Signs of Maturity

3 min readNov 21, 2023

White bald bearded man in green sweater signing against a wooden shiplap wall. A bamboo plant frames the image.

ASL Education/Deaf Studies is maturing as a field. I was helping a friend look for ASL faculty jobs and came across quite a few tenure-track job postings. I think, at last count, there is 10 for this year’s hiring season. (Which is about 9 more than available tenure-track posts for Modern U.S. history). There are also a few Deaf Studies positions popping up here and there- often in conjunction with ASL teaching.

A Significant Turn

This signals a major shift in attitudes about signed languages and Deaf Studies in higher education. Over the last six years, Jon Henner and I (with other colleagues on one occasion) co-authored several papers on the status of ASL and deaf people in higher education. In sum, we’ve been hanging out on the margins despite the popularity of ASL.

Our Points in Brief

Deaf scholars and traditional deaf knowledges are marginalized in higher education despite all the benefits that higher ed institutions reap from research on signed languages and deaf people.
Higher ed institutions reap a lot of $$ and benefits from signed languages/deaf bodies in a variety of ways. We ask: how are they giving back to deaf people?
Signed languages aren’t regarded as equal to spoken languages despite being very popular with students.
ASL classes are an awesome gateway to Deaf Studies and Critical Disability Studies.

Benefitting from ASL/Deaf Bodies and Knowledges

ASL has been a very popular language offering for the last two decades and counting. Universities also gain quite a bit from sign language and deaf related research: through research funding on things from cochlear implants to language acquisition to public health, through skyrocketing student enrollment in ASL classes, offering degree programs that attract large numbers of students such as audiology, communication disorders, interpreting, and special education, and developing reputations as epicenters of research on signed languages, language acquisition, accessible technologies, among other fields related to deaf bodies.

Incredible news.

The expansion of tenure-track postings for ASL/Deaf Studies means that higher ed institutions see ASL becoming a long-term part of the curricular landscape. This signals the acceptance of ASL Studies/Deaf Studies as intellectually rigorous contributions to the scholarly landscape. This also positions ASL as an equal to other language offerings within foreign/world language education.

Wise hires (if the right person is hired for the job) also positions the institution to give back to deaf people in an assortment of ways while working toward creating a more just world for deaf and disabled people.

Why are tenure-track positions, generally speaking, a big deal?

Tenure-line positions signals a major investment on part of the University. Those lines cost money. They also require political and social capital on part of the departments who advocate for those lines. Those investments point to long term intentions to build and sustain programs of study. Faculty who hold tenure-line positions have more leverage within institutions to advocate for their programs, funding, and participate in shared governance.

But (of course there’s a but…)

Although I’m thrilled with this state of affairs, there are issues that remain. The language in some of the job postings give me pause. What barriers remain? What ideas need remediation? What are some of the things I’d like for us to think about as this trend (hopefully) continues?

Stay tuned for part 2. In the meantime, the below are links to publications that discuss some of the issues that Henner and I (and others) have written about the place of signed languages and deaf knowledges in higher education.