[Linganth] Leila Monaghan

Wed Feb 23 21:27:27 UTC 2022

So sorry about this news.

Over the last several weeks, Richard Senghas, Anne Pfister, and I adapted a
panel we had planned for the upcoming Society for Linguistic Anthropology
meeting to focus on honoring Leila's scholarship and activism. She was
aware of this plan and had a chance to review it. The panel abstract is
below, and reflects our deep appreciation for her work, collaboration, and
mentorship.

We're keeping a presentation slot open to leave time for sharing a
collection of tributes from scholars and collaborators not on the panel. If
anyone would like to send us short written or video-recorded to be shared
at the SLA, please feel free to send them to me (ideally by 3/25, but
whenever you feel able).

Condolences to all,
Erika

Access to and Access Through Sign Languages: A Panel in Honor of Leila
Monaghan’s Scholarship and Activism

For deaf people born into hearing-dominated social contexts in which speech
is prioritized over sign language use, issues surrounding language and
social justice often center on questions of access, such as equitable
access to particular language practices and access through language
practices to resources, roles, and relationships (e.g., Friedner 2015;
Pfister 2017). Deaf scholarship and activism also invites us to critically
consider when questions of access center on inclusion in existing
institutions and when the work of creating new practices and modes of
belonging is most salient (Clark 2021). Leila Monaghan’s scholarship and
activism addresses both concerns, entailing collaborative work with deaf
activists to draw attention to and intervene in the ways in which
inaccurate language ideologies about the nature of sign languages can
create barriers to language access broadly (Senghas and Monaghan 2002;
Monaghan 2003) and to important existing institutions and bodies of
knowledge, such as public health information about HIV (Byrd and Monaghan
2018); she also provided some of linguistic anthropology’s first
ethnographic studies of how deaf signers together build new forms of
language and sociality (Monaghan 1996). This panel honors her work by
presenting a collection of papers that consider deaf socilaity and activism
across a wide range of settings. While illustrating that there are indeed
“many ways to be deaf” (Monaghan et. al., 2003), the papers all address how
signer activists have worked to disrupt and transform audist institutions.
Further, the papers explore how deaf and hearing scholars in linguistic
anthropology and related disciplines (institutions which themselves are
deeply grounded in audism) can participate in that disruption and
transformation.

    Byrd, Mark and Leila Monaghan. 2018. Interpreting Deaf HIV/AIDS: A
Dialogue. In, Avineri, Netta,  Laura R. Graham, Eric J. Johnson, Robin
Conley Riner, Jonathan Rosa (eds.), Language and Social Justice in
Practice, 128-135. New York:  Routledge.

    Clark, John Lee. 2020. Against Access. McSweeney’s Quarterly. 64 Audio
Edition.

    Friedner, Michele. 2015. Valuing Deaf Worlds in Urban India. New
Jersey: Routledge.

    Monaghan, Leila. 2003. A World’s Eye View: Deaf Cultures in Global
Perspective. In Monaghan, Leila, Constanze Schmaling, Karen Nakamura, and
Graham H. Turner (eds). 2003. Many Ways to Be Deaf. International Variation
in Deaf Communities, 1-24. Washington DC: Gallaudet University Press.

    Monaghan, Leila, Constanze Schmaling, Karen Nakamura, and Graham H.
Turner (eds). 2003. Many Ways to Be Deaf. International Variation in Deaf
Communities. Washington DC: Gallaudet University Press.

    Pfister, Anne. 2017. Forbidden Signs: Deafness and Socialization in a
Mexico City. Ethos 45(1): 139-161.

    Senghas, Richard and LeilaMonaghan, 2002. Signs of their Times: Deaf
Communities and the Culture of Language. Annual Review of Anthopology 31:
69-9

(The panelists include myself, Anne Pfister, Richard Senghas, Caitlin
Coons, Octavian Robinson, and Jennifer Dickinson.)

On Wed, Feb 23, 2022 at 4:13 PM Shana Walton <shana.walton at nicholls.edu>
wrote:

> Hi,
>>
> Leila Monaghan, beloved member of the linganth community, passed away this
> morning in her home just outside of Laramie, Wyoming.
>
> I don't have any information about her family's plans for a memorial
> service. I hope this community will want to hold a memorial for her.
>
> Shana
>
> _______________________________________________
> Linganth mailing list
> Linganth at listserv.linguistlist.org
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/linganth
>

-- 
Erika Hoffmann-Dilloway, she/her/hers
Professor of Anthropology
Oberlin College
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