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Joanne Weber

University of Regina, Education, Sessional

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Joanne Weber, PhD is a sessional lecturer at the University of Regina and a Deaf teacher of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing at a midwestern Canada DHH resource program in a large city board. Her dissertation is titled: “Becoming deaf in the posthuman era: Posthumanism, arts-based research and deaf education”. Joanne is a published author. Her books, The Pear Orchard (poetry) and The Deaf House (creative non-fiction) were finalists in the Saskatchewan Book Awards (2007, 2013). Joanne is also a leader in the Deaf community at provincial and national levels. She is the co-founder of Deaf Crows Collective which aims to provide opportunities for theatre performance by d/Deaf, hard of hearing and hearing, late deafened actors of all ages to celebrate Deaf culture, encourage self-expression, and foster relationships between hearing and Deaf communities.
Phone: 3065869621
Address: Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada

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Drafts by Joanne Weber

The impact of differing onto-epistemological stances toward plurilingualism and the implications for posthumanist plurilingual policies in education for deaf students

The binarization of language choices for deaf children and youth—that is, spoken English or Ameri... more The binarization of language choices for deaf children and youth—that is, spoken English or American Sign Language (ASL)--encourages competition in deaf education for resources, personnel and spaces. Saskatchewan Ministry of Education policy documents contain language planning discourses that subscribe to the cognitive-imperialist ideological frame concerning language acquisition in deaf children. Within this frame, plurilingualism is threatened by language hierarchization, linguistic prejudice, and structuralist approaches to language teaching which are often decontextualized and devoid of consideration of multiple semiotic resources that contribute to plurilingualism. Some researchers are beginning to explore the development of educational policy documents within a posthumanist frame. Posthumanist discourses concerning the flattened ontologies of humans, animals, and living and nonliving matter aim to bypass objectification of the “other” in terms of deaf people, immigrants, and people with diverse abilities. Alternative artistic texts set a posthumanist frame for language planning and may provide more expansive guiding principles for deaf children’s language access and acquisition.

The secrets of the Deaf Forest: Deaf translanguaging spaces

In this chapter, I will explore a cartography of intra-actions between deaf people, hearing peopl... more In this chapter, I will explore a cartography of intra-actions between deaf people, hearing people, animals, earth and machines presented in The Deaf Forest arts installation in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, September 29 - October 30, 2017. This cartography will explore the affects generated through intra-actions within the three contact zones within the installation: The Hearing Forest, The Hard of Hearing Forest, and The Deaf Forest. My discussion will include how affects in The Deaf Forest promote a translanguaging instinct (Li, 2011; 2017) among hearing, hard of hearing and deaf people in the Regina deaf diaspora thereby establishing a translanguaging space in which traditionally defined spaces according to one’s identity to hearing loss is replaced by performative intra-actions within each contact zone, therefore contributing to a single translanguaging space. On the surface The Deaf Forest seems to be an introduction to one’s identities formed in the response to hearing loss: 1) being a hearing person who cannot hear very well 2) using residual or cochlear implants and primarily identifying with the hearing world, thereby adopting a hard of hearing identity and 3) being a member of a deaf community, thereby presenting as deaf. I argue, however, that a posthumanist lens allows me to see The Deaf Forest as a single translanguaging space where the translanguaging instinct bypasses preoccupations with identity and locations strives, instead, to engage in encounters with difference in multiple spaces (Li, 2017; 2011; Masny & Cole, 2012; Pirbhai-Illich, Pete, & Martin, 2017).

Cyborgs and Fox-wives: Interrogating local sign language ideologies in the Saskatchewan deaf community

This chapter provides an arts based account of my journey in late acquisition of ASL in the conte... more This chapter provides an arts based account of my journey in late acquisition of ASL in the context of diminished access to ASL role models and the use of ASL in an educational environment primarily mediated by signed English transliterators. Using an arts based posthumanist lens and support provided by Canagarajah (2013) and Garcia, Otheguy, & Reid (2015), this paper analyzes arts data (poetry) regarding events and decisions which took place over twenty year period of teaching deaf adolescents and adults with view to interrogating the evolution of sign language ideologies and the establishment of a translanguaging orientation within a small resource program where I currently teach deaf adolescents.

The deaf way out of no way: Culturally Relevant Arts Education

I present an autoethnographic account of my struggle to become a culturally responsive deaf educa... more I present an autoethnographic account of my struggle to become a culturally responsive deaf educator in teaching significantly language deprived adolescent deaf students in the context of a deaf community diminished by language planning policies designed to suppress the use of ASL in the classroom and the value of deaf culture (Snoddon, 2009).

Captive Songs of Resistance: A Posthumanist Cartography

This chapter explores an arts-based resistance to normalizing systems and discourses of hegemonic... more This chapter explores an arts-based resistance to normalizing systems and discourses of hegemonic power. The presence of deaf diasporas resulting from closure of deaf schools and their reference to an imaginary and yet experienced homeland as a transnational presence (Emery, 2015) presents possibilities for resistance within education of deaf students who are isolated from more vibrant deaf communities. Today, most deaf students are educated in their home communities and are acculturated into the so-called “hearing world.” Therefore, these students are often deprived of access to the linguistic and cultural capital afforded by the deaf community on local, provincial and national scales (Humphries, et al., 2012). Despite inclusive education policies, the proliferation of cochlear implants, and the overall emphasis on hearing loss as an entity to be cured or rehabilitated (Mauldin, 2016), a significant number of mainstreamed deaf students eventually find their way into the Deaf community and come to embrace the linguistic, cultural, social, and artistic achievements provided by the deaf community at all levels (Bechter, 2008). The deaf homeland provides a means of resistance to the medical model of deafness in that it creates contact zones as evidenced in large international gatherings of deaf people, such as World Federation of the Deaf conferences and international and national sports events whereby deaf people can strengthen their identities, forge kinship ties, and return to their diasporic communities renewed and strengthened.

The paper is an arts based posthuman cartographic exploration of the processes involving the intra-actions between human and non human actors toward the creation of a theatrical play, Deaf Crows, which explores the experiences of deaf students in elementary school settings (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987; Crowley & Hickey-Moody, 2012; Hickey-Moody & Page, 2016; jagodzinski & Wallin, 2013). The narratives proved to be unsettling and challenged hegemonic beliefs concerning the acquisition of language in deaf students. Using nomadic ontology (Braidotti, 2011), the author also explores how nomadic zigzagging reveals the abject affects that are driven into the unconscious because of missing “obscene underside of the official narratives, the affect of life” (jagodzinski & Wallin, 2013, p. 73). For this reason, the “virtual real of the diasporic imagination is not approached”. Such affects provide a hidden narrative that enables resistance to normalizing discourses in deaf education.

Book Review: Culturally Responsive Pedagogy: Working Toward Decolonization, Indigeneity and Interculturalism, edited by Fatima Pirbhai-Illich, Shauneen Pete, and Fran Martin, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, 261 pp., ISBN 978-3-319-46327-8

Interculturalism is a new resource for preservice and inservice teachers who are facing increasin... more Interculturalism is a new resource for preservice and inservice teachers who are facing increasing numbers of students from minoritized and marginalized communities in their classrooms. The book also provides a foundation for curriculum designers, policy makers, and educational administrators and challenges fundamental premises entrenched in present educational institutions. The editors, Pirbhai-Illich, Pete, & Martin, (2017) remark that current culturally responsive/relevant pedagogies (CRP) practices (Gay, 2010; Ladson-Billings, 1995; 2014) are partially successful in classrooms containing students from minoritized and marginalized communities. This book attempts to demonstrates how and why efforts at culturally responsive pedagogy do not achieve the desired results.

Papers by Joanne Weber

Commentary: Shapes and Sites of Deaf People’s Transinstitutionalization

This commentary describes our perspective on transinstitutionalization as deaf teachers and resea... more This commentary describes our perspective on transinstitutionalization as deaf teachers and researchers from different regions of Canada, and accounts for some of the ways in which transinstitutionalization manifests in the lives of deaf people, particularly in educational settings. In the present day, so-called inclusive education is often presented as the progressive alternative to institutionalization, or deaf schools. However, mainstream education in regular settings without adequate sign language support and the continuing polarization of language and identity options for deaf children are two of the main ways in which transinstitutionalization recurs for deaf children and adults and threatens the vitality of sign languages.

Introduction: Plurilingualism and (In)competence in Deaf Education

Multilingual Matters eBooks, Dec 31, 2021

The Arts as Deaf Human Development: A Meta-Narrative Review of Arts-Based and Arts-Integrated Education With Deaf and Deaf-and-Disabled Youth in the United States and Canada

Proceedings of the 2023 AERA Annual Meeting

Dinner Table Experience in the Flyover Provinces: A Bricolage of Rural Deaf and Disabled Artistry in Saskatchewan

Social Sciences

This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more

The Aesthetics of OER, Deaf Pedagogy, and Curriculum Design Contra the “Wicked” Policy of Deaf Education

RIED: Revista Iberoamericana de Educación a Distancia, May 3, 2022

Designing inclusive education for deaf learners is a complex dilemma affecting multiple spheres a... more Designing inclusive education for deaf learners is a complex dilemma affecting multiple spheres and agents. In the US and Canada, despite considerable work by students, parents, educators, school administrators, curriculum developers, and lawmakers to address education policy about deaf bilingual literacy, the provision of deaf education is a wicked problem exacerbated by gaps in curriculum and pedagogy. Despite increasingly hypermodern technologies and mandated early assessment, most deaf high schoolers in North America have unsatisfactory literacy skills (Qi & Mitchell, 2012). To better manage this "wicked problem" involving policy, pedagogical methods, and curriculum design, we explore how aesthetic forms of knowledge and deaf positive design operations are used in conjunction with Open Educational Resources (OER). We reviewed the literature and constructed a novel framework about OER and e-books in deaf education. The synthesis generated three key takeaways that assisted our understanding of the complex issue. We presented our new framework alongside structured questions to 382 attendees hailing from 20 nations at the WUN/UNESCO Conference (2021, October), focused on inclusive and open access education technologies. We empirically analyzed this rich corpus using qualitative coding and represented our findings using a multipart Ecocycle Model. Following basic analysis, we describe four broader implications for deaf education research about teaching and curriculum using OER and e-book materials. Our analysis shows that deaf curriculum design is an educational problem embedded in a larger policy debate concerning methods and philosophies of pedagogy.

Please Pass the Translanguaging: The Dinner Table Experience in the Lives of Newcomer Canadian Deaf Youth and Their Families

Languages

While translanguaging occurs in the homes of deaf people and their hearing family members who do ... more 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 ...

Reinterpreting arts-based data through multiple theories

In 2015, the author published an autoethnographic study on the conflict between herself, a Deaf t... more In 2015, the author published an autoethnographic study on the conflict between herself, a Deaf teacher, and sign-language interpreters working with adolescent students in a tutorial program in Saskatchewan, Canada. While the author advocated the use of American Sign Language native to the Deaf community, the interpreters preferred to use a manual code based on English grammar and syntax (Weber, 2015). Artwork produced by the author during this period of conflict and interpreted in the light of classic postcolonial theory (Mignolo, 2000; Pennycook, 1998; Said, 1979) allowed for a more nuanced and compassionate retelling of the conflict. The presence of continued binaries in the 2015 study, however, prompted the reinterpretation of the same data within a posthumanist frame, prompting the questions: What does the same arts-based data reveal when reinterpreted according to the material turn, specifically posthuman theorizing?

Reinterpreting arts-based data through a posthumanist lens - Reinterpreting arts-based data through multiple theories

Captive Songs of Resistance

Handbook of Cultural Studies and Education, 2018

We Make Art, Too": A Panel Discussion on Disability Art and Activism on the Canadian Prairies

Canadian Journal of Disability Studies, 2020

On November 28, 2019, a group of sixty or so people gathered in a sunny room at the University of... more On November 28, 2019, a group of sixty or so people gathered in a sunny room at the University of Regina for the Disability Artivism in the Flyover Provinces symposium. The purpose of the event was to gather artists, students, and community members and arts organization representatives for collaborative reflection on the state of disability, deaf, and mad arts in the prairie provinces.

Cyborgs and Fox Wives

Canadian Journal of Disability Studies, 2021

Using an arts based posthumanist lens, (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987; jagodzinski & Wallin, 2013) I e... more Using an arts based posthumanist lens, (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987; jagodzinski & Wallin, 2013) I examine my evolving beliefs about American Sign Language (ASL) through the analysis of arts based data (poetry) (Leavy, 2015). Central to my analysis is an examination of Western domination and control of the language used by ‘othered’ communities through the imposition of dualisms, binaries and categories in sign language ideologies (Canagarajah, 2013). This exploration traces the evolution of sign language ideologies embraced by the deaf cyborg subject featured in the poetry volume as she explores ways to survive and resist the effects of a monolingual language ideology embedded in an imaginary assemblage containing intra-actions between human, animal, earth and machine (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987).

Commentary: Shapes and Sites of Deaf People’s Transinstitutionalization

Canadian Journal of Disability Studies, 2020

This commentary describes our perspective on transinstitutionalization as deaf teachers and resea... more This commentary describes our perspective on transinstitutionalization as deaf teachers and researchers from different regions of Canada, and accounts for some of the ways in which transinstitutionalization manifests in the lives of deaf people, particularly in educational settings. In the present day, so-called inclusive education is often presented as the progressive alternative to institutionalization, or deaf schools. However, mainstream education in regular settings without adequate sign language support and the continuing polarization of language and identity options for deaf children are two of the main ways in which transinstitutionalization recurs for deaf children and adults and threatens the vitality of sign languages.

The impact of differing onto-epistemological stances toward plurilingualism and the implications for posthumanist plurilingual policies in education for deaf students

The binarization of language choices for deaf children and youth—that is, spoken English or Ameri... more The binarization of language choices for deaf children and youth—that is, spoken English or American Sign Language (ASL)--encourages competition in deaf education for resources, personnel and spaces. Saskatchewan Ministry of Education policy documents contain language planning discourses that subscribe to the cognitive-imperialist ideological frame concerning language acquisition in deaf children. Within this frame, plurilingualism is threatened by language hierarchization, linguistic prejudice, and structuralist approaches to language teaching which are often decontextualized and devoid of consideration of multiple semiotic resources that contribute to plurilingualism. Some researchers are beginning to explore the development of educational policy documents within a posthumanist frame. Posthumanist discourses concerning the flattened ontologies of humans, animals, and living and nonliving matter aim to bypass objectification of the “other” in terms of deaf people, immigrants, and people with diverse abilities. Alternative artistic texts set a posthumanist frame for language planning and may provide more expansive guiding principles for deaf children’s language access and acquisition.

The secrets of the Deaf Forest: Deaf translanguaging spaces

In this chapter, I will explore a cartography of intra-actions between deaf people, hearing peopl... more In this chapter, I will explore a cartography of intra-actions between deaf people, hearing people, animals, earth and machines presented in The Deaf Forest arts installation in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, September 29 - October 30, 2017. This cartography will explore the affects generated through intra-actions within the three contact zones within the installation: The Hearing Forest, The Hard of Hearing Forest, and The Deaf Forest. My discussion will include how affects in The Deaf Forest promote a translanguaging instinct (Li, 2011; 2017) among hearing, hard of hearing and deaf people in the Regina deaf diaspora thereby establishing a translanguaging space in which traditionally defined spaces according to one’s identity to hearing loss is replaced by performative intra-actions within each contact zone, therefore contributing to a single translanguaging space. On the surface The Deaf Forest seems to be an introduction to one’s identities formed in the response to hearing loss: 1) being a hearing person who cannot hear very well 2) using residual or cochlear implants and primarily identifying with the hearing world, thereby adopting a hard of hearing identity and 3) being a member of a deaf community, thereby presenting as deaf. I argue, however, that a posthumanist lens allows me to see The Deaf Forest as a single translanguaging space where the translanguaging instinct bypasses preoccupations with identity and locations strives, instead, to engage in encounters with difference in multiple spaces (Li, 2017; 2011; Masny & Cole, 2012; Pirbhai-Illich, Pete, & Martin, 2017).

Cyborgs and Fox-wives: Interrogating local sign language ideologies in the Saskatchewan deaf community

This chapter provides an arts based account of my journey in late acquisition of ASL in the conte... more This chapter provides an arts based account of my journey in late acquisition of ASL in the context of diminished access to ASL role models and the use of ASL in an educational environment primarily mediated by signed English transliterators. Using an arts based posthumanist lens and support provided by Canagarajah (2013) and Garcia, Otheguy, & Reid (2015), this paper analyzes arts data (poetry) regarding events and decisions which took place over twenty year period of teaching deaf adolescents and adults with view to interrogating the evolution of sign language ideologies and the establishment of a translanguaging orientation within a small resource program where I currently teach deaf adolescents.

The deaf way out of no way: Culturally Relevant Arts Education

I present an autoethnographic account of my struggle to become a culturally responsive deaf educa... more I present an autoethnographic account of my struggle to become a culturally responsive deaf educator in teaching significantly language deprived adolescent deaf students in the context of a deaf community diminished by language planning policies designed to suppress the use of ASL in the classroom and the value of deaf culture (Snoddon, 2009).

Captive Songs of Resistance: A Posthumanist Cartography

This chapter explores an arts-based resistance to normalizing systems and discourses of hegemonic... more This chapter explores an arts-based resistance to normalizing systems and discourses of hegemonic power. The presence of deaf diasporas resulting from closure of deaf schools and their reference to an imaginary and yet experienced homeland as a transnational presence (Emery, 2015) presents possibilities for resistance within education of deaf students who are isolated from more vibrant deaf communities. Today, most deaf students are educated in their home communities and are acculturated into the so-called “hearing world.” Therefore, these students are often deprived of access to the linguistic and cultural capital afforded by the deaf community on local, provincial and national scales (Humphries, et al., 2012). Despite inclusive education policies, the proliferation of cochlear implants, and the overall emphasis on hearing loss as an entity to be cured or rehabilitated (Mauldin, 2016), a significant number of mainstreamed deaf students eventually find their way into the Deaf community and come to embrace the linguistic, cultural, social, and artistic achievements provided by the deaf community at all levels (Bechter, 2008). The deaf homeland provides a means of resistance to the medical model of deafness in that it creates contact zones as evidenced in large international gatherings of deaf people, such as World Federation of the Deaf conferences and international and national sports events whereby deaf people can strengthen their identities, forge kinship ties, and return to their diasporic communities renewed and strengthened.

The paper is an arts based posthuman cartographic exploration of the processes involving the intra-actions between human and non human actors toward the creation of a theatrical play, Deaf Crows, which explores the experiences of deaf students in elementary school settings (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987; Crowley & Hickey-Moody, 2012; Hickey-Moody & Page, 2016; jagodzinski & Wallin, 2013). The narratives proved to be unsettling and challenged hegemonic beliefs concerning the acquisition of language in deaf students. Using nomadic ontology (Braidotti, 2011), the author also explores how nomadic zigzagging reveals the abject affects that are driven into the unconscious because of missing “obscene underside of the official narratives, the affect of life” (jagodzinski & Wallin, 2013, p. 73). For this reason, the “virtual real of the diasporic imagination is not approached”. Such affects provide a hidden narrative that enables resistance to normalizing discourses in deaf education.

Book Review: Culturally Responsive Pedagogy: Working Toward Decolonization, Indigeneity and Interculturalism, edited by Fatima Pirbhai-Illich, Shauneen Pete, and Fran Martin, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, 261 pp., ISBN 978-3-319-46327-8

Interculturalism is a new resource for preservice and inservice teachers who are facing increasin... more Interculturalism is a new resource for preservice and inservice teachers who are facing increasing numbers of students from minoritized and marginalized communities in their classrooms. The book also provides a foundation for curriculum designers, policy makers, and educational administrators and challenges fundamental premises entrenched in present educational institutions. The editors, Pirbhai-Illich, Pete, & Martin, (2017) remark that current culturally responsive/relevant pedagogies (CRP) practices (Gay, 2010; Ladson-Billings, 1995; 2014) are partially successful in classrooms containing students from minoritized and marginalized communities. This book attempts to demonstrates how and why efforts at culturally responsive pedagogy do not achieve the desired results.

Commentary: Shapes and Sites of Deaf People’s Transinstitutionalization

This commentary describes our perspective on transinstitutionalization as deaf teachers and resea... more This commentary describes our perspective on transinstitutionalization as deaf teachers and researchers from different regions of Canada, and accounts for some of the ways in which transinstitutionalization manifests in the lives of deaf people, particularly in educational settings. In the present day, so-called inclusive education is often presented as the progressive alternative to institutionalization, or deaf schools. However, mainstream education in regular settings without adequate sign language support and the continuing polarization of language and identity options for deaf children are two of the main ways in which transinstitutionalization recurs for deaf children and adults and threatens the vitality of sign languages.

Introduction: Plurilingualism and (In)competence in Deaf Education

Multilingual Matters eBooks, Dec 31, 2021

The Arts as Deaf Human Development: A Meta-Narrative Review of Arts-Based and Arts-Integrated Education With Deaf and Deaf-and-Disabled Youth in the United States and Canada

Proceedings of the 2023 AERA Annual Meeting

Dinner Table Experience in the Flyover Provinces: A Bricolage of Rural Deaf and Disabled Artistry in Saskatchewan

Social Sciences

This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more

The Aesthetics of OER, Deaf Pedagogy, and Curriculum Design Contra the “Wicked” Policy of Deaf Education

RIED: Revista Iberoamericana de Educación a Distancia, May 3, 2022

Designing inclusive education for deaf learners is a complex dilemma affecting multiple spheres a... more Designing inclusive education for deaf learners is a complex dilemma affecting multiple spheres and agents. In the US and Canada, despite considerable work by students, parents, educators, school administrators, curriculum developers, and lawmakers to address education policy about deaf bilingual literacy, the provision of deaf education is a wicked problem exacerbated by gaps in curriculum and pedagogy. Despite increasingly hypermodern technologies and mandated early assessment, most deaf high schoolers in North America have unsatisfactory literacy skills (Qi & Mitchell, 2012). To better manage this "wicked problem" involving policy, pedagogical methods, and curriculum design, we explore how aesthetic forms of knowledge and deaf positive design operations are used in conjunction with Open Educational Resources (OER). We reviewed the literature and constructed a novel framework about OER and e-books in deaf education. The synthesis generated three key takeaways that assisted our understanding of the complex issue. We presented our new framework alongside structured questions to 382 attendees hailing from 20 nations at the WUN/UNESCO Conference (2021, October), focused on inclusive and open access education technologies. We empirically analyzed this rich corpus using qualitative coding and represented our findings using a multipart Ecocycle Model. Following basic analysis, we describe four broader implications for deaf education research about teaching and curriculum using OER and e-book materials. Our analysis shows that deaf curriculum design is an educational problem embedded in a larger policy debate concerning methods and philosophies of pedagogy.

Please Pass the Translanguaging: The Dinner Table Experience in the Lives of Newcomer Canadian Deaf Youth and Their Families

Languages

While translanguaging occurs in the homes of deaf people and their hearing family members who do ... more 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 ...

Reinterpreting arts-based data through multiple theories

In 2015, the author published an autoethnographic study on the conflict between herself, a Deaf t... more In 2015, the author published an autoethnographic study on the conflict between herself, a Deaf teacher, and sign-language interpreters working with adolescent students in a tutorial program in Saskatchewan, Canada. While the author advocated the use of American Sign Language native to the Deaf community, the interpreters preferred to use a manual code based on English grammar and syntax (Weber, 2015). Artwork produced by the author during this period of conflict and interpreted in the light of classic postcolonial theory (Mignolo, 2000; Pennycook, 1998; Said, 1979) allowed for a more nuanced and compassionate retelling of the conflict. The presence of continued binaries in the 2015 study, however, prompted the reinterpretation of the same data within a posthumanist frame, prompting the questions: What does the same arts-based data reveal when reinterpreted according to the material turn, specifically posthuman theorizing?

Reinterpreting arts-based data through a posthumanist lens - Reinterpreting arts-based data through multiple theories

Captive Songs of Resistance

Handbook of Cultural Studies and Education, 2018

We Make Art, Too": A Panel Discussion on Disability Art and Activism on the Canadian Prairies

Canadian Journal of Disability Studies, 2020

On November 28, 2019, a group of sixty or so people gathered in a sunny room at the University of... more On November 28, 2019, a group of sixty or so people gathered in a sunny room at the University of Regina for the Disability Artivism in the Flyover Provinces symposium. The purpose of the event was to gather artists, students, and community members and arts organization representatives for collaborative reflection on the state of disability, deaf, and mad arts in the prairie provinces.

Cyborgs and Fox Wives

Canadian Journal of Disability Studies, 2021

Using an arts based posthumanist lens, (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987; jagodzinski & Wallin, 2013) I e... more Using an arts based posthumanist lens, (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987; jagodzinski & Wallin, 2013) I examine my evolving beliefs about American Sign Language (ASL) through the analysis of arts based data (poetry) (Leavy, 2015). Central to my analysis is an examination of Western domination and control of the language used by ‘othered’ communities through the imposition of dualisms, binaries and categories in sign language ideologies (Canagarajah, 2013). This exploration traces the evolution of sign language ideologies embraced by the deaf cyborg subject featured in the poetry volume as she explores ways to survive and resist the effects of a monolingual language ideology embedded in an imaginary assemblage containing intra-actions between human, animal, earth and machine (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987).

Commentary: Shapes and Sites of Deaf People’s Transinstitutionalization

Canadian Journal of Disability Studies, 2020

This commentary describes our perspective on transinstitutionalization as deaf teachers and resea... more This commentary describes our perspective on transinstitutionalization as deaf teachers and researchers from different regions of Canada, and accounts for some of the ways in which transinstitutionalization manifests in the lives of deaf people, particularly in educational settings. In the present day, so-called inclusive education is often presented as the progressive alternative to institutionalization, or deaf schools. However, mainstream education in regular settings without adequate sign language support and the continuing polarization of language and identity options for deaf children are two of the main ways in which transinstitutionalization recurs for deaf children and adults and threatens the vitality of sign languages.

Interrogating sign language ideologies in the Saskatchewan deaf community: An autoethnography

Sign Language Ideologies in Practice, 2020

5 Plurilingualism and Policy in Deaf Education

Critical Perspectives on Plurilingualism in Deaf Education, 2021

Language Lab: A Pilot Project at R.J.D. Williams School for the Deaf, Saskatoon

Acehi Journal, 1992

Disrupting Binarized Diversity Discourses in ASL/English Bimodal Bilingual Deaf Education through Examining Affects within Apple Time, a Theatre Play

Des données fondées sur les arts, tirées d’une pièce de théâtre, Apple Time, sont explorées pour ... more Des données fondées sur les arts, tirées d’une pièce de théâtre, Apple Time, sont explorées pour remettre en question les discours sur la diversité axés sur la binarité qui dominent l’éducation des personnes sourdes dans une collectivité diasporique d’une petite ville en Saskatchewan. Les professionnels de l’éducation pour les personnes sourdes se rangent généralement dans l’un de deux camps : ceux qui font la promotion du développement de l’anglais parlé par l’utilisation d’implants cochléaires, d’interventions thérapeutiques et de placements dans des environnements exclusivement orientés sur l’apprentissage du langage oralߙ; et ceux qui font la promotion d’une approche bilingue à deux modes dans le cadre de laquelle les enfants apprennent deux langues : l’anglais et l’American Sign Language (ASL). Actuellement, la plupart des enfants sourds étudient dans des écoles dans leurs communautés natales et sont éduqués surtout dans un environnement de langue orale. Des histoires rédigées ...

Intelligibility as a Methodological Problem in the Rehearsal Spaces of Apple Time, a Signed Play

Sign Language Studies

Abstract:In this study, we investigate the impact of American Sign Language (ASL) playbuilding on... more Abstract:In this study, we investigate the impact of American Sign Language (ASL) playbuilding on the language practices of culturally and linguistically diverse deaf high school students. Students' learning of ASL takes place in an inclusive secondary school environment in a small midwestern Canadian city. This study explores ways in which participants develop linguistic repertoires through the production of a play involving eight deaf youth actors supported by a production team consisting of a nondeaf director, a nondeaf teacher, a deaf teacher, and a deaf elder volunteer. Analysis of participant interactions during the processes of language teaching and learning and meaningmaking in the context of daily school surroundings and activities supports the assertion that intelligibility of perceptions situated in deaf and nondeaf ontologies is a methodological problem.

Becoming Deaf in the Posthuman Era: Posthumanism, Arts-Based Research and Deaf Education

In this dissertation, I explore posthumanism as a possible paradigm shift for deaf education whic... more In this dissertation, I explore posthumanism as a possible paradigm shift for deaf education which is presently mired in binarized thinking concerning language choices. The ontologies, epistemologies, research methodologies and pedagogy associated with posthumanism propose a radical shift in thinking about what it means to educate deaf adolescents who struggle to acquire English as an additional language whom I teach in a small resource room program contained within a high school in a midwestern Canadian city. Posthumanist onto-epistemology proposes a shift from anthropocentrism to a posthumanism that emphasizes multiple and shifting relationships between animals, plants, humans, and the earth. Here, posthumanism proposes that human activity not be defined according to a binarized lens often used by many governing bodies, policy developers, medical specialists, and educators but include the material realities as expressed by animal, plant and mineral entities. Implications of the sh...