Made to Hear: Cochlear Implants and Raising Deaf Children
Abstract
A mother whose child has had a cochlear implant tells Laura Mauldin why enrollment in the sign language program at her daughter’s school is plummeting: “The majority of parents want their kids to talk.” Some parents, however, feel very differently, because “curing” deafness with cochlear implants is uncertain, difficult, and freighted with judgment about what is normal, acceptable, and right. Made to Hear sensitively and thoroughly considers the structure and culture of the systems we have built to make deaf children hear. Based on accounts of and interviews with families who adopt the cochlear implant for their deaf children, this book describes the experiences of mothers as they navigate the health care system, their interactions with the professionals who work with them, and the influence of neuroscience on the process. Though Mauldin explains the politics surrounding the issue, her focus is not on the controversy of whether to have a cochlear implant but on the long-term, multiyear undertaking of implantation. Her study provides a nuanced view of a social context in which science, technology, and medicine are trusted to vanquish disability-and in which mothers are expected to use these tools. Made to Hear reveals that implantation has the central goal of controlling the development of the deaf child’s brain by boosting synapses for spoken language and inhibiting those for sign language, placing the politics of neuroscience front and center. Examining the consequences of cochlear implant technology for professionals and parents of deaf children, Made to Hear shows how certain neuroscientific claims about neuroplasticity, deafness, and language are deployed to encourage compliance with medical technology. © 2016 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota. All rights reserved.
... Although cochlear implants and signed language acquisition are not mutually exclusive (Humphries et al., 2014), some advocates for cochlear implants insist that signed language interferes speech development assisted by cochlear implants (e.g., Geers et al., 2017). Much anthropological research has explored how cochlear implants are interwoven with this oralist ideology globally in different ways, mostly fueled by a preference for the local dominant (spoken) language (Friedner, 2022;Holmström et al., 2015;Loh, 2022;Mauldin, 2016). ...
... After the cochlear implant surgery, there is typically a "rehabilitation" process that includes speech-language therapy. Cochlear implants have been discursively portrayed as a technology that "cures" deafness (Lin, 2019;Mauldin, 2016). The status of cochlear implants is further strengthened by neuroplasticity discourse, which emphasizes how a young brain is moldable and therefore hearing technology can be the most effective when it is implanted as early as possible (Mauldin, 2014). ...
... As cochlear implants have gained dominance in early intervention programs, signed language is usually not included as a possible approach of early intervention among deaf children (Mauldin, 2016). In Taiwan, Lin (2019) notes that parental groups play a crucial role in reinforcing the status of cochlear implants, with many parents unable to envisage a future where their children rely on signed language for communication. ...
This paper develops the concept of "indexical depri-vation" from the experiences of English learning in relation to cochlear implant use among Taiwanese deaf adults. Based on the framework of language ideological assemblage, this paper traces how institutional discourses and practices at different levels contribute to the indexicalization between cochlear implants and elevated proficiency in English as a global language. By examining the top-down discourses and bottom-up narratives of two Taiwanese deaf women, the study demonstrates how enhanced English proficiency has been linked to cochlear implants and how individuals are deprived of the capacity to recognize alternative links. This paper highlights how global English has promoted the status of cochlear implants in a sociolinguistic context where English is spoken as a foreign language and increasingly gains prominence at multiple societal levels. K E Y W O R D S embodied sociolinguistics, enregisterment, global English, indexicality, semiotic ideologies 摘要 本研究從台灣聽損社群使用人工電子耳與英語學習的經 驗出發，提出「索引性剝奪」的概念。基於語言意識形態 裝配的理論框架，本研究追溯了不同層次的制度性論述 和實踐如何促成人工電子耳與好的英語能力之間的索引 性關聯。透過檢視兩位台灣聽損女性的敘事，以及媒體 與官方論述，本研究展示了英語能力如何在索引意義上 與人工電子耳連結起來，並剝奪了個體辨認其他索引意 This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.
... In this article, we travel back to the early days of CI experimental use in the 1970s in Australia, when unsettled expectations of the device and broad investigations of its effects began to settle. We explore the "interpretive flexibility" surrounding CIs as "a process through which bodily faculties and technologies are shaped together and brought into mutually constitutive technological frames" (Marshall 2014, 950-51;Mauldin 2016). Anthropologist Michele Friedner has explored this interpretive flexibility, specifically the extent to which hopes and expectations about the normalizing potential of CIs have converged and materialized in the habilitation practices that accompany their use. ...
... Deafness and the experience of deafness are shaped by factors ranging from social to political, legislative, educational, and medical (Mauldin 2016;Snoddon and Paul 2020). To understand the factors that have influenced CI users' experiences in the present, we draw on the concept of the "biology of history" (Landecker 2016). ...
... Other effects include changes in modes of communication, as many deaf people now communicate orally rather than manually. Family dynamics are affected, as families of people with CIs often effectively live as hearing families (Mauldin 2016). Moreover, an increasing number of deaf children now attend mainstream schools, rather than schools for the deaf. ...
In this article, we travel back to the early days of experimental use of cochlear implants (CIs) in the 1970s, when unsettled expectations of the device and broad investigations of its effects began to settle and center on speech outcomes. We describe how this attention to speech outcomes coalesced into specific understandings of what CIs do, and how implicit or explicit understandings of CIs as bionic devices that normalize hearing influenced research on and expectations of CIs into the present. We conclude that accumulated evidence about what is known and unknown about experiences and materialities with CIs calls for a decisive break from the metaphor of the bionic ear. This shift would create a space to reconsider the “deafness of history and the present,” as well as experiences of brain–computer interfaces that are inclusive of nonnormative life. This article is based on fieldwork in research and clinical facilities in Australia, Canada, and the United States. It included forty-three interviews with clinical experts and leading researchers in the fields of audiology, psychoacoustics, and neuroscience, among them scientists involved in the development and commercialization of one of the first CIs.
... Written with a lower case "d", it is based on audiological diagnosis and encompasses a variety of labels, including hard of hearing, late deafened, oral deaf, and Deaf (Leigh, 2010). Mauldin (2016) asserts that there are two main scripts through which parents can view deafness; the medical script and the Deaf cultural script. Historically, deafness has been viewed from the sociological perspective of medicalization (lower case "d") (Dillehay, 2011;Mauldin, 2016), with a focus on disability and the need to function "normally". ...
... Mauldin (2016) asserts that there are two main scripts through which parents can view deafness; the medical script and the Deaf cultural script. Historically, deafness has been viewed from the sociological perspective of medicalization (lower case "d") (Dillehay, 2011;Mauldin, 2016), with a focus on disability and the need to function "normally". Medicalization describes an understanding of a condition (e.g., deafness) within a medical framework (Mauldin, 2016). ...
... Historically, deafness has been viewed from the sociological perspective of medicalization (lower case "d") (Dillehay, 2011;Mauldin, 2016), with a focus on disability and the need to function "normally". Medicalization describes an understanding of a condition (e.g., deafness) within a medical framework (Mauldin, 2016). Mauldin asserts that mothers of d/Deaf children may experience ambivalent medicalization, which she describes as a state where "individuals are both empowered by and surrendering to the process of medicalization" (p. ...
Early detection of hearing loss leads to early intervention-related decisions. Most children with cochlear implants (CIs) are born to hearing parents. Prior evidence suggests that this increased access to oral communication and the “hearing” world means oral communication is prioritized by hearing parents. Language plays a key role within culture and these communication decisions are likely to be associated with children’s level of d/Deaf acculturation. This study was based on qualitative interviews. Thirty-two people associated with 14 children were interviewed; these were parents of children with CIs, four children over age 11 years, and teachers of 13 of the children. The study aimed to investigate parental communication decisions on child/family d/Deaf acculturation and the role of access to resources on children’s d/Deaf acculturation development. Findings indicate two profiles of family acculturation—oral and bicultural and point to a possible relationship between access to resources and parents’ decision-making process.
... In previous work on assessing levels of sign language vitality (e.g. Webster & Safar, 2019), some of the most significant threats were the decreasing birth of deaf children, changes in marital patterns, the geographic dispersion of sign language users, and language contact with other sign languages (Zeshan & de Vos, 2012;Braithwaite, 2019;Safar & Le Guen, 2020), as well as an increasing demand for cochlear implants in deaf children (Wrobel, 2014;Mauldin, 2016), a tendency for deaf pupils to attend mainstream schools (Johnston, 2004), and disappearance of sign languages from educational settings (McKee, 2017). The last three factors impact national sign languages while the first four have more influence on small-scale "village" sign languages (Webster & Safar, 2019; for further background on the concept of village sign languages, see Zeshan & de Vos, 2012). ...
... Linguists working with sign language users also encounter complexities stemming from the stark sociolinguistic differences between signers and speakers in terms of their bilingual and/or bimodal competence, which is more common in signers than speakers, and language acquisition paths, which for signers do not typically involve acquiring their first language from their parents (Quer & Steinbach, 2019). Unlike most spoken language users, sign language users have "a type of bilingualism that is neither territorial nor commonly the result of parent-to-child transmission" (Plaza-Pust, 2016:448), often due to the prejudice that many parents have against sign language, which is sometimes promoted by medical and educational professionals (Barberà et al., 2019:81; see also Mauldin, 2016). This makes transmission "the most idiosyncratic property of this language type within the context of language endangerment" (Barberà et al., 2019:80). ...
To investigate the under-researched topic of sign language vitality, the authors evaluate a set of sociolinguistic data gathered as part of the Sign Hub project. The subproject Atlas aimed to create an interactive online tool for researchers, teachers, and interpreters to compare sign languages’ sociolinguistic, grammatical, lexical, and phonological features. This paper presents an analysis of ten sign languages, i.e. the first batch of socio-historical data submitted to the subproject. The authors find that nearly all of them have been subjected to oppression, and their documentation is limited. Their vitality is supported by good awareness among the hearing community and use within educational institutions, national deaf associations and local deaf clubs. Vitality is threatened by low provision of sign language media and a lack of interpreter training. The paper concludes that the Atlas has considerable utility in research on sign language vitality, which may be augmented by adding further diachronic components.
... Several studies in this scoping literature review compared hearing and Deaf parents' views about communication choices as well as child outcomes. Deaf parents are likely to choose a more visual mode of communication for their deaf child, and frequently outperform hearing parents in interaction studies that compare hearing and Deaf parents' engagements with their deaf children [44]. For example, Deaf parents tend to use a higher level of tactile strategies when communicating with their deaf child compared to hearing parents [42]. ...
... Frequently there is reported to be minimal information about sign language and Deaf culture, and over time parents resist medical knowledge and asked for alternate services as their knowledge of their own children grew beyond diagnostic assumptions [43]. Initial adoption of a medicalised model script is recognised as occurring, which often maintains a strict divide between competing views of deafness [44], such views may include parents thinking their children are successful if they do not need a signed language. ...
Background
Over 90% of deaf children are born to hearing parents who have limited knowledge about deafness and require comprehensive support and information to support and communicate with their deaf child. However, little is known about the systems that support hearing families with deaf children. We performed a scoping review to provide an overview of current literature on the topic.
Methods
The protocol of the scoping review was prepared using the PRISMA statement guidelines for scoping reviews. Relevant search terms were used to identify eligible studies following discussion with the study’s steering group. Databases searched were CINAHL, Medline, ProQuest Central and ASSIA, as well as grey literature from relevant journals and online sources. Included were studies published from 2000 to 2021 and available in English.
Results
A search of databases identified 1274 articles. After excluding duplicates, screening titles and abstracts and full texts, 65 papers matched the identified inclusion criteria. Results included 1 RCT, 7 comparative studies, 6 literature reviews, 4 PhD theses, and 47 further empirical studies.
Conclusion
There is limited quality evidence on what supports hearing parents with deaf children. It is evident that further studies are needed to ensure comprehensive support is accessible and effective for hearing parents of deaf children.
... At the same time, ideology establishes systematic patterns of control through schools, workplaces, and higher education, which shapes language-learning investments and determines which language is worthy of more time and study. Mauldin (2016) reports on the proliferation of cochlear implant clinics designed to promote speech and listening skills in deaf children and the ideological conflicts over the use of sign language in addition to spoken language. Such ideological commitments shape the habitus of language users and position them to act and think a certain way and, at the same time, grant them agency to change their multiple contexts (O'Brien 2021). ...
... This expectation to behave in normative ways may also be described as a form of denial and therefore an act of marginalization (Aldalur et al. 2021). These expectations are outward forms of the investment in the belief that a deaf child can learn to speak and hear, a belief that is dominant and reinforced by medical approaches to hearing loss (Mauldin 2016). This unfortunate reality is often compounded by the long and protracted battle for the legal recognition of sign languages. ...
While translanguaging occurs in the homes of deaf people and their hearing family members who do not sign or possess limited signing skills, in this article we argue that translanguaging alone does not explain the complex, domestic-sphere language experiences of three young, newcomer artists in Saskatchewan, Canada. We frame our inquiry around the “dinner table experience” phenomenon, wherein deaf family members receive partial or little access to conversational exchanges. At the dinner table, which is both a literal setting and a metaphor for exclusion experienced by deaf people in audiocentric cultures, many deaf family members report feeling loved yet disconnected. However, translanguaging serves to expand linguistic repertoires among hearing and deaf interlocutors amidst the dinner table experience. We draw from three interviews with deaf youth who describe the dinner table experience through both dialogue and art making, including descriptions of ways in which communication is facilitated or not facilitated, thereby highlighting available and unavailable translanguaging practices in the domestic sphere. The interview data suggest that the dinner table experience is a significant setting for translanguaging, and that promoting accessible and equitable translanguaging practices in the home remains a significant challenge, especially when combined with newcomer lived experience that does not always match current descriptions of translanguaging. We posit that translanguaging is a necessary practice among hearing and deaf persons at the table that can and should be expanded to consider the intersectional experiences of communicators in this literal and metaphorical setting.
... By 1999, this number had reached 11,000 children globally. Notably, the use of cochlear implants among pupils aged 6 to 11 years increased from less than 15 per cent in 1999 to 22 per cent between 2002 and 2003 (Mauldin, 2016). Globally, by the end of 2012, the number of individuals with cochlear implants had surpassed 324,000 (Jaffer, 2017). ...
This study employed a multiple case study design to examine teachers' awareness of the learning needs of pupils with deafness using cochlear implants (PCIs) in inclusive primary schools in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Data were collected from 25 participants through semi-structured interviews and observations and analysed thematically. The findings revealed that most teachers had limited knowledge of cochlear implants and the specific learning needs of PCIs, with only a few demonstrating adequate understanding. Teachers with special education training showed greater awareness than their counterparts in general inclusive schools. To bridge this gap, the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology (MoEST) and the Tanzania Institute of Education (TIE) should integrate cochlear implant education into teacher training programmes. Furthermore, school management is encouraged to implement continuous professional development in collaboration with cochlear implant specialists to enhance teacher capacity in supporting PCIs.
... This variability in the understanding of an impairment as a disability can lead to forms of exclusion associated with disabilities varying, sometimes in direct counterpoint to the availability of accepted treatments. As medical treatments become more available, disability can be interpreted as a choice-as in the refusal of Deaf people to accept (Mauldin 2016) or the refusal of parents with children diagnosed as autistic to support their treatment with applied behavior analysis, which some parents and autism activists characterize as dehumanizing (Suskind 2014). Because of disability's exceptional status in relationship to the normal, it exists in the paradoxical position of being both intensely scrutinized and widely ignored (Wolf-Meyer and Friedner 2022); its ubiquity is revealed when disability interrupts the life of an individual or family and otherwise disability is ignored or suppressed. ...
... This variability in the understanding of an impairment as a disability can lead to forms of exclusion associated with disabilities varying, sometimes in direct counterpoint to the availability of accepted treatments. As medical treatments become more available, disability can be interpreted as a choice-as in the refusal of Deaf people to accept (Mauldin 2016) or the refusal of parents with children diagnosed as autistic to support their treatment with applied behavior analysis, which some parents and autism activists characterize as dehumanizing (Suskind 2014). Because of disability's exceptional status in relationship to the normal, it exists in the paradoxical position of being both intensely scrutinized and widely ignored (Wolf-Meyer and Friedner 2022); its ubiquity is revealed when disability interrupts the life of an individual or family and otherwise disability is ignored or suppressed. ...
In this article, I argue for an antinormative bioethics based in disability experiences drawn from memoirists’ accounts of idiosyncratic needs and desires that are obscured by normative impulses in mainstream bioethics. Bioethics has long been shaped by a commitment to the normal, which often casts disabled people and the category of disability as anterior to bioethical concerns about individual rights, protections, and property. Focusing on disability experiences and the category of disability—as developed by disability studies scholars and supported by materialist feminist science and technology studies—provides a grounding for an inclusive bioethics that creates livable lives through careful and creative alliance building in and beyond the contexts in which bioethics has traditionally operated. I focus herein on the non-unitary experience of autism and the facilitation of people who identify as autistic to develop this inclusive and responsive bioethical praxis.
... The biodiversity of the human species includes individuals with different hearing levels, although the majority have similar abilities to hear (henceforth, hearing people). Schools, workplaces, and healthcare systems, for example, have infrastructures and practices that have been built by hearing people but might cause barriers to those of different hearing levels, including deaf and hard of hearing people [1][2][3][4] . While deaf individuals navigate institutional and systemic barriers, many also experience oppression and other people's perception of them as broken, impaired, or disabled; this perception is known as ableism 5,6 . ...
Deaf people experience ableism (able-bodied oppression), audism (hearing-ability oppression), and linguicism (sign language-use oppression) and this study investigated if internalizing these oppressive experiences predicts their mental health. Deaf participants (N = 134) completed a 54-item Deaf Oppression Scale, developed for this study with Ableism, Audism, and Linguicism Subtests, along with the Beck Depression Inventory-II and the State and Trait Anxiety Inventory. The Deaf Oppression Scale and its Ableism, Audism, and Linguicism Subscales carry good reliability and the model fit indices for a confirmatory factor analysis indicated a good fit. Sixteen (16%) percent (n = 22) of the sample had depression, 36% (n = 48) had state anxiety, and 64% (n = 86) had trait anxiety. Internalized ableism predicted greater characteristics and symptoms of depression, internalized ableism and linguicism predicted greater state anxiety, and internalized audism predicted greater trait anxiety. This is the first empirical evidence dissociating three types of oppression that deaf people experience and their separate and different effects on their psychological well-being.
... As neural prostheses, CIs could be seen as precursors to brain-to-speech interfaces. However, it is well documented that CIs are not simple solutions to deafness (Blume 2010;Campbell 2009;Mauldin 2016). Rather CI wearers are working with these technologies, learning to process sound perhaps for the first time via the brain, and training the brain to make sense of sound requires substantial labour on the part of the person being implanted. ...
This manifesto seeks to challenge dominant narratives about the future of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). Current predictions are mainly driven by technological developments—technologies usually being developed for different markets—and are often based on ableist assumptions. In online conversations and a discussion panel at the 2023 International Society for Augmentative and Alternative Communication conference, we explored alternative futures by adopting different starting positions. Our case is presented under five headings: questioning the dominance of predictions that artificial intelligence and brain-computer interfaces will define the future of AAC; resisting disability being framed medically, as a problem to be solved, yet acknowledging both the pleasures and pains of being disabled; declaring that people who use AAC—as cyborgs of necessity rather than choice—should have choice and ownership of our technologies; challenging notions of independence as the necessary end goal for disabled bodies and considering interdependence as a human right; imagining alternative futures in which all people who use AAC are accepted and embraced for our communication and self-expression. This manifesto is an invitation for further discussion, and we welcome responses. While our focus is AAC, and three of the authors use AAC, we believe that our stance could be relevant to other disability communities in turn. This paper is about who gets to imagine disability futures and whose voices are left out. It is about how uncritical these futures can be, often presuming values that disabled people, in all their diversity, may not share.
... Throughout history, in almost every part of the globe, models of deaf children's needs regarding language and cognitive development have focused on hearing loss and the necessity of speech; from the moment hearing loss is identified, a quest ensues to find ways to help deaf children overcome inherent disadvantages accessing and processing spoken language [9]. In the modern world, replacing hearing, replacing the auditory pathway to language, too often becomes the sole goal [10]. Deaf children are faced with trying to develop spoken language with critically inaccessible input or degraded exposure to such input [11]. ...
The matter of raising and educating deaf children has been caught up in percepts of development that are persistently inaccurate and at odds with scientific research. These percepts have negatively impacted the health and quality of life of deaf children and deaf people in general. The all too prevalent advice is to raise the child strictly orally and wait to see what happens. Only when the child is seriously behind is a completely accessible language – a sign language – introduced, and that is far too late for protecting cognitive health. The medical profession, along with others, needs to offer parents better advice and better supports so that neither the children nor their parents wait and watch as the oral-only method fails. All must take responsible action to assure an approach that succeeds.
... One result of this asymmetrical presentation of information (cf. Young et al., 2006) can be exaggeratedly positive evaluations of certain forms of "help" and "helpers" -for example cochlear implants as "miracles" or service providers as the benevolent and philanthropic providers of these miracles (Lane, 1992;Mauldin, 2016). It can also result in the decision about whether or not to use sign language being presented to parents unnecessarily as an "either/or choice" (Humphries et al., 2012;Snoddon, 2021). ...
Parents of children who are deaf or hard-of-hearing (D/HH) need clear and complete information about early intervention options. There is a body of research on parents’ reactions to, and perceptions of, information they encountered following their child’s diagnosis, but little research examining the information itself. This paper reports on a research project examining the evaluative meanings of information on the websites of the two early intervention providers in NSW, Australia. Both providers describe their services as “family-centered” on their websites. The appraisal framework from systemic functional linguistics was used to analyze each website. Specifically, evaluations regarding the ‘capacity’ of providers and D/HH children are reported here. Providers are consistently evaluated as altruistic and expert, while D/HH children are consistently evaluated as requiring the specific kind of intervention program offered by these organizations in order to live a “normal” or “successful” life. Coupled with the lack of information about alternative approaches to early intervention, the information provided appears to be inconsistent with principles of family-centered intervention.
... Similarly, focusing solely on cochlear implantation and spoken language does not guarantee favorable results in spoken or overall language acquisition (Huttunen & Valimaa, 2010). In fact, the child may instead suffer from the impact of delayed, accessible exposure to any language (Mauldin, 2016). By encouraging a specific one-method choice, parents and professionals deny children valuable opportunities for reaching critical language development milestones. ...
In promoting family engagement, we must first analyze the initial entry into the world of early intervention by families with children recently identified as deaf or hard of hearing. What is the framework in play? With deaf and hard of hearing children, the framework is usually based on language acquisition, namely which communication approach the families want to pursue. This chapter will discuss how current practices, supported by systematic and individual bias embedded in laws, have led to the development of a false dichotomy of parent choice, resulting in severe disconnection between the child and the parents/family, thus reducing the chance for authentic engagement.
... Recently, this has been pursued through medical intervention technologies, but not so long ago, overtly violent training regimens and eugenic practices were employed and applauded (Commerson, 2014;Schmidt, 2020;Wrigley, 1996). Normalization has behaviorist psychological origins (Mauldin, 2016;. Behaviorism was a major point of contention for Vygotsky's pedology (Bein et al., 1993;Skyer, 2023b, this issue), and led Vygotsky to reject its theories and methodsincluding Pavlov's-in deaf education. ...
Lev Vygotsky (1993) described deaf ontology as dynamic interactions that uniquely but inexorably synthesize biology and society. The deaf biosocial condition is a deceptively simple theory. Principally, it clarifies imbricated issues of axiology, power, and knowledge by centering positive adaptive compensations that sublate deafness. Using Vygotsky's theoretical proposals, I organized four distinct paradigms of deaf research and analyzed a historical case of sign language deprivation from Soviet Russia in the 1930s. On the basis of this critical literature review and case analysis, I posit that a paradox of inclusion comprises the heart of deaf education, which forces stakeholders to make choices about ethics and evaluate their consequences. Vygotsky urges practitioners to reject disablement and pathology and instead to uplift visuality and multimodality. These foundational values disrupt harmful conditions, improve teaching and learning, and encourage deaf people to transform the deaf body and mind through society.
... Research has typically compared bilingual signing and speaking DHH children to those learning a single (spoken) language, often finding the signing-speaking children to be deficient (i.e., that the bilingual DHH children scored below monolingual English-speaking DHH children on standardized tests of spoken English, as in Geers et al., 2017; but see Fitzpatrick et al., 2016 for a systematic review finding that there is insufficient high-quality evidence to be conclusive). The results from these lines of research, in combination with other problematic scientific arguments and long-standing biases against sign languages, have been used by professionals to discourage sign language use with DHH children (as discussed in Hall, 2017;Hall et al., 2019;Henner & Robinson, 2023;Humphries et al., 2016;Mauldin, 2016). In contrast, if we recognize that a child exposed to both a signed and a spoken language is bilingual, we can learn from the immense literature about speech-speech bilinguals and set realistic expectations for language development in two languages. ...
Some studies have concluded that sign language hinders spoken language development for deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children even though sign language exposure could protect DHH children from experiencing language deprivation. Furthermore, this research has rarely considered the bilingualism of children learning a signed and a spoken language. Here we compare spoken English development in 2-6-year-old deaf and hearing American Sign Language-English bilingual children to each other and to monolingual English speakers in a comparison database. Age predicted bilinguals' language scores on all measures, whereas hearing status was only significant for one measure. Both bilingual groups tended to score below monolinguals. Deaf bilinguals' scores differed more from monolinguals, potentially because of later age of and less total exposure to English, and/or to hearing through a cochlear implant. Overall, these results are consistent with typical early bilingual language development. Research and practice must treat signing-speaking children as bilinguals and consider the bilingual language development literature.
... These shifts may appear insignificant when looked at in isolation, but current trends in the Deaf community indicate a major shift in practice is occurring from dividing the community based on audiovocal (hearing and speaking) skills to embracing the different language needs of individuals. However, there is still ambivalence within the Deaf community regarding speech therapy (Mauldin, 2016), as was seen in this study. Although some participants felt they benefited from speech therapy, others showed attitudes and behavior that have become symbolic of a strong Deaf identity, such as throwing their hearing aids into the toilet. ...
... a scourge to be eliminated (Mauldin, 2016;Valente & Boldt, 2016). In opposition, sociocultural stances critically respond to injustice and center the activism of enclaves of self-determined deaf people (Mauldin & Fannon, 2017;Skyer, 2022). ...
Deaf education is an incoherent macrosystem whose sub‐systems—e.g., biomedical vs. sociocultural institutions—contradict. Unreconciled tensions cause stagnation, not regeneration, and harmful dissensus in deaf educational sub‐systems. To revitalize deaf education, address these contradictions, and eliminate incoherence, we posit that a deafled systemic transformation of deaf education is necessary; furthermore, we argue it may best be realized through theories and actions constitutive of anarchism. To this end, we synthesize four thematic loci where anarchism overtly aligns with constructs immanent in deaf communities. First, collectivism is necessary for survival in anarchist and deaf communities toward shared goals including equity in education, social labor, and politics. Second, mutual aid is integral—like anarchists who work arm‐in‐arm, deaf individuals and groups exhibit uncanny solidarity across political, cultural, technological, linguistic, and geographical boundaries. Third, direct action tactics overlap in both groups: When facing internal or external threats, both communities effectively rally local mechanisms to affect change. Finally, both groups exhibit a stubborn, existential refusal to be subdued or ruled by outsiders. Reframing systemic dilemmas in deaf education via anarchism is a novel, beneficial praxis that’s only been tangentially explored. Centering anarchism in deaf education also generates succor for ongoing struggles about sign language in deaf communities. Toward the horizon of radical equality, our staunchly anarchist analysis of deaf education argues that to guide deaf‐positive system change neoliberalism is inert and neo‐fascism anathema.
... As I will show, material and datafied bodies are also fundamentally social, and these embodied experiences require an agency-centered reframing of bodies/the body-a process common among Critical Disability Studies/Crip Studies scholars such as Alison Kafer (2013), Aimi Hamraie and Kelly Fritsch (2019), Laura Mauldin (2016), and Robert McRuer (2006, 2018, which likewise informs how we can approach the technologies and use acts entangled in these practices-to account for the complexities of choice and materiality in T1D treatment and life more generally. The freedom these informants have been promised through their devices, and have in some cases sought out with vigor, is actually a freedom from their own bodies and lives deemed unlivable. ...
Drawing from feminist and queer technoscience studies, this panel examines the constitutive entanglements of bodies, technologies and systems in Type 1 diabetic continuous glucose monitoring and the intimate feeling of their numbers and data visualization; in the selfie politics of mastectomies on Instagram and the platform vernaculars people use to make the grief of breast cancer’s gendered loss representable; in the ways Bay Area Deaf AIDS activists in the 1980s and 1990s remediated their access to information through infrastructures of care they built for themselves and others; and in the ways Type 1 diabetics navigate the material culture of insulin pump treatment and the politics of diabetic care as both compulsory and liberating. Thinking across their research on chronic and crip technologies, this panel interrogates what it means, and is, to care for oneself and others in relation to the feel of navigating technologized, datafied, and materially marked lives and the systems and communities that shape their very possibilities. Building on Hamraie and Fritsch’s (2019) conception of “crip technoscience” and capacious notions of care articulated by folks in our research, panelists examine how chronic and disabled lives are lived between “enclosed regimes of self-care” with their individualizing models of selfhood and “collective communal care” frameworks (Sharma, 2017, para. 20, para. 4) that our research shows often require new ways of thinking about and better sourcing social and technological infrastructures that are centered around chronic and crip ways of living.
... There is significant debate over the meaning of d/Deafness, and the discussion here is greatly simplified. Among many possible entry-points for those wanting to learn more, see(Mauldin 2016). ...
... Социальная природа КИ достаточно активно изучалась на западе в конце ХХ -начале XXI в. Исследования посвящены образовательным и про-фессиональным достижениям детей с КИ (Spencer et al. 2004;Venail et al. 2010), этическим вопросам имплантации (Christiansen, Leight 2002), развитию институтов ранней диагностики и поддержки семьи (Mauldin 2016), удовлетворенности КИ старших подростков, их социальным и коммуникативным способностям. При этом большинство исследований посвящены именно изучению детей или пользователей КИ, совершивших операцию еще в детстве, в то время как глухие, решившиеся на КИ во взрослом возрасте, достаточно редко оказывались в фокусе внимания, а существующие исследования совершеннолетних людей посвящены в основном эффективности программ поддержки (Hogan 1997) или опыту участия в реабилитационных программах (Glade 2018). ...
Cochlear implantation (CI) is a relatively new phenomenon for Russia. It has had a significant impact on both the lives of individuals with hearing disabilities and the entire community of the deaf and hard of hearing people. The first CI operations in Russia were performed in the early 1990s, and already in the first decade of the 21st century, implantation took root in medical practice. In recent years, in the world and in Russia, there has been a tendency to implantation of adults with long-term experience of deafness. These people are usually classified by specialists in the category of unpromising patients, and the operation itself is considered risky. In the presented article, based on the results of a qualitative study, which included interviews with CI users, as well as with experts, the main motives determining the decision to perform implantation of adult deaf people are considered. As it was found, the decision on CI is motivated not only by medical indications, but also by the social motives of the individual. These include communicative, professional and individual-personal. In addition, a fundamental role in this process is played by a person's rejection of the culture of the deaf, lack of full-fledged involvement in the life of the deaf community, self-determination and perception of one's own deafness. According to CI users, the operation does not make it possible to turn a person into a “hearer,” and the traditional binary opposition of deaf / hearer identities is limited, resulting in hybrid identities. At the moment, the Institute of CI for adults has not yet been formed in Russia. This significantly complicates the process of integrating the CI user into the hearing society and requires a revision of the work with this category of people with hearing impairments.
... Outside of formal schooling, hearing persons learn to use sign language through and for their families, occupations, and other affiliations. Since many health and human services providers work with deaf clients, and their fields are overrepresented by women (Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf, 2020, Table MS&GA 2; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2021, Table 11; also see McDermid, 2009), and mothers largely take on responsibility for rearing children with disabilities (e.g., Blum, 2015;Mauldin, 2016;Meadow-Orlans, Mertens, & Sass-Lehrer, 2003), we expect female respondents would be overrepresented among hearing signers. ...
An empirical estimate of how many deaf and hard-of-hearing persons use sign language in the USA was obtained a half-century ago, but no study has measured how many people sign regardless of deafness. This study estimated the number of deaf, hard-of-hearing, and hearing adult signers. Concatenation of the 2010-2018 National Health Interview Surveys was required to provide sufficient sample size. Unadjusted and age-by-sex-adjusted sign language use prevalence across the range of hearing acuity was estimated. Adult sign language use was substantial (2.80%), with its rate of use greater for women than men and younger adults than older adults. As a group, deaf respondents had a far higher rate of sign language use than any other hearing acuity group. This study provides the first empirical estimate of adult sign language use generally, and the first update of any sign language use estimate in a half-century.
... The number of certified therapists, and interest in AVT more generally, is increasing, catalyzed by the growing prevalence of cochlear implantation and the increasingly younger age at which children are implanted (see Blume 2010;Mauldin 2016). Certification requires a degree in a deaf education or re/habilitation-related field, mentorship by a current certified LSLS AVT professional (which the potential AVT practitioner might pay for), and successful completion of an examination administered in either English or Spanish at a licensed testing center. ...
This article analyzes convergences in the ways that both deafness and autism are framed as crises that require immediate (and often expensive) professional intervention. Parents receive messages that failure to therapeutically intervene will prevent their children from living normative lives. We demonstrate how therapy techniques such as Auditory Verbal Therapy and Applied Behavioral Analysis have proliferated to address these crises. We explore the development of professional organizations and training programs devoted to AVT and ABA and we consider how AVT and ABA professionals define “optimal outcomes” that are supposedly achieved when diagnosis is removed or declassified. In contrast to professional views, we argue for alternative perceptions of these therapeutic processes and their ostensible outcomes based on accounts by d/Deaf and Autistic adults. In addition, we argue that the (neutral) language of outcomes obscures the active work required and backgrounds the different kinds of labor and ideologies at play. While AVT and ABA experts argue that it is increasingly possible to achieve optimal outcomes, we question the sensory and relational costs of these outcomes and the way that they prevent other ways of being, sensing, and communicating from taking place.
... While deaf babies born to signing deaf parents, generally, are exposed to accessible language from day one; 96% of deaf babies are born to non-signing hearing parents [62], and it is those children who are most at risk of delayed language development. Many medical professionals advise parents to have their child undergo surgery for a cochlear implant (CI) and, for hearing parents, to raise the child with speech and hearing only [63]. This advice has led parents to trust that a CI will, essentially, make their child "hearing", often giving them an unwarranted sense of security in their decision. ...
Bilingual bimodalism is a great benefit to deaf children at home and in schooling. Deaf signing children perform better overall than non-signing deaf children, regardless of whether they use a cochlear implant. Raising a deaf child in a speech-only environment can carry cognitive and psycho-social risks that may have lifelong adverse effects. For children born deaf, or who become deaf in early childhood, we recommend comprehensible multimodal language exposure and engagement in joint activity with parents and friends to assure age-appropriate first-language acquisition. Accessible visual language input should begin as close to birth as possible. Hearing parents will need timely and extensive support; thus, we propose that, upon the birth of a deaf child and through the preschool years, among other things, the family needs an adult deaf presence in the home for several hours every day to be a linguistic model, to guide the family in taking sign language lessons, to show the family how to make spoken language accessible to their deaf child, and to be an encouraging liaison to deaf communities. While such a support program will be complicated and challenging to implement, it is far less costly than the harm of linguistic deprivation.
This article examines competing discourses about Jordanian Sign Language (LIU) among deaf and hearing people in Amman, based on ethnographic fieldwork at an educational start‐up for deaf children and at a deaf cultural center. In these spaces, how my interlocutors discussed the use and value of LIU took on conflicting ideological tones: on the one hand, they would emphasize the importance of access to sign language for deaf children, described as the “mother tongue” ( al‐lugha al‐ʾumm ) of deaf people. On the other hand, they would make comments that disparaged LIU as a form of “broken Arabic” ( ʿarabi mukassar ). I argue that these contradictory discourses can be productively read as forms of rhetoric: for instance, calling LIU the “mother tongue” of deaf Jordanians, rooted in its materiality, is a way for the start‐up staff to convince audiences to support their cause, while describing LIU as “broken Arabic,” while incorrect, is useful insofar as it asks students of sign language not to sign in conformity to Arabic grammar. Building on recent work on sign language ideologies, I argue for understanding these contradictory discourses in the contexts in which they are deployed and for the centrality of language to deaf personhood in Jordan.
The Indian state relates to the category of disability—and materialises itself—through the distribution, often at camps, of aids and appliances such as hearing aids, canes and wheelchairs that are ‘make in India’, as examples. In 2014, the state modernised its distribution programme and started providing cochlear implants to children living below the poverty line. While aspirations exist to create and manufacture an Indian-made cochlear implant, currently the state purchases implants from three multinational corporations. This cochlear implant programme reveals new directions in which the state is moving in engaging with disability and introduces novel assemblages of welfare, medicine, rehabilitation and multinational capital. In these assemblages, new relationships form between the state, multinational corporations and families with deaf children. These relationships stretch beyond the one-time disability camp or the one-off surgery and have resulted in opportunities for government administrators, surgeons and rehabilitation professionals to reinvent themselves in relation to the seemingly miraculous power of cochlear implants while also producing complex dependencies for families with deaf children. Families are required to interact with, and depend on, multinational corporations to maintain the cochlear implants.
What might it mean to change the questions we ask during clinical case conferences and to ask different kinds of questions, both in case conferences and more broadly in our clinics, care conferences and research? How might conducting ‘para case conferences’ with diverse stakeholders, community members and scholars invigorate conversation and surface different kinds of concerns? By ‘para,’ I draw from all of the meanings of the prefix, including alongside of, beside, near, resembling, beyond, apart from and abnormaL In this essay, I discuss a ‘traditional’ hospital-based case conference about a young deaf woman who would like to undergo cochlear implant surgery and I compare it to two ‘para case conferences’ that I organised with disability studies scholars in the humanities, social sciences and public health, in which we analyzed the same case and had a very different discussion. I argue, drawing on disability studies, medical anthropology and disability ethics scholarship, that we must actively consider and confront the role of structural ableism and the ways that it constrains the kinds of questions and horizons of possibility we imagine for patients and for disabled flourishing more broadly.
Objective:
To explore the process of paediatric cochlear implant assessment, from referral to implantation, from the perspective of parents, cochlear implant professionals, and through observations of clinics.
Design:
Qualitative approach, using grounded theory methodology.
Study sample:
Twelve families with children under 5 years with permanent hearing loss referred for a cochlear implant or received an implant in the past year, and six professionals who refer or assess children for cochlear implants. Data collection involved interviews and ethnographic observations of assessment clinics.
Results:
The core theme derived from interview and observation data related to the work of the cochlear implant assessment for families. The relationship between the work generated by the assessment process and capacity of parents to do the work provides a model to examine access to early implantation, consistent with the Burden of Treatment theory. We identified variation in terms of workload, relating to factors such as a child's additional needs or number of appointments required, and in terms of capacity, relating to factors such as social circumstances or health literacy. Social, peer and professional support and information helped families manage the workload.
Conclusions:
Findings have implications for delivery of paediatric cochlear implant services.
The emphasis on biological and genetic perspectives in this chapter is intended to underscore the complexity of brain development. The next chapter explores complexity in terms of social and environmental modifications. As both chapters point out, these are not separate topics in individual lives. Individuals who are going to thrive despite genetic, congenital, and developmental conditions require social and environmental responses that meet their needs. Similarly, although an acquired condition is clearly biological and possibly related to genetics or environmental factors, it often creates a social rupture that distinguishes it from a condition one knows from birth and infancy. These topics are expanded on throughout the book.
This chapter examines how neuroscience and art are interwoven with therapeutics. The emphasis is on applications and strategies that enhance human health and well-being. The initial section introduces a range of approaches that intersect with therapeutics: neurology, psychology, neuropsychology, psychiatry, occupational therapy, and art therapy. Following this, topics covered include (1) how art therapy and art as a practice differ; (2) case studies that demonstrate artists with brain damage frequently continue to work professionally despite traumas, like stroke, or neurodegenerative conditions, such as dementia; (3) how art practices change after injuries; (4) the benefits of outreach programs in terms of patients, families, and communities; and (5) therapeutic controversies surrounding the use of cochlear implants.
The ability to associate different types of number representations referring to the same quantity (symbolic Arabic numerals, signed/spoken number words, and nonsymbolic quantities), is an important predictor of overall mathematical success. This foundational skill—mapping—has not been examined in deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children. To address this gap, we studied 188 4 1/2 to 9-year-old DHH and hearing children and systematically examined the relationship between their language experiences and mapping skills. We asked whether the timing of children’s language exposure (early vs. later), the modality of their language (signed vs. spoken), and their rote counting abilities related to mapping performance. We found that language modality did not significantly relate to mapping performance, but timing of language exposure and counting skills did. These findings suggest that early access to language, whether spoken or signed, supports the development of age-typical mapping skills and that knowledge of number words is critical for this development.
Cochlear implants are considered the gold standard in intervening on deafness and hearing loss. However, “success” is predicated upon routine and consistent use, which in turn is predicated on the ability to maintain devices. This essay considers what happens when use is partial and precarious and asks what happens when external implant processors become obsolete. Contributing to Science and Technology Studies scholarship on obsolescence and the binary between use and nonuse, I analyzes the ongoing aftermath of a central government program in India that provides children living below the poverty line with cochlear implants. Drawing on ethnography and interviews, the article analyzes how families struggle financially and logistically to maintain devices, resulting in cycles of partial use and precarious use. Ultimately, devices become obsolete, and families cannot afford compulsory upgrades. The state and corporations claim these families abandon the devices. In contrast to this claim, the article stresses that we must examine abandonment differently, by attending to how families are abandoned by the state and corporations. Arguing that obsolescence as a concept obscures relationality and functions apolitically, the concept of abandonment is instead put forward to analyze ruptures that occur when consistent and reliable biotechnology use is no longer possible.
Taboo topics in deaf communities include the usual ones found in spoken languages, as well as ones particular to deaf experiences, both in how deaf people relate to hearing people and how deaf people interact with other deaf people. Attention to these topics can help linguists understand better the consequences of field method choices and lead them to adopt better ones. Taboo expressions in American Sign Language are innovative regarding the linguistic structures they play with. This creativity is evident across the grammar in non-taboo expressions, but seems to revel in profane ones. When it comes to the syntax, however, certain types of structures occur in taboo expressions that are all but absent elsewhere, showing grammatical possibilities that might have gone unnoticed without attention to taboo. Taboo expressions are innovative, as well, in how they respond to changing culture, where lexical items that are incoherent with community sensibilities are 'corrected'.
What would it mean to invite disability into dialogue? Disability in Dialogue attunes us to the dialogues of and about disability. In the pages of this book, we ask readers to consider the dialogic constitution of disability and to imagine its reformulation. We find the voices, bodies, social norms, visceral experiences, discourses, and acts of resistance that materialize disability in all its dialogic and enfleshed complexity: tensions, contradictions, provocations, frustrations and desires. This volume makes a unique contribution, bringing together authors from disciplines as diverse as communication, dialogue studies, psychology, sociology, design, rhetoric and activism. Because we take dialogue seriously, this book is designed to be brave as we examine the ways of being in the world that dialogic practices engender and allow, as well as beckon to continue. By way of a variety of frameworks, such as discourse analysis, dialogue studies, narrative analysis, and critical approaches to discourse, the chapters of this book take us through a polylogue of and about disability, demanding that we consider our own roles in bringing forth disabled ways of being and how we might, instead, choose ways that enable our common existence.
The hypothesis that impoverished language experience affects complex sentence structure development around the end of early childhood was tested using a fully randomized, sentence‐to‐picture matching study in American Sign Language (ASL). The participants were ASL signers who had impoverished or typical access to language in early childhood. Deaf signers whose access to language was highly impoverished in early childhood ( N = 11) primarily comprehended structures consisting of a single verb and argument (Subject or Object), agreeing verbs, and the spatial relation or path of semantic classifiers. They showed difficulty comprehending more complex sentence structures involving dual lexical arguments or multiple verbs. As predicted, participants with typical language access in early childhood, deaf native signers ( N = 17) or hearing second‐language learners ( N = 10), comprehended the range of 12 ASL sentence structures, independent of the subjective iconicity or frequency of the stimulus lexical items, or length of ASL experience and performance on non‐verbal cognitive tasks. The results show that language experience in early childhood is necessary for the development of complex syntax.
Research Highlights
Previous research with deaf signers suggests an inflection point around the end of early childhood for sentence structure development.
Deaf signers who experienced impoverished language until the age of 9 or older comprehend several basic sentence structures but few complex structures.
Language experience in early childhood is necessary for the development of complex sentence structure.
This article ethnographically considers the experiences of Australian young people who were born deaf and who hear and listen through cochlear implants to explore the intersection between the sensory body, lived experience and technology. The article draws on phenomenology to examine how experiences of deafness are productive in analysing articulations of embodiment and the meanings embedded in a body that is valued as both deaf and hearing. Leaving aside binary conceptions of deaf versus hearing, and understandings of the cochlear implant as a remedy for sensory deficits, we instead make a case for nuanced understandings of the device and embodied experiences through technology. This analysis identifies how a cochlear implanted body navigates connections to the world and to others in turning on and off engagement. We contend that the device has an intrinsic value for recipients through enabling their access to hearing while not removing their experiences of deafness.
This study explores the intertwined phenomena of language deprivation, emergent writing, and translanguaging in deaf students without additional disabilities in grades 3–6. A case study was conducted using deductive and inductive approaches to analyze 42 writing samples. There were four areas of focus: (1) stages of emergent writing development, (2) writing change over time, (3) emerging writing and translanguaging features, and (4) writing features unique to the context of language deprivation. First, pre-writing samples add to evidence that older deaf students undergo similar developmental processes with their emergent writing patterns. Second, an analysis of pre- and post-writing samples indicated that movement between stages occurred for most students. Third, students incorporated emergent writing and translanguaging features that reflected the application of their linguistic resources in writing. Finally, existing theories were extended by uncovering writing characteristics unique to the context of language deprivation. Incomplete ideation and restricted translanguaging practices were identified as attributions of language deprivation impacting cognitive and linguistic resources. This study provides evidence that deaf students as old as thirteen years old are developing emergent writing skills not because of their deafness but likely because they were in environments that produced chronic inadequate language access.
En aquest article argumentem que el factor principal de variació lingüística en la població amb sordesa prelocutiva és el tipus d’intervenció exclusivament oral que es realitza majoritàriament en l’actualitat. El fet de no exposar els infants sords a la llengua de signes a més de la llengua oral des del moment del diagnòstic de la sordesa els posa en risc de privació lingüística i d’alteracions cognitives, socioemocionals i de salut mental. A partir de la descripció de les dues variables principals que són font de la variació de perfils lingüístics en la població amb sordesa, les modalitats lingüístiques que empren i la presència o absència de trastorns del llenguatge, analitzem els factors que influeixen en aquesta variació lingüística. La identificació del principal factor de variació en la intervenció que es realitza ens condueix a proposar algunes mesures per contribuir a millorar aquesta situació.
The term homesign has been used to describe the signing of deaf individuals who have not had sustained access to the linguistic resources of a named language. Early studies of child homesigners focused on documenting their manual communication systems through the lens of developmental psycholinguistics and generative linguistics, but a recent wave of linguistic ethnographic investigations is challenging many of the established theoretical presuppositions that underlie the foundational homesign research. Sparked by a larger critical movement within Deaf Studies led by deaf scholars, this new generation of scholarship interrogates how researchers portray deaf individuals and their communication practices and questions the conceptualization of language in the foundational body of homesign research. In this review, we discuss these contested issues and the current moment of transition within research on homesign.
Human-centred design methodologies provide a means to align bioethical advocacy with the needs and desires of disabled people. As a method, human-centred design seeks to locate points of friction in an individual’s experience of everyday interactions, specifically in relation to technologies, but potentially in relation to processes and institutions. By focusing on disabled persons and their experiences of institutional organisation, human-centred design practices serve to create a foundation for a bioethical practice that addresses idiosyncratic needs and desires while providing support for disabled persons and their families. In considering how a design-focused bioethics might operate in this way, I focus on advanced sleep phase syndrome and delayed sleep phase syndrome as a way to show how the temporal ordering of institutions disable the participation of individuals with atypical sleep needs. I then turn to the education of deaf students through the exclusive use of sound, which puts them at a significant disadvantage relative to their hearing peers; this example shows how normative ableism obscures itself in attempts to aid disabled people, but an attention to the experience of deaf students show how exclusively auditory learning can be redesigned. Advocating for flexible institutional organisation and practices situates bioethical advocacy as a means to engage with social organisations in ways that create novel opportunities for able-bodied and disabled people alike.
Some Christians are anxious and uncomfortable about gender diversity and transition. Sometimes, they understand these issues as a rejection of God's intention for creation. Gender diversity has also been assumed to entail self-deception, mental ill-health, and dysphoria. Yet, humans are inherently transformative creatures with a vocation to shape their own worlds and traditions. Transformative creaturely theology recognizes the capacity of gender to shape humans even as we also question it. In this book, Susannah Cornwall reframes the issues of gender diversity and transition in constructive Christian theological terms. Resisting deficit-based discourses, she presents gender diversity in a way that is positive and non-oppositional. Her volume explores questions of the licit limits of technological interventions for human bodies, how gender diversity maps onto understandings of health, and the ethics of disclosure of gender diversity. It also brings these topics into critical conversation with constructive Christian theologies of creation, theological anthropology, Christology, and eschatology.
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