Speaker Biographies

Dr. Douglas Baynton is an associate professor of history at the University of Iowa. He is the author of Forbidden Signs: American Culture and the Campaign Against Sign Language, and coauthor with Jean Bergey and Jack Gannon of Through Deaf Eyes: A Photographic History of an American Community. His recent articles include "'The Undesirability of Admitting Deaf Mutes': American Immigration Policy and Deaf Immigrants, 1882-1924," in Sign Language Studies, and "Beyond Culture: Deaf Studies and the Deaf Body," in Open Your Eyes: Deaf Studies Talking, edited by H-Dirksen L. Bauman. He is currently writing a book on the history of the concept of "defective persons" in American immigration policy.

Dr. Harry G. Lang is a deaf professor on the graduate faculty of the Master of Science in Secondary Education program at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). He has published numerous research and theoretical papers on teaching deaf students. In the areas of Deaf Studies and Education, Lang has published eight books, including three major biographies. He is currently writing books about the Deaf Experience during the Civil War and a biography of the deaf poet and journalist Laura Redden Searing. He was the Senior Advisor on the production team of the PBS documentary, "Through Deaf Eyes." In 2006, Lang was awarded the Rochester Institute of Technology Trustees' Scholarship Award in recognition of establishing an outstanding record of academic scholarship, and is a recipient of RIT's Eisenhart Award for Outstanding Teaching.