Deaf Characters Research Articles

‘The bloody fingers … bear witness’: Sign Language and the Mute Detective in Susan Hopley and The Trail of the Serpent

In her examination of signing characters in works of Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, Jennifer Esmail highlights deaf characters’ absence in Victorian fiction. Mutism is more common, for example, in the character of Mary Elizabeth Braddon's working-class, fingerspelling Detective Peters (70, 10n24). Even so, sign language – seen as ‘primitive’ and ‘lacking [in] intellectual […] rigor’ – was rarely represented (Esmail 3). Dickens, Collins and Braddon, proto-detective novelists themselves, were preceded by Catherine Crowe, whose 1841 novel Susan Hopley features Julie le Moine, a female, cross-dressing sleuth whose mutism does not prevent her from testifying using ‘signs’ and ‘the finger alphabet’ (III.100, 125). Julie's undercover work not only crosses class, gender, and genre boundaries, but her non-verbal evidence challenges women's exclusion from ‘“masculine” systems of representation’ symbolised by legal parlance (Irigaray 85). When detective fiction pits the private eye against traditional jurisprudential structures, the courtroom becomes a space where classed and gendered hierarchies inform testimonial evidence, reinforcing exclusionary principles that disenfranchise the ‘Other’. The sign language, fingerspelling and lip-reading of Julie le Moine, Joseph Peters and Richard Marsh's Judith Lee expose ableist and sexist barriers that seek to expunge the detectives from the legal record by excluding them from public speech.

Inclusive Media Mix

A Silent Voice (Koe no katachi, dir. Yamada Naoko, 2016) is an anime film based on the critically acclaimed manga of the same name by Ôima Yoshitoki. A Silent Voice follows the experiences of a deaf character, Nishimiya Shôko, and her classmates, particularly as they deal with school bullying and rebuilding friendships afterwards. A Silent Voice not only won various awards such as Best Animated Feature Film at the Japanese Movie Critics Award, but also collaborated with actors across the public sector such as schools, local governments, and the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), to enhance inclusive education in Japan. This article shifts the typical focus on media mix as a marketing strategy to consider media mix strategies as potential tools for civic and educational causes. Specifically, it explores A Silent Voice’s media mix in relation to improving inclusivity in Japanese education and society. To that end, this project begins with a brief elucidation of the three versions of the original manga, which serve as starting points of this inclusivity-focused media mix. The project then moves to analysis of how the anime problematizes school bullying as systemic exclusion and explores how sign language is presented as one key to forming an inclusive society. Finally, by introducing cases in which collaboration with the public sector distributes this anime’s characters, induces various audience desires, and mobilizes audiences to participate in social change, I argue that A Silent Voice provides an example of inclusive media mix.

Disability and silver screening: Comparative analyses of Deaf Culture in Sound of Metal and CODA

Cinema serves as a mirror, reflecting the development or state of society. It plays an important function in entertainment and education and can bring about a shift in our perspectives and attitudes. The article includes a descriptive analysis of Deaf Culture as a prominent subject in the movies Sound of Metal () and CODA () and clarifies the most prevalent misconceptions about disability in both films. In recent years, filmmakers have made an effort to create true and authentic representations of Deaf Culture, moving beyond the notion of a tokenized portrayal of the Deaf. They shifted the emphasis away from unwarranted sympathy towards perceptive analyses of Deaf characters with the aim of dismantling the embarrassing perception of deafness. Filmmakers have provided the Deaf population with a voice by giving real-life Deaf performers a place in mainstream cinema. Even though many efforts have been made, the article also shows that the mainstream media have not generally represented the Deaf Community favourably. Furthermore, the article looks at the psychological conflict that arises when hearing people and hearing-impaired people share the same room.

The Impact of Bullying on Deaf Children and Young People, e‐learning modules by the National Deaf Children's society, 2022, available free of charge at https://www.ndcs.org.uk/our‐services/services‐for‐professionals/training‐courses/e‐learning/the‐impact‐of‐bullying‐on‐deaf‐children‐and‐young‐people

In 2021 there were at least 45,060 deaf children in England (CRIDE, 2021) and 78 per cent were in mainstream educational settings. It is highly likely, therefore, that many people working in these settings will at some point meet a deaf child. Any level of hearing loss can have an impact on children, not only in terms of their communication and language development but also their social and emotional development. Deafness can be temporary or permanent, unilateral or bilateral and can range from a mild loss where a child may struggle to hear speech clearly, through to a profound loss where they have no access to speech at all. Depending on the type and level of loss, deaf children may use a range of audiological equipment (hearing aids, bone conduction hearings, cochlear implants, assistive listening devices) and may communicate in a variety of ways using speech or sign language, or a mixture of both. Bullying continues to be a risk for all children regardless of their background, but research highlights that children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities are potentially more vulnerable to being bullied (DFE, 2018) as studies specifically focused on deaf children have shown (Bouldin et al., 2021). The National Deaf Children's Society (NDCS) has produced The Impact of Bullying on Deaf Children and Young People to support those working with deaf children and young people to identify potential bullying and provide appropriate support as necessary. The resource is presented in two modules, each taking around 30 minutes to complete. The first module introduces bullying and deafness and aims to explain why deaf children and young people may be more vulnerable to bullying. Attention is drawn to issues such as children needing to use audiological equipment which can set them apart from their peers; difficulties in hearing their peers and understanding what they are saying and responding appropriately; and communicating with others using speech or sign language, though they are not discussed in detail. The module might have mentioned, for example, that audiological equipment has its limitations, which peers may not understand – the optimal working range of a hearing aid is around 1.5 m so if someone calls a deaf child from behind, from a distance, and they do not respond, this may be taken as ignoring them or being rude. Module 2 follows up with activities focused on three deaf characters and discussion of their experiences of bullying. Carmen (13 years), Barnardo (13 years) and Ursula (7 years) have different levels of deafness, use different audiological equipment and communication methods. Each character presents with a different scenario followed by questions for learners to apply their new knowledge to identify, respond to and report concerns. The scenarios look at a range of types of bullying in different settings and although the actions and reasoning behind them are explained well, more discussion around the impact of their deafness and suggestions and strategies for promoting inclusion and the understanding of deafness would have been useful. The content is interactive, with information provided in written and spoken English and British Sign Language (BSL). The modules includes a range of activities to explore the different issues and quizzes for the learner to check their knowledge. The scenarios provide an introduction to some of the challenges that deaf children and young people may face and the opportunity to apply learning. The resource is easy to navigate and goes ‘back to basics’ in defining bullying. It explores in more detail the different types of bullying with lots of questions for learners to apply their knowledge and identify specific types of bullying. The examples are extensive but general, with only one specific reference to deafness. The multiple-choice question format is the same for each scenario – ‘What type of bullying is …?’ For staff with some knowledge of bullying this might feel repetitive; however, for someone new to the subject the range of potential scenarios and behaviours presented are useful to consider. Signposting to additional information and resources from the Anti-Bullying Alliance is also provided. The content provides a valuable recap for those already working with deaf children and with some knowledge of what bullying is. It would be particularly helpful to those new to working with children and wanting to gain a better understanding of what bullying is. The modules are clearly presented and are a useful introductory resource to provide professionals with a basic understanding of deafness and the potential vulnerability of and impact on deaf children and young people.

Woke Cinderella: Twenty-First-Century Adaptations

Woke Cinderella: Twenty-First-Century Adaptations is a timely collection of 12 essays that explore the concept of wokeness in twenty-first-century text, film, and television versions of American Cinderellas. Woltmann defines wokeness as “being culturally competent, sensitive, and aware” (p. 1). She positions the term “woke” within recent activism, including the Black Lives Matter movement, and identifies wokeness as a practice in which the text and audience engage, rather than an inherent characteristic of a text (pp. 6–7). Along with the theme of wokeness, Cristina Bacchilega's politics of wonder and the intersectionality of gender and race are central to Woltmann's introduction and many of the essays that follow, giving the heart of the collection a more unified theoretical feel despite the diverse topics and authors. The United States focus of Woltmann's collection complements the primarily European focus of other collections or other single-tale studies of Cinderella, including Cinderella across Cultures: New Directions and Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Martine Hennard Dutheil de la Rochère, Gillian Lathey, and Monika Wozniak, eds., 2016).The essays are divided into three relatively loose sections and bookended by Woltmann's “Introduction” and “Conclusion.” The first section, “Girl Power: Feminist and Queer Readings,” explores the post-feminism of Generation Z, with its reactions to feminism and materialism across a range of ages. Two standout essays focus on specific demographics within Generation Z: “Gen Z Cinder(f)ellas,” by Sarah E. Maier and Jessica Raven, explores the cultural expectations in Generation Z teen culture, while “With This Shoe I Thee Wed” by Aoileann Ní Éigeartaigh explores the postfeminist movement for women in the workforce. Focusing on the specific intended audience allows the authors to create a strong sense of the cultural Zeitgeist that shaped these Cinderella messages.The second section, “(Re)Production: A Classic Tale Told Anew,” includes essays that look at the concept of wokeness through a range of perspectives, making it difficult to characterize but very engaging. Camille S. Alexander's “Tiana Can't Stay Woke” takes an especially strong look at wokeness as a practice of engagement. Alexander explores Disney's Cinderella narrative embedded in The Princess and the Frog (2009). Among other things, Alexander tracks cultural engagement in the creation of the film and its relationship to the film's message. This section also includes the only essay that explores the concept of wokeness and ableism: Carolina Alves Magaldi and Lucas Alves Mendes’ “Deaf Cinderella.” This essay analyzes the first Brazilian book published in both Portuguese and Sign Writing: Deaf Cinderella (2003; Cinderela Surda). Magaldi and Mendes argue that this children's story is a landmark in “constructing a woke cultural deaf identity among deaf children” (p. 165) because the two deaf characters, Prince Charming and Cinderella, find community with each other as well as romance. It is a strong addition to this collection as well as fairy-tale studies at large, which rarely addresses issues of ableism.The third section, “Post-human and Post-truth Cinderellas,” begins with a post-humanist take on Cinderella with dragons and cyborgs in Rachel L. Carazo's “Dragons, Magical Objects, and Social Criticism” and Alexandra Lykissas’ “Cyborg-erella.” Ryan Habermeyer's “Once Upon a Time in Nazi-Occupied France” concludes the final section with a shift to post-truth. He specifically positions the film Inglourious Basterds (2009) in the growing post-truth culture surrounding Brexit and Donald Trump's presidency.As Woltmann states in the introduction, this collection does not intend to engage with the traditional folkloric, deep historical, or psychoanalytic approaches used in folklore or fairy-tale studies. Rather, this collection creates a wide-ranging social history for recent Cinderella adaptations, making it especially useful for classes or research that address film and television adaptations of fairy tales. As with similar studies, the scope of this study is as much a drawback as it is a necessity. However, the diversity of perspectives and adaptations add to recent conversations about Cinderella as two new film adaptations of this fairy tale premiere this year. Woke Cinderella is an engaging read that juxtaposes an equal number of experienced scholars with new voices in fairy-tale studies, highlighting the continued power and relevance of this fairy tale today.

“Where’s the Dummy?”

Delores Phillips’s novel The Darkest Child (2004), which features one of the few representations of deafness in African American literature, has been largely overlooked in literary criticism. Phillips’s depiction of Martha Jean challenges a long-standing tradition of deaf characters and deaf-related imagery as negative. Yet, Martha Jean is not a marginal character, nor merely a symbol or metaphor. Rather, as I show, Martha Jean constitutes a character of complex embodiment who complicates preconceived notions of Black and deaf people as “burdens” on society. Trapped under a system of capitalism which values labor, ability, and profit, Martha Jean’s mother, Rozelle, considers her a burden, forcing her into a sort of indentured servitude in the domestic sphere—cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the babies that Rozelle continues to have. However, the article maintains that Martha Jean uses her position in the domestic sphere in order to reorder and redefine those terms. Ultimately, the suggestion is that by centering deafness and a deaf experience, Phillips exposes complex aspects of the novel which might otherwise be obscured. Through complicating issues surrounding literacy and education, and larger systems of racism, sexism, capitalism, and ableism, Phillips imagines a multiplicity of Black experiences in the Jim Crow South.

Construction of deaf narrative identity in Creative South African Sign Language (SASL)

In this paper we observe how deaf narrative identity (identities) emerge in creative SASL texts. We first identify how difficulties in establishing deaf cultural identities in the hearing-dominant world are represented in the ‘Man Against Monster’ plot (Booker 2004) commonly employed in sign language narrative. Then we use de Certeau (1984)’s notion of ‘place versus space’ and Heap (2003)’s notion of Sign-deaf space (plus our own term of mediated Sign-speak space) to explore how deaf artists transform the Monster (i.e. oppressing hearing place) into Deafhood and deaf space, which leads to the celebration of sign language and deaf culture. We also demonstrate how the recent notion of sensescape , coined by Rosen (2018), can be used to reinterpret our own approach to deaf narrative identity. The Monster in deaf stories can be understood not only in terms of the audist ideology but also in terms of different sensory orientations between deaf and hearing characters. Creative texts provide a wealth of opportunities to explore how narrative identities are constructed. In fictional stories, deaf narrators step back from being themselves and extract the essence of their shared experience and sublimate it into a search for Deafhood which appeals to the deaf community. Various notions developed within the field of deaf studies, such as Deafhood, deaf space and deaf geographies, are useful in (re-)interpreting existing texts and shedding a new light on them.

Switched at Birth: A Game Changer for All Audiences

Switched at Birth: A Game Changer for All Audiences

Power in Silence: Captions, Deafness, and the Final Girl

Power in Silence: Captions, Deafness, and the Final Girl

“Why Would I Want to Hear?”

The article examines how the controversy around the use of cochlear implants is reflected upon in a selection of contemporary Young Adult novels (Lynn McElfresh’s Strong Deaf, Anthony John’s Five Flavors of Dumb, Chrissie Keighery’s Whisper, and Annabel Pitcher’s Ketchup Clouds). After a general introduction to the portrayal and inclusion of deaf characters in Young Adult fiction as well as to the controversy around cochlear implants, narrative issues such as the characters’ and their families’ desire for “normalcy,” technical and medical problems with implants, communication benefits and drawbacks, and, most importantly, the Deaf community’s reservations about cochlear implants are highlighted and analyzed. The main finding is that Young Adult literature featuring deaf characters with a cochlear implant tends to follow a strategy of avoidance by introducing only minor characters with implants and being careful to present both sides of the argument without implying (dis)approval. This strategy of avoidanc...

Introducing Sign Language Literature: Folklore and Creativity by Rachel Sutton-Spence, Michiko Kaneko

Introducing Sign Language Literature: Folklore and Creativity, by Rachel Sutton-Spence and Michiko Kaneko (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, paperback, 280 pages, $45, ISBN: 9781137363817)WHEN PEOPLE talk of literature, they typically mean printed literature. Literary critics typically do not analyze oral literature and sign language literature. That is their loss. This book, Introducing Sign Language Literature: Folklore and Creativity, presents background information, examples, and analysis that illustrate the richness of sign language literature. Studying it can teach us much about cultures, linguistics, and the nature of literature itself.The chapters suggest further readings and class and individual activities, making the book a perfect vehicle around which to build a course. A YouTube channel goes with the book, as does an extensive list of sign poems, stories, and interviews from Brazil, Britain, South Africa, and the United States, along with information on how to access these materials.The book outlines the following sociolinguistic facts and discusses their repercussions. Sign language literature historically includes faceto- face performances in places such as deaf clubs and events such as weddings and funerals. However, it now also includes videos; thus individuals and small groups can experience these performances without living in or having access to a deaf community. Sign language literature includes folklore (which reflects the culture of a community), fiction, and poetry, as well as oratory, autobiographies, chronicles, and religious literature. In some regions (e.g., Brazil and Britain) it puts a high priority on deafness, but in other locales (e.g., South Africa) it prioritizes matters of pressing interest to the larger community (e.g., racial and political issues). The fact that sign language literature is signed is as important as its content, or perhaps even more so; that is, the act of creating and performing sign language literature is political inasmuch as it supports community identity.Given these facts, the context for sign language literature is crucial: when and where it occurs, who the performer is, who the audience is, why the event is occurring, and whether the material reflects cultural heritage or is created solely by the performer. Importantly, sign language literature belongs to everyone. Indeed, signing a joke or a story can be an act of declaring membership in the deaf community. Hearing people who grew up in a family with deaf members can also perform sign language literature for deaf audiences. Still, there are recognized masters-and many of the greats are introduced in this book.Many functions of sign language literature are common to all literature, particularly that found in oppressed communities. Thus it teaches people about the world and their culture; it helps them make sense of the world; it creates and maintains community identity; and it allows performers to demonstrate their skills and artistry. It can put deaf characters in a position of privilege. In all of this, it is particularly helpful to deaf children, the great majority of whom are born into hearing families and may feel that the complications they experience are unique to them. They are in need of being welcomed into deaf culture and experiencing a community in which they are ordinary and normal.But one function of sign language literature is particular to deafness: the linguistic function. For the vast majority of hearing people, access to language is a given. …

Weaving a path from the past: Gender, disability and narrative enablement in Zulu Love Letter

abstractTwo decades after the end of apartheid, many continue to see this period as having been anti-climactic, particularly with the continuing economic disparities that currently characterise the ‘rainbow nation’. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was one of the main strategies instituted by the democratically elected government as a way of fostering the smooth transition into this new dispensation. The TRC enabled public recognition of the wrongs committed against various people during the years of apartheid. Although it had its own shortfalls, this process was in fact an attempt to accord a voice to those previously denied it in the previous era. The TRC has been represented and discussed in various media, including novels and film. One such creative piece is the award-winning film, Zulu Love Letter (2004).This piece focuses on the role of creativity as narrative enablement in Zulu Love Letter, especially through the character of Simangaliso. I argue that in this film the Deaf character exists as an enabling presence, employing her imaginative abilities to forge links between families, generations and traumatic histories. However, her ability to form these bridges is dependent on the destabilising of her position as an ‘other’ within her society. In this way the disabled character is presented as one who might hold the potential to permit both the unearthing of history and the commencement of closure for those who have experienced trauma and suffering. Through Simangaliso the film suggests ways in which the creative mode can exist as narrative enablement, affording a voice to those who may be silenced by history.

Constructing Hearing Loss or “Deaf Gain?” Voice, Agency, and Identity in Television's Representations of d/Deafness

Representations of deafness and Deaf culture on television have significantly increased and improved in the last 26 years. This paper explores these changing depictions, examining entertainment television from 1987 through 2013. Findings suggest that the pathological model persists, in which deaf characters are framed as vulnerable or dehumanized, and promote the cochlear implant as a “cure” for deafness. At the same time, episodes about tolerance and acceptance reinforce deafness as a cultural trait, especially in storylines in which multiple characters speak in American Sign Language. While ASL frequently appears in d/Deaf representations, its portrayal is incomplete and simplistic, downplaying its grammatical complexity. These competing discourses illustrate that what it means to be deaf or experience deafness is culturally constructed depending on context and experience, and reflects real-life tension between the Deaf community and medical experts who continue to pathologize deafness. Only through diversity in the roles for d/Deaf actors will television help to counter stigmas about disabilities and promote mainstream acceptance of Deaf culture.

Reading Victorian Deafness: Signs and Sounds in Victorian Literature and Culture by Jennifer Esmail (review)

Reading Victorian Deafness: Signs and Sounds in Victorian Literature and Culture, by Jennifer Esmail (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2013, 296 pp., cloth, $59.95, ISBN: 978-0-8214-2034-8)Reading Victorian Deafness opens with immortalization in a painting of Queen Victoria's willingness and ability to fingerspell with a deaf woman, Elizabeth Tuffield, by a deaf painter, William Agnew. Victoria's actions were contradictory to spirit of her age in terms of comfort with sign languages and deafness and focus on Hmiting definition of language via unrelenting rise of oralism. While this book does trace and revisit historical and Hnguistic trajectory of events leading to imposition of oralism on deaf people during this time, value of Esmail's book is her focus on deaf subjectivity: In addition to closely examining Victorian understandings of signed languages, this book focuses on two related topics: Victorian cultural constructions of deafness and Hved and self-representations of deaf (4). Her expHcation of deaf people and their work and writings within context of Victorian process of mis-understanding language as speech shows that deaf people actively tried to question and undermine this cultural process.Esmail's first chapter on deaf and politics of language disentangles and then re-entangles issues that arise in intersections between deafness, sound, and poetry (31). Esmail analyzes how deaf poets defended their in as imagined, silent, and textual-not auditory-constructions of print. Esmail analyzes specifically how deaf poets such as Amos Draper and John Kitto at this time show, in addition to celebration of visual properties and bodily signs within poems themselves, how patterns of rhythm and rhyme were therefore moored in textual practices rather than sound experiences (30) or speech. Esmail analyzes how the perceived gap between deafness and poetic ability was exploited by deaf people, and their allies, in their fight to defend sign language use (23).The issue faced by nineteenth-century deaf poets was then a particular physical disability but rather cultural prejudices about relationship between disability and poetry (26).In her second chapter, Esmail underscores rarity of signing deaf characters in world of Victorian fiction even as there are numerous examples of deafened, not signing, people in this genre.This chapter posits that absence of deafness in Victorian fiction reveals its investment in a particular and normativized relationship between bodies, spoken language, and textuality: one that understands fiction as a record of what was said and (70) via problematic silent heroines. Esmail points out how deafness is not as much of a problem for Victorians as lack of speech and assumption that writing is a form of printed orality (73). For silent Victorian woman to be acceptable, she had to have access to oral voice; one thing I would have liked to see Esmail do is indicate that this tradition goes at least as far back as early modern period in this era's dependence on speech along with anxieties about being heard and not hearing wrong thing. These anxieties did not just pop up suddenly in Victorian era as she seems to indicate.1 Writers like Dickens and Collins show difficulties of representing deaf characters in fiction via connecting corporeality to textuality and, more specifically, granting hands, arms, and face linguistic complexity of vocal organs, tongue, and lips within strictures of a written English text (71). Esmail also does neglect somewhat a more complete analysis of Victorian fiction genre in relation to silence, but possibly does so in order to focus on deaf viewpoint and subjectivity within works. She argues that Dickens and Collins portray Sophy and Madonna, deaf women in their works, as having more agency than has often been acknowledged; she also illustrates how Dickens and Collins attempt to incorporate inaudible voices (100) and in so doing subtly point out some of failures of assumed oral nature of print. …

Prominent Messages in Television Drama Switched at Birth Promote Attitude Change Toward Deafness

The study at hand employed a pre- versus posttest experimental design to test the effects of television drama Switched at Birth on viewers’ attitudes toward deafness. This program tells the story of two teenage girls (one of whom is deaf) and their struggles to relate to their peers and families after discovering they were switched as newborns. Two hundred eleven female adults completed pre- and postexposure measures utilizing Cooper, Rose, and Mason's (2004) Attitudes to Deafness measure, the items of which were categorized according to thematic dimensions. After exposure to one of three episodes, viewers’ attitudes toward deafness significantly improved overall, although significant differences in attitude changes varied by episodes and dimensions. The three thematic dimensions that were most strongly represented in the program (social interaction, deafness as a handicap, and language issues) appeared to show the strongest attitude change. Positive attitude changes were observed on social interaction and deafness as handicap dimensions, which was consistent with program content depicting positive deaf-hearing friendships and capable deaf characters. However, attitudes on the language issues dimension showed a negative shift, possibly due to the way that deaf characters communicated with hearing characters onscreen.

Joining the diaspora of deaf memoirists: a personal account of writing deafness.

In this essay, the author describes how, and why, she tackled a lifetime of questions about her deafness and experiences of being deaf by writing a memoir called The Art of Being Deaf. While researching her memoir, the author discovered that the questions about her deafness that she most needed to answer were her own. Having first read many memoirs by other deaf writers and novels with deaf characters, the author set about composing her own narrative of deafness in a fresh way. She not only came to an improved understanding of her deaf self, but grew into a more authentic understanding of her whole self, reconciling her memories of the deaf girl she once was with the adult deaf woman she is now. The author illustrates how the act of writing a memoir can be an important tool in resolving questions of identity.

Outcasts and angels: the new anthology of deaf characters in literature

Outcasts and angels: the new anthology of deaf characters in literature

Rethinking the portrayal of deaf characters in children's picture books

Children's literature provides the opportunity for children to see both representations of themselves and of others in print and in pictures. Not only can engaging with picture books develop key literacy and language skills and a love of reading, but reading (and/or being read) high quality books also has the potential to foster an appreciation and respect for oneself and others. However, sometimes the diversity that exists in the real world is not represented well—or at all—in books created for young children (Mendoza and Reese, 2001; Kama, 2004). In this article we will discuss the lack of, and critical need for, children's books that portray Deaf1 characters from a cultural perspective. We will also provide examples, from a sampling of children's picture books, of messages about deafness and deaf characters in text and illustrations (e.g., Golos and Moses, 2011; Golos et al., 2012). Finally, we will highlight the implications for both hearing and d/Deaf children as well as parents and educators. Typically, when people think about deafness, they think about a person with a disability, that is, someone who is unable to do something (i.e., hear). This represents a pathological perspective of deafness, which entails viewing deafness as a disability or as a condition that needs to be fixed with medical intervention (i.e., cochlear implants or hearing aids; e.g., Lane, 1992; Lane et al., 1996; Padden and Humphries, 2006). Deaf studies scholars suggest an alternative view of deafness from a cultural perspective, in which the deaf person is seen a member of a minority population, the Deaf community, rich with their own language (i.e., American Sign Language or ASL) and culture (i.e., Deaf culture) (e.g., Lane et al., 1996).

From "Freak Show" to "Charity Case"

The article explores the representation of deafness, and in particular the deaf character Madonna/Mary, in Wilkie Collins's nineteenth-century novel Hide and Seek. The argument is that Madonna's rescue from a circus and adoption into the safety of a middle-class home transforms her from "freak show" into "charity case" through a discourse of paternalism. This process of containment parallels wider transitions in how deafness was understood socially in the late nineteenth century. Drawing on the history of deaf education and using Foucault's concepts of emergence and confinement, the article argues that this mirrors the transition from manual to oralist approaches to deaf education in this period.

Strong Deaf (review)

Reviewed by: Strong Deaf Deborah Stevenson McElfresh, Lynn . Strong Deaf. Namelos, 2012. 122p. Trade ed. ISBN 978-1-60898-126-7 $18.95 Paper ed. ISBN 978-1-60898-127-4 $9.95 E-book ed. ISBN 978-1-60898-128-1 $8.95 Ad Gr. 5-7. The Gilbert family is a legendary one in the Deaf community, running Bradington Academy for deaf students and regularly participating in political action, such as protests at all-deaf Gallaudet University. To fourteen-year-old Marla, who attends Bradington, this identity is the core of her existence. To Jade, twelve, it can't be, because she's the only hearing member of her deaf family. The sisters' simmering rivalry hits the boil when their parents move Jade into the senior summer baseball league along with Marla, where the girls' sporting failures and triumphs and close friendships all become fodder for sisterly battles. The story deftly blends both familiar and unusual family dynamics, with the sisters' ability to make each other crazy universally recognizable even as their concerns about exclusion based on their deaf and hearing status add a special slant. The details of a Deaf-dominant family are matter-of-factly incorporated into the narrative, with Jade taking them as much for granted as Marla. The constant ferocity of the sisters' battling drowns out some of the more interesting aspects of the book, however, and the climactic drama that results in a new relationship for the two is a hackneyed device; the limited English used to relay the deaf characters' thoughts and dialogue does effectively convey a different language use but marginalizes their communication. The sibling rivalry story will still ring true to many readers, though, and the identity exploration is a useful younger complement to Ferris' Of Sound Mind (BCCB 10/01) and Johnson's Accidents of Nature (BCCB 6/06). Copyright © 2012 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois