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5:8 Monday, August 11, 2003
High Marks for History Books
An In-depth Review Lauds Press Authors
 An
article in
The American Historical Review recognized several of the Presss
titles in its June 2003 issue. First noted is Jan Branson and Don Millers
Damned for
Their Difference: The Cultural Construction of Deaf People as Disabled, which
offers a well-founded explanation of how the discrimination against Deaf people
came to be through a discursive exploration of the cultural, social, and
historical contexts of these attitudes and behavior toward deaf people,
especially in Great Britain. In her review essay, Catherine J. Kudlick states
that Branson and Miler provide
an excellent, if unusual, point of departure for understanding deaf history in
the West. The review
concludes with: Damned for Their
Difference ends with a spirited critique of recent drives to create national
sign language dictionariessymbols
of deaf cultures
success in the Westas
oppressive to a patchwork of deaf linguistic traditions existing in much of the
world. Read
chapter two,
The Domestication
of Difference: The Classification, Segregation, and Institutionalization of
Unreason, and learn how the
majority societies around the
world viewed people who were different.
You can also take advantage of your exclusive subscriber discount when
you order Damned for Their Difference.
In Illusions of Equality: Deaf
Americans in School and Factory, 1850-1950, historian
Robert M. Buchanan expertly chronicles and analyzes the hundred years between
the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, which marked a time of remarkable
progress and unconscionable discrimination for deaf men and women chasing the
American Dream. Hence the glowing review of Illusions of Equality
commending it for demonstrating
many of the strengths and weaknesses possible in historical approaches to
disability.
Furthermore, Buchanan is praised as a talented, energetic researcher who has
brought a compelling and important chapter of deaf history to life by
introducing us to sources and case studies from across the country....He tells a
lively story with interesting characters and a good plot while making readers
aware of places where future work needs to be one, most notably in issues
related to race and gender.
You can read more about Illusions of Equality in an excerpt from
chapter six, Conspiracy of
Silence: Contesting Exclusion and Oral Hegemony, and
receive a 20% discount when you
order your copy.
 A
Mighty Change: An Anthology of Deaf American Writing, 1816-1864 edited by
Christopher Krentz collects the earliest writings by prominent and previously
obscure deaf Americans. The anthology includes prose and poetry by Laurent Clerc,
James Nack, John Burnet, John Carlin, Edmund Booth, Adele M. Jewel, and Laura
Redden Searing, as well as exchanges in the debate over a Deaf Commonwealth and
the inauguration of the National Deaf-Mute College, later Gallaudet University.
Catherine J. Kudlick offers accolades of this compilation stating,
Christopher Krentzs
book....is the best autobiographical collection currently available for deaf
history. Additionally, the
reviewer comments,
One only wishes that, in a field that desperately needs people to tell their
own stories, more such volumes existed for other times, other places, and other
disabilities. Read
chapter six, Adele
M. Jewel, which includes an excerpt from her pamphlet A Brief Narrative
on the Life of Mrs. Adele M. Jewel (Being Deaf and Dumb), and
order A Mighty Change at a special savings
of 20% off the regular price.
 Horst
Biesolds
Crying Hands: Eugenics and Deaf People in Nazi Germany,
a history of the persecution of Deaf people in Nazi Germany, also received
deserving praise. The reviewer
writes: Horst
Biesolds
[book] is a welcome, if problematic, early contribution to this little-told
story.
The praise continues with:
...Crying Hands is an experience, a riveting account. Here, hundreds and
hundreds of deaf people tell their storieswithout
the aid of literary conventions and without the backing of a wider world that
has joined them in their outrage. Even as mediated history, this is raw stuff
that forces us to suspend analysis until such a time as more studies of
disability in the past can give us a deeper understanding of how humans deal
with their relationship to difference.
Chapter one,
From Social Darwinism to National Socialism, sheds more light on this
wrenching study of the forced sterilization and murder of deaf
people in Nazi Germany.
Order Crying
Hands and receive a 20%
discount.
 Honorable mentions also go to
Deaf History Unveiled: Interpretations from the New Scholarship,
calling it a still-unsurpassed
volume that explores the topic [of deaf history] primarily from a North American
perspective but that also includes essays from Western Europe and Russia. The provocative collection
of essays edited by John Vickrey Van Cleve provides answers to questions such
as, how is the experience of Deaf people similar to that of African Americans?
And, how did Deaf people establish the education, employment, and social
structures that would ensure the prosperity of their community? Read chapter
five, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet: Benevolent Paternalism
and the Origins of the American Asylum, for a closer look, and
order Deaf History
Unveiled.
You can read the reviews in their entirety and use
your exclusive subscriber discount of 20% to
order
Damned for Their Difference, Illusions of Equality, A Mighty
Change, and Crying Hands.
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