The Invention of Miracles: Language, Power, and Alexander Graham Bell’s Quest to End Deafness (Simon & Schuster, 2021)

Many think of Alexander Graham Bell as the inventor of the telephone, but as the son of a deaf woman (and, later, husband to another), his goal in life from adolescence was to teach deaf students to speak. He became a leading advocate for the oralist movement, which valued teaching deaf students how to speak English verbally and shunned the use of American Sign Language — in spite of growing evidence that this led to the detriment of all other learning, causing not only stalled development, but also social isolation. The author describes the harm that many people, including her grandparents, experienced as a result of Bell’s movement to stamp out ASL and explains how the deaf community reclaimed their once-forbidden language.

This presentation is co-sponsored by the Delaware Association of the Deaf, Deaf Outreach, Inc., and Epworth United Methodist Church.

Booth will be in conversation with Feta Fernsler.

About the author
Katie Booth, who was raised in a mixed hearing/deaf family, teaches writing at the University of Pittsburgh. She spent more than 15 years researching this book, poring over Bell’s papers, Library of Congress archives, and the records of deaf schools around America.