Event: HEARD Hosts Panel on Junius Wilson

By BitcoDavid In Nowhere Man in a Nowhere Land, by Jean F. Andrews, we told the story of Junius Wilson. He was a Deaf, Black man living in the Jim Crow South. He spent 76 years in the State Hospital for the Colored Insane – wrongfully charged with rape. On February 11th, HEARD and the Disability

My 12 Favorite Posts of 2013

By BitcoDavid As the rock we call home hurtles around that angriest of planets at a mind boggling 67000 mph, I find myself feeling nostalgic. Here then, without further ado, is my list of the past 12 month’s highlights.   First off, Moorbey’z Blog put us up for the Reality Blog Award. Moorbey has been a

Supporter Contribution by Dr. Damara Paris

By Jean F. Andrews [Author’s Note: Dr. Paris is an assistant professor in the Dept of Deaf Studies/Deaf Education at Lamar University. She has done research with Native American Deaf Communities. — Jean Andrews] Native American and Deaf Communities: Parallels of Oppression Damara Paris, Ed.D, CRC, NCC Recently, the news has been rife with reports

It Takes Time to be an ASL/English Bilingual

By Jean F. Andrews Learning ASL and English does not happen quickly. It takes time as do all first language and second language learning. Delays in language learning is a fact in many deaf persons’ lives. But it does not have to be. Being deaf does not cause a language delay. It is the lack

Preschools, Prisons and Deaf Inmates

By Jean F. Andrews In Sunday’s New York Times (October 26, 2013), Nicholas D. Kristof wrote a compelling piece linking two ideas that seemed, at first blush, to be oceans apart–preschools and prisons. What comes to mind is an innocent looking, three year old playing with play dough next to a grizzled inmate who looks beaten down by poverty, low education

Reading and Deaf Researchers

By Jean F. Andrews Since I’ve been in higher education, I’ve seen an increase in numbers of graduate students who are deaf apply to deaf education programs. I have also seen the increase in the hiring of professors who are deaf in different institutions where I have worked. The topics of their research papers are

The Role of Deaf Professors In Higher Education

By Jean F. Andrews As more and more deaf individuals earn degrees in higher education at the doctorate level, they are entering high education as professors and administrators. Oftentimes, they experience both physical and attitudinal barriers. Professors who are deaf provide role modeling for deaf undergraduate and graduate students. But working in an environment where

More on the Passing of Dr. McCay Vernon

By BitcoDavid Three posts today. I would have done them as a digest post, but I think they each bear too much weight to handle that way. As I mentioned a couple of days ago, the man whom we should probably start referring to as our Founder, Dr. McCay Vernon, passed away on Wednesday. Here’s

I Review the “Little Books” ASL Discs

By BitcoDavid The 3 stages of difficulty in learning ASL – for me, anyway – are 1) memorizing the vocabulary, 2) learning the grammar and 3) reading other people’s Sign. In other words, it’s more difficult for me to understand other people when they Sign to me, than it is for me to learn how