Writing Deafness

Taking an original approach to American literature, Christopher Krentz examines 19th-century writing from a new angle: that of deafness, which he shows to have surprising importance in identity formation. He demonstrates that deaf and hearing authors used writing to explore their similarities and differences, trying to work out the invisible boundary, analogous to Du Bois's color line, that Krentz calls the "hearing line." Discusses authors including James Fenimore Cooper, Lydia Huntley Sigourney, Herman Melville, and Mark Twain.

Christopher Krentz is assistant professor of English and American Sign Language and is director of the ASL Program at the University of Virginia