National Deaf History Month

A reinterpretation of early 20th century Deaf history, with sign language at its center. 

During the nineteenth century, American schools for deaf education regarded sign language as the "natural language" of Deaf people, using it as the principal mode of instruction and communication. These schools inadvertently became the seedbeds of an emerging Deaf community and culture. But beginning in the 1880s, an oralist movement developed that sought to suppress sign language, removing Deaf teachers and requiring Deaf people to learn speech and lip reading. Historians have all assumed that in the early decades of the twentieth century, oralism triumphed overwhelmingly. 

Susan Burch shows us that everyone has it wrong; not only did Deaf students continue to use sign language in schools, hearing teachers relied on it as well. In Signs of Resistance, Susan Burch persuasively reinterprets early twentieth century Deaf history: using community sources such as Deaf newspapers, memoirs, films, and oral (sign language) interviews, Burch shows how the Deaf community mobilized to defend sign language and Deaf teachers, in the process facilitating the formation of collective Deaf consciousness, identity and political organization.

People who first encounter sign language often ask if Deaf people around the world sign the same language. Frequently, they are surprised to learn that there are different sign languages in different nations worldwide, as well as variations of these languages. These variations depend on social factors such as region, age, gender, socioeconomic status, and race. One variation, Black ASL, has been recognized for years as a distinct form of sign language but only through anecdotal reports. This volume presents the first empirical study that begins to fill in the linguistic gaps about Black ASL. The powerful cast of contributors to The Hidden Treasure of Black ASL considered three questions in their study. First, what was the sociohistorical reality that made a separate variety of ASL possible? Second, what are the features of the variety of ASL that people call Black ASL? Third, can the same kind of unique features that have been identified in African American English be identified in Black ASL? This groundbreaking book goes far in answering these questions while also showing the true treasures of Black ASL.

This book, originally published in 2011, presents the first sociohistorical and linguistic study of Black American Sign Language. Based on the findings of the Black ASL Project, which undertook this unprecedented research, Hidden Treasure documents the stories and language of the African American Deaf community. With links to online video content that includes interviews with Black ASL users, this volume is a groundbreaking scholarly contribution and a powerful affirmation for Black Deaf people. This paperback edition includes an updated foreword by Glenn B. Anderson, a new preface that reflects on the impact of this research, and an expanded list of references and resources on Black ASL. The online supplemental video content is available at the Gallaudet University Press YouTube Channel.

Partially deaf due to a childhood illness, Gerald Shea is no stranger to the search for communicative grace and clarity. In this eloquent and thoroughly researched book, he uncovers the centuries-long struggle of the Deaf to be taught in sign language—the only language that renders them complete, fully communicative human beings. Shea explores the history of the deeply biased attitudes toward the Deaf in Europe and America, which illogically forced them to be taught in a language they could neither hear nor speak. As even A.G. Bell, a fervent oralist, admitted, sign language is "the quickest method of reaching the mind of a deaf child." Shea's research exposes a persistent but misguided determination among hearing educators to teach the Deaf orally, making the very faculty they lacked the principal instrument of their instruction. To forbid their education in sign language—the "language of light"—is to deny the Deaf their human rights, he concludes.

Exploring nearly 200 years of Deaf life in America, this film presents the shared experiences of American history—family life, education, work, and community connections—from the perspective of deaf citizens. Interviews include community leaders, historians, and deaf Americans with diverse views on language use, technology, and identity. The documentary also takes a straightforward look at life for people who are part of the cultural-linguistic group who use American Sign Language and often define themselves as "Deaf" with a capital and cultural "D" and deaf people who, for a variety of reasons, do not identify with the Deaf cultural community. The history often shows that intersections between deaf and Deaf people are many and that oppression and discrimination are common experiences.

An astonishingly revisionist biography of Alexander Graham Bell, telling the true—and troubling—story of the inventor of the telephone. 

We think of Alexander Graham Bell as the inventor of the telephone, but that's not how he saw his own career. Bell was an elocution teacher by profession. As the son of a deaf woman and, later, husband to another, his goal in life from adolescence was to teach the deaf to speak. Even his tinkering sprang from his teaching work; the telephone had its origins as a speech-reading machine. And yet by the end of his life, despite his best efforts—or perhaps, more accurately, because of them—Bell had become the American Deaf community's most powerful enemy. 

The Invention of Miracles recounts an extraordinary piece of forgotten history. Weaving together a moving love story with a fascinating tale of innovation, it follows the complicated tragedy of a brilliant young man who set about stamping out what he saw as a dangerous language: Sign. The book offers a heartbreaking look at how heroes can become villains and how good intentions are, unfortunately, nowhere near enough—as well as a powerful account of the dawn of a civil rights movement and the triumphant tale of how the Deaf community reclaimed their once-forbidden language. 

Katie Booth has been researching this story for over a decade, poring over Bell's papers, Library of Congress archives, and the records of deaf schools around America. But she's also lived with this story for her entire life. Witnessing the damaging impact of Bell's legacy on her family would set her on a path that upturned everything she thought she knew about language, power, deafness, and the telephone.

In November 2021, an obscure email from the California Department of Education landed in New York Times reporter, Thomas Fuller's, inbox. The football team at the California School for the Deaf in Riverside, a state-run school with only 168 high school students, was having an undefeated season. After years of covering war, wildfires, pandemic, and mass shootings, Fuller was captivated by the story of this group of high school boys. It was uplifting. During the gloom of the pandemic, it was a happy story. It was a sports story but not an ordinary one, built on the chemistry between a group of underestimated boys and their superhero advocate coach, Keith Adams, a Deaf former athlete himself. The team, and Adams, tackled the many stereotypes and seemed to be succeeding. Fuller packed his bags and drove seven hours to the Riverside campus. 

The Boys of Riverside looks back at the historic 2021 and 2022 seasons in which the California School for the Deaf chased history. It follows the personal journeys of their dynamic Deaf head coach, and a student who spent the majority of the season sleeping in his father's car in the Target parking lot. It tells the story of a fiercely committed player who literally played through a broken leg in order not to miss a crucial game, as well as myriad other heart-wrenching and uplifting narratives of players who found common purpose. Through their eyes, Fuller reveals a portrait of high school athletics, inspiring camaraderie, and deafness in America.

All William Ellsworth Hoy wanted to do was play baseball. After losing out on a spot on the local Deaf team, William practiced even harder—eventually earning a position on a professional team. But his struggle was far from over. In addition to the prejudice Hoy faced, he could not hear the umpires' calls. One day, he asked the umpire to use hand signals: strike, ball, out. That day, he not only got on base but also changed the way the game was played forever. William "Dummy" Hoy became one of the greatest and most beloved players of his time!

Weaving together lyrical history and personal memoir, Virdi powerfully examines society's, and her own, perception of life as a deaf person in America. At the age of four, Jaipreet Virdi's world went silent. A severe case of meningitis left her alive but deaf, and she was suddenly treated differently by everyone. Her deafness was downplayed by society and doctors, she struggled to "pass" as hearing for most of her life. Countless cures, treatments, and technologies led to dead ends. Never quite deaf enough for the Deaf community or quite hearing enough for the "normal" majority, Virdi was stuck in aural limbo for years. It wasn't until her thirties, exasperated by problems with new digital hearing aids, that she began to actively assert her deafness and reexamine society's, and her own, perception of life as a deaf person in America. 

Through lyrical history and personal memoir, Hearing Happiness raises pivotal questions about deafness in American society and the endless quest for a cure. Taking us from the 1860s up to the present, Virdi combs archives and museums in order to understand the long history of curious cures: ear trumpets, violet ray apparatuses, vibrating massagers, electrotherapy machines, airplane diving, bloodletting, skull hammering, and many more. Hundreds of procedures and products have promised grand miracles but always failed to deliver a universal cure, a harmful legacy that is still present in contemporary biomedicine. Weaving Virdi's own experiences together with her exploration into the fascinating history of deafness cures, Hearing Happiness is a powerful story that America needs to hear.

Leah Hager Cohen is part of the hearing world but grew up among the deaf community. Her Russian-born grandfather had been deaf—a fact hidden by his parents as they took him through Ellis Island—and her father served as superintendent at the Lexington School for the Deaf in Queens. Young Leah was in the minority, surrounded by Deaf culture, and sometimes felt like she was missing the boat—or in the American Sign Language term, “train go sorry.”

The history of the Lexington School for the Deaf, the oldest school of its kind in the nation, comes alive with Cohen’s vivid descriptions of its students and administrators. The author, who grew up at the school, follows the real-life events of Sofia, a Russian immigrant, and James, a member of a poor family in the Bronx, as well as members of her own family both past and present who are intimately associated with the school. Cohen takes special pride in representing the views of the Deaf community—which are sometimes strongly divided—in such issues as American Sign Language (ASL) vs. oralism, hearing aids vs. cochlear implants, and mainstreaming vs. special education.

In this powerful new history, New York Times bestselling author Max Wallace draws on groundbreaking research to reframe Helen Keller's journey after the miracle, vividly bringing to light her rarely discussed, lifelong fight for social justice across gender, class, race, and ability. 

Raised in Alabama, she sent shockwaves through the South when she launched a public broadside against Jim Crow and donated to the NAACP. She used her fame to oppose American intervention in WWI. She spoke out against Hitler the month he took power in 1933 and embraced the anti-fascist cause during the Spanish Civil War. She was one of the first public figures to alert the world to the evils of Apartheid, raising money to defend Nelson Mandela when he faced the death penalty for High Treason. She lambasted Joseph McCarthy at the height of the Cold War, even as her contemporaries shied away from his notorious witch hunt. But who was this revolutionary figure? She was Helen Keller. From books to movies to Barbie dolls, most mainstream portrayals of Keller focus heavily on her struggles as a deafblind child—portraying her Teacher, Annie Sullivan, as a miracle worker. 

This narrative—which has often made Keller a secondary character in her own story—has resulted in few people knowing that Keller's greatest accomplishment was not learning to speak, but what she did with her voice when she found it. After the Miracle is a much-needed corrective to this antiquated narrative. 

In this first major biography of Keller in decades, Max Wallace reveals that the lionization of Sullivan at the expense of her famous pupil was no accident and calls attention to Keller's efforts as a card-carrying socialist, fierce anti-racist, and progressive disability advocate. Despite being raised in an era when eugenics and discrimination were commonplace, Keller consistently challenged the media for its ableist coverage and was one of the first activists to highlight the links between disability and capitalism, even as she struggled against the expectations and prejudices of those closest to her. Peeling back the curtain that obscured Keller's political crusades in favor of her "inspirational" childhood, After the Miracle chronicles the complete legacy of one of the 20th century's most extraordinary figures

A heartfelt and inspiring memoir and celebration of Deaf culture by Nyle DiMarco, actor, producer, two-time reality show winner, and cultural icon of the international Deaf community. 

Before becoming the actor, producer, advocate, and model that people know today, Nyle DiMarco was half of a pair of Deaf twins born to a multigenerational Deaf family in Queens, New York. At the hospital one day after he was born, Nyle "failed" his first test—a hearing test—to the joy and excitement of his parents. In this engrossing memoir, Nyle shares stories, both heartbreaking and humorous, of what it means to navigate a world built for hearing people. From growing up in a rough-and-tumble childhood in Queens with his big and loving Italian-American family to where he is now, Nyle has always been driven to explore beyond the boundaries given him. A college math major and athlete at Gallaudet—the famed university for the Deaf in Washington, D.C.—Nyle was drawn as a young man to acting, and dove headfirst into the reality show competitions America's Next Top Model and Dancing with the Stars—ultimately winning both competitions. 

Deaf Utopia is more than a memoir, it is a cultural anthem—a proud and defiant song of Deaf culture and a love letter to American Sign Language, Nyle's primary language. Through his stories and those of his Deaf brothers, parents, and grandparents, Nyle opens many windows into the Deaf experience. Deaf Utopia is intimate, suspenseful, hilarious, eye-opening, and smart—both a memoir and a celebration of what makes Deaf culture unique and beautiful.

A History of the Montfort College for Special Needs Education and the FIC Brothers in Malawi In 1969, the Brothers of the Immaculate Conception of the Holy Virgin Mary (FIC Brothers), set out to teach deaf children so that they could take their rightful place in society. This book shows the history of the Training of Teachers for the Hearing Impaired, its recognition and growth, and the changing educational concepts employed.

Disability has always been a preoccupation of American society and culture. From antebellum debates about qualification for citizenship to current controversies over access and reasonable accommodations, disability has been present, in penumbra if not in print, on virtually every page of American history. Yet historians have only recently begun the deep excavation necessary to retrieve lives shrouded in religious, then medical, and always deep-seated cultural misunderstanding.

This volume opens up disability's hidden history. In these pages, a North Carolina Youth finds his identity as a deaf Southerner challenged in Civil War-era New York. Deaf community leaders ardently defend sign language in early 20th century America. The mythic Helen Keller and the long-forgotten American Blind People's higher Education and General Improvement Association each struggle to shape public and private roles for blind Americans. White and Black disabled World War I and II veterans contest public policies and cultural values to claim their citizenship rights.

Neurasthenic Alice James and injured turn-of-the-century railroadmen grapple with the interplay of disability and gender. Progressive-era rehabilitationists fashion programs to make crippled children economically productive and socially valid, and two Depression-era fathers murder their sons as public opinion blames the boys' mothers for having cherished the lads' lives. These and many other figures lead readers through hospital-schools, courtrooms, advocacy journals, and beyond to discover disability's past. Coupling empirical evidence with the interdisciplinary tools and insights of disability studies, the book explores the complex meanings of disability as an identity and cultural signifier in American history.