleological
• Not totally separated processes or
paradigms
• But: gradual moves
Name: Title
12
First wave of Deaf Studies
• 1950s and 1960s: sign language linguistics: Sign languages as equal to
spoken languages
• From the 1970s onwards: spread of foundational concepts of Deaf
culture, Deaf community, identity
• The cultural-linguistic model (versus the medical model; and parallel
to social model)
• Focus during first wave of Deaf Studies: Description and validation of
deaf communities and cultures (Deaf clubs and schools as central places).
For example: definition of Deaf Studies in Bristol: “the study of the Deaf
community, their language and their culture”
13
Limitations of this first wave terminology
• Persistent and often uncritical use of these founding
concepts (Deaf community/culture)
• Result of dichotomisation deaf/hearing
• Deaf community / Deaf world:
– In the past: deaf school => deaf club => community
– Now: this chain has been broken (mainstreaming, “outsiders”)
– Where are its boundaries? Who is “out/in”? (CODA, interpreters,
parents, mainstreamed deaf, deaf blind, …?) “Community” seemingly
implies closed sphere
14
Deaf culture?
– How to distinguish deaf and hearing culture?
– One deaf culture in the world? Are there multiple deaf
cultures?
– What is part of culture and what is part of embodiment?
(waving, circle, noise when walking/door slamming,
peripheral view, visual technology)
– Still not clear what “deaf culture” means (it’s vague, we
can’t explain it!): is it a helpful concept for academic
analysis?
– Does a “narrow” definition of deaf culture (the arts, sign
language literature, theatre) work better than having it as
“umbrella” term? (cf “deaf culture festivals”)
– THUS: We should think about other concepts for
academic analysis!
15
Second wave of Deaf Studies
– Approximately 1990s-2000s
– Recognition of the senses, the visual body, visual ways of being (early
Deaf Studies focused on language and culture instead, and less on
visual embodiment/ontology)
– More focus on what happens on the ground/close-up:
• Deaf ontologies: Being deaf: focus on experiences (Deafhood)
• Deaf epistemologies: ways of viewing/thinking, discourses.
– Broader geographical coverage (beyond USA/UK)
– Amplification of marginalised voices (race, gender, sexual orientation,
class, non-signing deaf people) (“Open Your Eyes: Deaf Studies
Talking”)
16
Third wave of Deaf Studies
• 2010s - ….
• Extension of the second wave themes: focus on
deaf ontologies/epistemologies
• Further increase in global coverage:
– studies in the global South
– deaf sameness/differences in international contexts
(book “It’s a Small World”)
• Languaging: increasing focus on language
ideologies and everyday language use (not
limited to national sign languages, but including
gesture, International Sign, linguistic diversity)
• Neoliberalism: value, gain, citizenship
• Interventions in other disciplines
(increasing numbers of Deaf Studies
publications in non Deaf-Studies journals)
17
Third wave: some key ideas
1. Methodologies
2. Academy and community relationships
3. What is specific to deaf scholars?
Name: Title
18
Methodology
• Visual methods for visual people: photography and
film as elicitation devices
• Autoethnography and dialogue as a way to bring deaf
ontologies into the field
• The deaf white researcher in the global South:
positionality
Name: Title
19
The academy and the community
• Sign Language Communities’ Terms of Reference and
Kaupapa Maori research framework
– Harris et al.: “research in the Deaf community should be
by Deaf, for Deaf, and with Deaf people” (does not rule
out the collaborative model)
– research must be endorsed by deaf/sign language
communities (thus a few individual deaf or hearing scholars
cannot speak for entire communities),
– ownership of research findings should be the communities’
Name: Title““
20
What is specific to deaf scholars?
• Often personal and long-term investment in research
with deaf people and in communities (before, during,
after research)
• More likely to get linguistic/personal access to deaf
discourses, understand some experiences from the
inside out
• Deaf scholars’ knowledge and discourses
(epistemologies) and interests are less likely to find
their way into print
Name: Title
21
Contents of the book
Name: Title
22
Max Planck Institute for the Study of
Religious and Ethnic Diversity
Max-Planck-Institut zur Erforschung multireligiöser und
multiethnischer Gesellschaften
Hermann-Föge-Weg 11, D-37073 Göttingen, Germany
tel. +49/0 551 4956-0, fax +49/0 551 4956-170
www.mmg.mpg.de
23