Jane Fernandes's Schools

• University of Iowa , Class of 1986 Ph.D in Comparative Literature

Jane Fernandes's Publications

• National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Jane K. Fernandes December, 2010 A longtime advocate for equal rights, Jane K. Fernandes maintains membership in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), an organization dedicated to ensuring non-discriminatory social, political, educational, and economic practices. Headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland, the NAACP also oversees regional offices in New York, Michigan, Georgia, Texas, Missouri, and California. In order to optimize its resources, the NAACP is divided into a Branch and Field Services department, a Youth and College department, a Legal department, an Education department, and a Health Division. As of 2007, the NAACP retained a membership base of approximately 425,000 individuals. Established in 1909, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was founded by a diverse group of political and social leaders including the famed African American writer W. E. B. Du Bois, social reformer Florence Kelley, and English Walling, the son of a family that formerly held slaves. As the years passed and the NAACP grew, luminaries such as Albert Einstein joined the organization, determined to further the cause of equal rights for all. Initially, the NAACP focused its energy on petitioning an overturn of the Jim Crow statutes that allowed for legal racial segregation. During World War I, the NAACP successfully convinced the U.S. government to allow African American men to serve in battle. Due to the NAACP’s efforts, 700,000 African American men registered for the draft, 600 of those brave soldiers registered as military officers. Between World War I and World War II, the NAACP worked to raise awareness about the lynching of black people across the United States, playing an instrumental role in a Supreme Court decision that increased the federal court’s ability to punish those who participated in race riots or other acts of violence against blacks. In the ensuing decades, the NAACP spearheaded the fight for desegregation in the nation’s schools, secured voting rights for its constituents, and raised public awareness of the African Diaspora, among numerous other accomplishments. To learn more about the NAACP, visit http://www.naacp.org.

• Inclusive Deaf Studies: Barriers and Pathways, Jane K. Fernandes and Shirley S. Myers July, 2009 Currently, American Deaf Studies continues the focus of founding scholarship on native White American Sign Language users. This has privileged information and knowledge about this group of people at the expense of scholarship and knowledge about deaf people with different language backgrounds, races or ethnicities and other diverse attributes. This paper discusses the development of an interdisciplinary lens to research and understand the many ways deaf people live. The continued marginalization of academic study of less privileged people within the deaf community will impede knowledge and render Deaf Studies unsustainable as an academic field. The paper recommends that Deaf Studies scholars embrace a more expansive, nuanced, and interdisciplinary approach that encompasses the full variety of deaf lives and identities.

• Deaf Studies: A Critique of the Predominant U.S. Theoretical Direction, Shirley S. Myers and Jane K. Fernandes July, 2009 The focus and concerns establishing Deaf Studies in the 1970s have rigidified into a reactive stance toward changing historical conditions and the variety of deaf lives today. This critique analyzes the theoretical foundation of this stance: a tendency to downplay established research in the field of Deaf Studies and linguistics, the employment of outdated examples of discrimination, an uncritical acceptance of Derrida’s phonocentrism, flawed uses of Saussure’s linguistic theory, and reliance on the limiting metaphor of colonialism. The purpose of the critique ultimately is to point Deaf Studies in a new direction.

• Jane K. Fernandes’ Brief History of American Sign Language June, 2011 Some linguists argue that all verbal human languages trace back to gestures, but they have found no substantial proof to validate this claim. Groups of deaf people, left to themselves, will naturally develop their own sign-based languages, but the Western history of sign language generally derives from the hearing writers of such history and efforts by hearing people to teach deaf students. The earliest explicit reference to sign language dates back to the 5th century B.C. in Greece, when Socrates declared it logical for deaf individuals to communicate with the hands and bodies. Pedro Ponce de Léon developed the first known manual alphabet system during the mid-1500s in order to facilitate the education of deaf children from wealthy Spanish families. Some two hundred years later, Jacob Rodriguez Pereira, adopted this alphabetical system and added 30 new signs that represented specific sounds, which he used in tutoring deaf pupils in Spain and later France. For the most part, only noble families benefited from this system. In the late 18th century, the Abbé de l’Epée established the first large-scale school for deaf children, the National Institution for Deaf-Mutes in France. At l’Epée’s behest, the school took existing signs, now identified as Old French Sign Language (OFSL), and modified them to more directly reflect the spoken French language. His successor, however, reverted the school back to OFSL and created an early dictionary of signs. Deaf graduates of the school soon became its most effective teachers. As the French began to develop their education system for deaf individuals, settlers in America became anxious about the lack of educational opportunities available to deaf individuals in the New World. In 1816, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet traveled to the school France and studied teaching techniques under Laurent Clerc. When the pair returned to America, they founded the Connecticut Asylum for the Education and Instruction of Deaf and Dumb Persons, which eventually became the American School for the Deaf. With Clerc as the primary instructor at the school, students began to learn OFSL, which served as the basis for the development of American Sign Language (ASL). In 1853, the New England Gallaudet Association of the Deaf formed to raise public awareness of deafness, promote educational efforts, and discourage discrimination. A decade later, Edward Miner Gallaudet, son of Thomas and his former student Sophia Fowler Gallaudet, opened the National Deaf-Mute College, which now operates as Gallaudet University. Despite the validation imparted by these institutions, ASL lost popularity during the 1880s as American schools began to teach lip reading and speaking instead. In the 1970s, Professor William C. Stokoe demonstrated the validity of ASL as a language in its own right by pointing out its unique grammar and syntax, which differ significantly from those of English. At that point, proponents reinforced the importance of ASL to the American deaf community, linguistic study of the language advanced, and ASL regained credence in educational settings. About the Author: Jane K. Fernandes holds a Master of Arts and a Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature from The University of Iowa, where she distinguished herself by earning several recognitions and awards. Possessing decades of experience in deaf education, she serves as a Senior Fellow at the Johnnetta B. Cole Global Diversity and Inclusion Institute. During her time at the institute, Jane Fernandes has spoken before the Chief Diversity Officers Forum and the United Way Inclusion Roundtable. She also acts as the Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at The University of North Carolina at Asheville.

• The Center for Diversity Education by Jane K. Fernandes , Jane K Fernandes' Blog on Bigsight September, 2011 The provider of programming to more than 20,000 students and educators, the Center for Diversity Education endeavors to encourage understanding and acceptance, building a community based on equality. The Center dates back to 1995 when Jewish Community Center volunteers in Asheville, North Carolina, put on an event called the Festivals of Light: Peoples with Many Flames. The festival celebrated holidays from around the globe, bringing over 800 teachers and students together for a tour of Christmas scenes faithfully recreated from different countries. The participants and attendees alike responded with enthusiasm, which led to the Center’s inception. Fittingly, the Center started out in the Jewish Community Center. Programs geared toward students in kindergarten through 12th grade were offered initially before the Center extended its reach to other demographics. Productions such as Harvest Seasons Around the World and Children and the Holocaust sought to teach audiences how to understand and assimilate perspectives from other countries and peoples. All the while, the Center continued to flourish, becoming a nonprofit entity in 1998 with its own board of directors and new offices located Asheville’s in Pack Place Arts and Education Center. Today, the Center’s programs fall into four categories. Field Trips invite individuals to travel to the Center to witness programs such as Anne Frank: A History for Today and Houses of Worship. Road Shows allow teachers to bring the Center’s skilled productions into their classrooms; educators choose from 11 distinct holidays, with the Center hosting the performance at the educator’s school. Staff Development invites an exchange of ideas, allowing teachers and Center personnel to partake in basic diversity and cultural competency lectures. Finally, the Lending Library allows teachers to borrow resources such as books, videos, and artifacts for use in the classroom. For more information on the Center for Diversity Education, visit www.diversityed.org. About Jane K. Fernandes For the past 25 years, Jane K. Fernandes has served numerous higher learning institutions throughout the United States. Presently, Jane K. Fernandes serves as the provost and vice chancellor at the University of North Carolina at Asheville where she chairs the Diversity Actiona Council working on numerous projects related to facilitating awareness of diversity and inclusion. Beginning in the fall of 2011, Jane K. Fernandes will occupy a seat on the Board of Directors for the Center for Diversity Education.

• Intersections of Science, Technology and Deaf Culture, Public Lecture, Kansas City, Kansas February, 2011 For Deaf Studies to be a fully academic field, upholding intellectual values, scholars must broaden their focus to encompass diverse deaf people—diverse in language and communication, culture, race and ethnicity. The presentation will cover ways that medical professionals can be more inclusive of deaf and hard of hearing people in their practices and responsive to the many ways that deaf live.

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