Will Garrow is from upstate New York, where he was first introduced to the Deaf community through snowboarding. Ever since, he has been very involved with the Deaf community. He holds a BA degree in Deaf Studies from Gallaudet University and a MA degree in Linguistics also from Gallaudet.
Currently, he is working on his PhD dissertation on ASL lexical discourse markers and their function, specifically their role in building mental spaces. His other areas of interest and research are audism, deaf history, deaf-‐centric digital media, and deaf sports. He has taught numerous courses in Deaf Studies and ASL Linguistics at California State University, Northridge, Gallaudet University, Utah Valley University and Community College of Baltimore County at Catonsville.
Deaf Cultural Community Wealth: Building Successful Deaf College Students in a Primarily Hearing University.
Critical Deaf Theory provides a framework for analyzing the deaf community through a critical lens based on the assumption that Audism is a key component of our social structure. Audism inherently erects barriers to a successful college career. This study explores how Cultural Community Wealth allows for deaf students to succeed within a primarily hearing university. There are six different capitals that build cultural community wealth, aspirational, familial, social, navigational, resistant, and linguistic capital. Through analyzing stories told by deaf students about their educational experiences we can ascertain which capitals have the most impact on building a successful college career. By understanding how deaf students succeed we may then gain insight to the dynamics of the deaf community while building our overall knowledge on how minority communities resist various forms of oppression.
If this theory derives its inspiration from critical race theory, then why does critical deaf theory exclude people of color? Is it dependent on the assumption that a deaf person of color is deaf first before one is a person of color?
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