Review of "Seeing Through New Eyes, Deaf Culture and Deaf Pedagogies: The Unrecognized Curriculum"

Seeing Through New Eyes, Deaf Culture and Deaf Pedagogies: The Unrecognized Curriculum is the first volume in a planned magnum opus about deaf educator pedagogies by renowned deaf scholar and activist Paddy Ladd, who famously conceived of Deafhood as a way of explaining deaf people’s ways of being in the world. The purpose of this series is to outline “the skills and numerous positive qualities demonstrated by Deaf educators” as “sites to explore both Deaf cultures and Deafhood processes in action” (p. 1). As such, this volume presents a perspective that is often missing from the field. Work on this book began in 2005, when Ladd was employed at the former Centre for Deaf Studies at the University of Bristol. Ponderous and illuminating, this book gave rise to a mix of reactions that I will attempt to summarise here.