Inside Deaf Culture | 
 enlarge | Authors: Carol A. Padden, Tom L. Humphries
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Category: Book
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Avg. Customer Rating:  12 reviews
Sales Rank: 8374
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 224
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.4 x 0.7
ISBN: 0674022521
Dewey Decimal Number: 305.90820973
EAN: 9780674022522
ASIN: 0674022521
Publication Date: October 31, 2006
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Product Description
In this absorbing story of the changing life of a community, the authors of Deaf in America reveal historical events and forces that have shaped the ways that Deaf people define themselves today. Inside Deaf Culture relates Deaf people's search for a voice of their own, and their proud self-discovery and self-description as a flourishing culture. Padden and Humphries show how the nineteenth-century schools for the deaf, with their denigration of sign language and their insistence on oralist teaching, shaped the lives of Deaf people for generations to come. They describe how Deaf culture and art thrived in mid-twentieth century Deaf clubs and Deaf theatre, and profile controversial contemporary technologies. Most triumphant is the story of the survival of the rich and complex language American Sign Language, long misunderstood but finally recently recognized by a hearing world that could not conceive of language in a form other than speech. In a moving conclusion, the authors describe their own very different pathways into the Deaf community, and reveal the confidence and anxiety of the people of this tenuous community as it faces the future. Inside Deaf Culture celebrates the experience of a minority culture--its common past, present debates, and promise for the future. From these pages emerge clear and bold voices, speaking out from inside this once silenced community. (20060124)
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| Customer Reviews: Read 7 more reviews...
 A good book about Black deaf culture within a deaf subculture January 20, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book offers a good introduction about the African American deaf community that exists as a miniority within a Deaf minority in America. If you are looking for a overview of the Deaf Culture then this is a good foundation book. The only downside about the book is that some of the chapers seem to be a mirror of previous chapters only about a different geographical Deaf community. However, given the limited number of resources about Deaf culture it is definitely worth reading.
 excellent book for your collection on Deaf History & Culture November 1, 2007
Padden & Humphries, husband & wife, both wrote a wonderful book that is much needed in terms of how Deaf Culture was or what it looked like in the days of the past. To me, "Inside Deaf Culture" is a follow-up from their previous book, "Deaf in America: Voices from a Culture". The difference is the latter is introductory by explaining different aspects of what Deaf culture is. The former contains selected pieces of Deaf history or rather, incidents and circumstances where the authors explain or pinpoint where some aspects of the Deaf culture originated.
For me, the most interesting parts of this book were the incidents occurring inside the Deaf residential schools. For most of us who are familiar with Deaf history, we know that the American School for the Deaf (Hartford, Connecticut) was the first permanent Deaf school and was established by Thomas H. Gallaudet, Laurent Clerc and Dr. Mason Cogswell. We also know that the Kentucky School for the Deaf was the first state-supported Deaf school. However, for many of us, we don't know what happened in the schools, whether they be good or bad.
Padden & Humphries bring light to some of the Deaf schools' darkest secrets. In addition, they also shed light to segregation between the Black and White Deaf residential schools. They don't stop there. They continue with voice, oralism, employment, theatre, American Sign Language (ASL) and of course, culture.
*Inside Deaf Culture* is an excellent book that is highly recommended for those in the Deaf-related fields. This book is also easy reading for those who are not knowledgeable of the Deaf community.
 Inside Deaf Culture April 30, 2007
Carol Padden and Tom Humphries weave together the historical and cultural aspect of the Deaf community in the book Inside Deaf Culture. They achieve this through a collection of historical data, interviews and personal memories. The book offers accounts of the institutionalization of separate schools, the emergence and decline of social clubs and Deaf theatre.
Within the discourse of spoken voice and Deaf theatre the book offers a very interesting discussion on performance as providing a point of intersection between Deaf and hearing audiences. Innovations in theatre such as blocking, complexities of signing and dialogues were some of the changes that were brought about due to the increasing interest in Deaf theatre. They write, "Where silence was once not noticed, it was now a commodity, and for that matter, made even more emphatic by voice interpretation. Signing was the manner of performing, and it was itself the performance. Astonished, the Deaf actors began to look at their own hands, and literally began to watch themselves sign." (124).
The book focusing on the struggles around the legitimacy of the American Sign Language (ASL) again suggests a rethinking of how we interpret language. ASL came to be understood not as a signing of the English language but as a language in its own right, with its own sets of signs and meanings that could not be found in the English language. This is demonstrated in Dorothy Miles' work discussed in the book. Padden and Humphries also refer to other poets and performers who were constantly trying to find ways to step beyond the confines of language and culture. They further write, "The cultural is neither here nor there, but is borne through history, made anew by the circumstances of the present. Cultures suggest a fixedness of place and time. The cultural offers a fluid idea of how experience and expression come together. The cultural resides in things, in behaviors as well as in performance." (142).
Silent and Invisible March 23, 2007
Other reviews here have touched on some of the specific points made in the book, so I would like to share instead my personal reaction to this book. What struck me the most is the tension running through each chapter between community and coercion. The very early history of schools for the deaf in the United States is inseparable from the growing introduction in the early nineteenth century of the expert management of civil society. Like prisons or asylums for the insane, schools for the deaf exercised direct control over student's bodies, starting from the fact that the institution became the legal guardian of the student. This coercive placement, both physical and social, however, represented for many student's their first encounter with other deaf people, with whom they would often form life-long friendships. This was, and continues even today to be, such a strong identity forming process, that many students considered these schools the places they "were from", and not the towns or cities they were born in.
This is something that I have thought about often since reading this book, for it brings me to questions about the ways in which we negotiate our identity with the people and institutions around us, which can provide us with growth and with pain at the same time. This touched me the most in the moving accounts of both suffering and profound connection that the authors are intimately familiar with.
Inside Deaf Culture March 21, 2007
In this accessible book the authors weave together several historical episodes that influenced the development of Deaf culture in the United States. Each chapter examines a different "cultural moment" including: the institutionalization of children in early schools for the deaf, the rise and fall of Deaf social clubs, changes in modalities of Deaf cultural expression, debates over the legitimacy of American Sign Language, and the implications of new technologies for the survival of Deaf culture.
Common to each chapter is the theme of struggle over voice and for self-determination. The authors discuss ways that Deaf institutions, language, cultural expression, educational strategies, and bodies often became sites of struggle between the Deaf and hearing and within the Deaf community itself.
These struggles are also couched in a broader social context. Racial segregation in early Deaf schools and the decline of Deaf social clubs during the post-World War II economy introduce issues of race and class into the story of Deaf culture. Additionally, Deaf cultural history becomes an interesting lens to view these important historical moments (Jim Crow laws, urban industrial social clubs, rise of film, etc...)
I appreciated the writing, particularly descriptions of scene. A cemetery on the campus of the South Carolina School for the Deaf and Blind (chap. 2) is a great example. Space, scene, and architecture-- the physical contours of the social environment in which the community devloped-- play an important role in describing Deaf culture in this book.
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