New Materials

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. As the son of a deaf woman and, later, husband to another, his goal in life from adolescence was to teach deaf students to speak. Even his tinkering sprang from his teaching work; the telephone had its origins as a speech reading machine. The Invention of Miracles is an astonishingly revisionist biography of an American icon, revealing the extraordinary true genesis of the telephone and its connection to another, far more troubling legacy of Bell's: his efforts to stamp out American Sign Language. Weaving together a dazzling tale of innovation with a moving love story, the book offers a heartbreaking look at how a champion can become an adversary and provides an enthralling account of the deaf community's fight to reclaim a once-forbidden language. Katie Booth has been researching this story for more than fifteen years, 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 overturned everything she thought she knew about language, power, deafness, and the telephone.

International perspectives about literacy and deaf students is an uncharted intellectual landscape. Much of the literacy research in deaf education is conducted in English-speaking countries--primarily the United States--but 90% of deaf children live outside the U.S. and learn various signed and spoken languages, as well as diverse writing systems. Many of these children face significant educational challenges. In order to improve the literacy outcomes of deaf students around the world, it is imperative to study how children are using their local signed and spoken languages along with Deaf culture to learn to read and write. This volume fills a void in the field by providing a global view of recent theoretical and applied research on literacy education for deaf learners. Literacy and Deaf Education: Toward a Global Understanding is organized by region and country, with the first part discussing writing systems that use alphabetic scripts, and the second part focusing on countries that use non-alphabetic scripts. Some examples of the wide spectrum of topics covered include communication methodologies, curriculum, bilingual education, reading interventions, script diversity, and sociocultural development, including Deaf cultural developments. The contributors provide the results from literacy projects in fifteen countries and regions. This volume aims to widen the knowledge base, familiarize others in the field with these initiatives, and improve global understandings and outcomes of literacy teaching and learning in deaf education from birth to high school. Signed chapter summaries are available on the Gallaudet University Press YouTube channel.

Police found John Doe No. 24 in the early morning hours of October 11, 1945, in Jacksonville, Illinois. Unable to communicate, the deaf and mute teenager was labeled "feeble minded" and sentenced by a judge to the nightmarish jumble of the Lincoln State School and Colony in Jacksonville. He remained in the Illinois mental health care system for over thirty years and died at the Sharon Oaks Nursing Home in Peoria on November 28, 1993.

Deaf, mute, and later blind, the young black man survived institutionalized hell: beatings, hunger, overcrowding, and the dehumanizing treatment that characterized state institutions through the 1950s. In spite of his environment, he made friends, took on responsibilities, and developed a sense of humor. People who knew him found him remarkable.

Award-winning journalist Dave Bakke reconstructs the life of John Doe No. 24 through research into a half-century of the state mental health system, personal interviews with people who knew him at various points during his life, and sixteen black-and-white illustrations. After reading a story about John Doe in the New York Times , acclaimed singer-songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter wrote and recorded "John Doe No. 24" and purchased a headstone for his unmarked grave. She contributes a foreword to this book.

As death approached for the man known only as John Doe No. 24, his one-time nurse Donna Romine reflected sadly on his mystery. "Ah, well," she said, "God knows his name."

"Interpreters are key members of the educational team for students who are dependent upon sign language interpretation to access the general curriculum and educational environment. This book reports a multifaceted 5-year investigation into the patterns of practice of educational interpreters working in K-12 school settings with children who are deaf and hard of hearing in the United States. The investigation included a national survey of educational interpreters, a national Summit of educational interpreters, review of the current literature, analysis of a national assessment instrument for educational interpreting competencies, review of interpreter education curricula, case study of one interpreter education program, and meetings with state educational agency representatives. The audience for this book includes federal and state decision-makers, parents, educators, practitioners, and other stakeholders."--