Education Commons^™

Deaf In Her Own Way: The Role Of Identity In Social Justice Leadership, Judy Drescher

Student Coursework: Ed.D. program

The following fieldwork chronicles the personal and professional trajectory of Cindy Greenspun, a social justice leader at Yale University Library. At the age of eighteen months, Greenspun suffered an illness that resulted in the loss of her hearing and spent nearly the first half of her life fully immersed in the hearing world. Through significant self-reflection and perseverance, Greenspun evolved beyond the binary paradigm of oralism–the exclusive use of speech and lip reading–to ultimately embrace the essence of being both bilingual (speech and sign) and bicultural (hearing and non-hearing). These attributes not only enabled Greenspun to navigate between two distinctly …