| I can hardly begin to acknowledge the support it has taken to make this book. The listening, giving, sharing, enabling, questioning, caring, cheerleading, patience, attentiveness, and willingness that these institutions, organizations, and individuals have offered me has meant and still means much. |
| Really, this began with my dissertation research, aided by a grant from the National Council of Teachers of English in 1991. An Ohio State University Seed Grant and two quarters of release time from my department made all the difference for completing the bulk of the interviews, traveling numerous times to Gallaudet University, and completing most of the background research. Toward the end, a Coca-Cola Foundation for Research on Women grant helped me complete chapter 4, "Diagnosing Deafness: The Audiologist's Authority," and remarkable grant support from the Gallaudet University Press did much to bring the manuscript to print. |
| The "subjects" of the study deserve far more than just their bibliographical entry. For their time, wisdom, sometimes continued conversations over these seven years, I thank all those "hidden" pseudonymously as my ''sources." I know their names. I know, too, how much they have mattered in making this the book I always wanted it to be. |
| Flying Words Projectthe two-man team of Kenny Lerner and Peter Cookwere also oddly research subjects (though named) even as they were sheer inspiration. I watched a colleague, Susan Burch, deliver a paper on their work (and show a video clip) at MLA a number of years ago. Together, she and I have become surely their strongest fans, intent on seeing their work get the recognition it deserves. What's more, watching their workseeing their own words fly, and their hands, bodies, and faces, toohas somehow given me all the more incentive to do just what Hlne Cixous encouraged me, as a woman and with my whole body, to do: to "write!" and to "flyflying in language and make it fly." |
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