Dr.Sarah Rose

I read Douglas Baynton’s Forbidden Signs: American Culture and the Campaign against Sign Language for fun as bedtime reading while I was in the process of deciding to go to graduate school and specialize in disability history.  It’s probably the only academic monograph that I’ve ever read in that manner.  But, it’s so beautifully written and tells such a powerful story about nativists’ and eugenicists’ efforts to suppress American Sign Language and the persistence of Deaf culture that I couldn’t put it down. The fact that I was reading about disability history for fun was one of the things that clinched my decision to get a PhD.  In the years since, Douglas Baynton’s work has become a touchstone for me and now for many of my students as well.