Description
Book SynopsisPlaces the growth of the Deaf community at the heart of the story of deaf education
Trade Review[A] useful addition to the still-developing history of the nation's evolving deaf community. * The Journal of American History *
R.A.R. Edwards' Words Made Flesh: Nineteenth-Century Deaf Education and the Growth of Deaf Culture is a brilliant study of the emergence of a deaf community in nineteenth-century America . . . . Beyond a more nuanced account of the emergence of the American Deaf community, this monograph is ultimately a revisionist history of the ongoing conflict over pedagogical methods in deaf education. Building on the established historiography produced by a small cadre of deaf historians, Edwards represents a new generation of scholarship in the field, offering a revisionist thesis of the ideas originally presented by Van Cleve and Crouch over twenty years ago. Words Made Flesh is a fine addition to New York University press's history of disability series. * Common-Place *
[This book is] provocative, detailed, and a welcome examination of the emergence of a signing deaf culture. * American Historical Review *
In this gracefully written book, Edwards offers both a fascinating narrative and a provocative, revisionist thesis.Scholars and general readers interested in the Deaf community and American cultural history will find it a rewarding read. -- Douglas Baynton,University of Iowa
Words Made Fleshis a stimulating, beautifully written, and thoroughly engaging book. -- James W. Trent * American Studies *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction 1 Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and Laurent Clerc: A Yale Man and a Deaf Man Open a School and Create a World 2 Manual Education: An American Beginning 3 Learning to Be Deaf: Lessons from the Residential School 4 The Deaf Way: Living a Deaf Life 5 Horace Mann and Samuel Gridley Howe: The First American Oralists 6 Languages of Signs: Methodical versus Natural 7 The Fight over the Clarke School: Manualists and Oralists Confront Deafness Conclusion Notes Index About the Author
