[Linganth] Leila Monaghan

[Elizabeth Keating]

Sad news. I remember meeting Leila for the first time in graduate school at UCLA! She was always a centering presence—scholarship and human caring in abundance, and of course her signature smile. I’ll miss her very much, she was such an inspiration over the years. Thank you, Shana, for letting us know, and thanks to those organizing the panel.

Elizabeth

ELIZABETH KEATING, Professor of Anthropology & Graduate Faculty, Human Dimensions of Organizations
The University of Texas at Austin | Department of Anthropology | 512-471-8518






From: Linganth <linganth-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> On Behalf Of Erika Hoffmann-Dilloway
Sent: Wednesday, February 23, 2022 9:27 PM
To: Shana Walton <shana.walton at nicholls.edu>
Cc: Linguistic Anthropology Discussion Group (LINGANTH at listserv.linguistlist.org) <LINGANTH at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: Re: [Linganth] Leila Monaghan

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<mailto: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

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





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