 |
|
 Department Office Location Office Hours Email Address |
Joseph Murray, PhD. Assistant Professor
SHORT BIOGRAPHY A New England (USA) native, Joseph Murray spent ten years outside the U.S., mostly living in Norway and other Western European countries. His dissertation, "'A Touch of Nature Makes the Whole World Kin:' The Transnational Lives of Deaf Americans, 1870-1924," explores the national and transnational lives of American Deaf people, how they utilized connections with their European counterparts, and the significance of these connections for Deaf Americans' struggles to assert their equality in American society. Living as a visual minority in an auditory world, Deaf Americans were not simply passive observers in a larger social landscape hostile to their aims; they actively re-interpreted ideas within this landscape to fit their own circumstances. While work in Deaf Studies has traditionally emphasized the uniqueness of Deaf people, the next step in the field is to show how Deaf people have successfully navigated a sense of co-belonging in their lives: of being members of both a cultural community and also of a larger national community. This idea is present in Dr. Murray's dissertation under the term "co-equality." The co-equality concept is an idea which resonates beyond Deaf Studies and addresses the question of diversity in American society. The idea of co-equality shows how particular group created a vision of a diverse society based on their difference. Dr. Murray's current research continues this exploration of how extra-national ideas shape locally-lived lives. One current project is a study of Deaf lives within a particular American Deaf community in the late nineteenth century and the ways in which this community utilized the discourse of co-equality in their daily activities. Drawing on the methods of Subaltern Studies, this project anticipates moving beyond the voices of elites into manifestations of co-equality among grassroots Deaf people. Another project is a study of the late nineteenth century imperial imagination at work in acts of benevolence enacted by Western Deaf communities towards Deaf people in Asia. Western Deaf people utilized benevolence towards Deaf people in Asian nations as a means of asserting their status as citizens at home. Dr. Murray has presented on Deaf Studies related topics in over a dozen countries on five continents. In between time spent on airplanes and in airline lounges, Joe resides in Washington D.C. with his family.
SPECIALIZATIONS Transnationalism. European Deaf History. Cultural Studies.
|
|||
 |
Copyright 2009 Gallaudet University 800 Florida Ave NE, Washington DC 20002 |
Directory | Maps and Directions | Copyright | Feedback |