Professor of English, Gallaudet University
Washington, D.C. 20002
fax 202.651.5599; Edna.Sayers@Gallaudet.edu
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| William, Edna Edith, and Dorothy Sayers, Romulus, New York 2004 |
Work in Progress
Gates, Diana, and Edna Edith Sayers. A book on Lydia Sigourney's poems and stories having to do with Deaf people.
Publications
Carty, Breda, Susannah Macready, and Edna Edith Sayers. "'A Grave and Gracious Woman': Deaf People in Colonial New England." Forthcoming in Sign Language Studies.
Sayers, Edna Edith. “Experience, Authority, and the Mediation of Deafness: Chaucer’s Wife of Bath.” Forthcoming in A World of Difference: Essays on Disability in the Middle Ages, ed. Joshua Eyler. Under review.
Sayers, Edna Edith, and Diana Gates. “Lydia Huntley Sigourney and the Beginnings in American Deaf Education in Hartford: It Takes a Village.” Forthcoming in Sign Language Studies 8.4 (2009). A study of the first successful teacher of a deaf child in America and her later career as a poet and essayist.
Channon, Rachel, and Edna Edith Sayers. “Toward a Description of Deaf Students’ Written English: Avoidance, Overuse, and Mastery of Function Words.” American Annals of the Deaf 152.2 (2007): 91-103. A study of how Deaf people write English, noting the lexical and grammatical patterns typical of Deaf writers.
Sayers, Edna Edith. “B. H. and Arnold H. Payne: Early Champions of Sign Language in the United Kingdom.” Deaf History Review 5 (2007): 22-30.
Sayers, Edna Edith. “Night Vision: Blind Characters in John Gardner’s Fiction.” Disability Studies Quarterly, Winter 2006.
Bragg, Lois. "Norse Sagas." In The Encyclopedia of Disability, ed. Gary S. Albrecht. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Press, 2005.
Bragg, Lois. "Telling Silence: Alingualism in Old Icelandic Myth, Legend, and Saga." Journal of Indo-European Studies 32 (2004): 267-98.
Bragg, Lois. Oedipus borealis: The Aberrant Body in Medieval Iceland. Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2004. Book-length study of physical, behavior, and sexual aberrance in Old Icelandic myth, legend, saga, and history.
Bragg, Lois. “The Hard of Hearing and the Hardly Heard in Henry Green’s Novels of the 1940s.” Journal of Modern Literature 26.2 (2003): 100-112.
Bragg, Lois, ed. Deaf World: A Historical Reader and Primary Sourcebook (New York: NYUP, 2001). A collection of personal and polemical writings by Deaf authors from 1851 to 1999.
Bragg, Lois. “Impaired and Inspired: The Makings of an Icelandic Poet.” In Madness, Disability, and Social Exclusion: The Archaeology and Anthropology of ‘Difference,’ ed. Jane Hubert. One World Archaeology, no. 40. (London: Routledge, 2000). 128-143. Discussion of the role of disability in the character of Thormódr Kólbrúnsskáld, an eleventh-century Icelandic poet who died defending St. Olaf: he stuttered and had a crippled right arm.
Bragg, Lois, and William Sayers. “Proust’s Prescription.” Medicine and Literature 19 (2000): 163-81. Analysis of epiphanies in In Search of Lost Time, demonstrating that each turns on an issue of chronic illness.
Bragg, Lois. “Runes and Readers: In and Around ‘The Husband’s Message,’” Studia Neophilolgia (Uppsala) 71 (1999): 34-50. Literacy in Dark-Age England.
Bragg, Lois. “Generational Tensions in Sturlunga Saga,” Arkiv för nordisk filologi (Lund) 116 (1997): 5-34. Father/son relations and male roles in 13th-c. Icelandic narrative.
Bragg, Lois. “Oedipus borealis: The Aberrant Body in Barbarian Europe.” Disability Studies Quarterly 17.1 (1997): 258-62. Covers the Gospel of Mark.
Bragg, Lois. “From the Mute God to the Lesser God: Disability in Medieval Celtic and Old Norse Literature.” Disability & Society 12.2 (April 1997): 165-77.
Bragg, Lois. “Visual-Kinetic Communication in Europe before 1600: A Survey of Sign Lexicons and Finger Alphabets prior to the Rise of Deaf Education” Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 2 (1997): 1-25. Survey of finger alphabets and sign lexicons in the Middle Ages and early Renaissance.
Bragg, Lois. “The Chaucer Monogram and the ‘Harleian Portrait’ Tradition,” Word & Image 12 (1996): 127-42. Use of finger alphabets in 15th-c. portraits.
Bragg, Lois. “Disfigurement, Disability, and Dis-integration in Sturlunga Saga,” alvíssmál (Berlin) 4 (1994): 15-32. Disability in 13th-c. Icelandic narrative.
Foley, John Miles, ed. “Deafness and Orality.” Oral Tradition 8 (1993): 413-37. Edited version of an electronic conversation among eight scholars on whether ASL literature is an “oral traditional” literature. My argument that it is was cited in a recent doctoral dissertation as the first to appear in print.
Bragg, Lois. “Modes of the Old English Metrical Charms.” The Comparatist 16 (1992): 3-23. Rpt. in New Approaches to Medieval Textuality, ed. Mikle Dave Ledgerwood (New York: Peter Lang, 1998). Relation between magic and figurative language in vernacular spells.
Bragg, Lois. The Lyric Speaker in Old English Poetry (Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 1991). The only comprehensive study of OE lyric poetry, this book argues for the importance of the speaker over the topic, tone, or prosody.
Bragg, Lois. “Old English Dual Pronouns and their Poetic Uses.” Language and Style 22 (1989): 337-49. The only comprehensive study of dual pronouns in OE poetry, this essay discusses a kind of pronoun that does not exist in Modern English and known today mostly from sign languages.
Bragg, Lois. “’Wulf and Eadwacer,’ ‘The Wife’s Lament,’ and Women’s Love Lyrics of the Middle Ages.” Germanische-Romanische Monatsschrift 39 (1989): 257-68. Argues for a connection with continental women’s lyrics and against the received notion that OE women’s poetry is an adaptation of male-speaker conventions.
Bragg, Lois. “Whaleroads and Meadseats: Four Ways of Translating Beowulf.” Humanities Education 3 (1986): 63-77. Translation theory and pedagogical applications.
Bragg, Lois. “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the Elusion of Clarity.” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 86 (1985): 482-88. Analysis of romance hero’s ethics.
Bragg, Lois. “More Word Processing for Anglo-Saxonists.” Old English Newsletter 17.2 (1984): 21-23.
Bragg, Lois. “Color Words in Beowulf.” Proceedings of the Patristic, Mediaeval, and Renaissance Conference 7 (1982): 47-55. Examines adjectives denoting color in a culture that had a different color schema that that of modern Westerners.
Bragg, Lois. “John Erskine.” Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 9, ed. James J. Martine (Detroit: Gale Research, 1981).
Bragg, Lois. “Dorothy Canfield Fisher.” Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 9, ed. James J. Martine (Detroit: Gale Research, 1981).
Bragg, Lois. “Ernest Poole.” Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 9, ed. James J. Martine (Detroit: Gale Research, 1981).
Selected lectures and papers
Sayers, Edna Edith. "What's up with Helen Keller?" Deaf Studies, April 2008.
Bragg, Lois, and Diana Gates. “It Takes a Village: Lydia Sigourney and Beginnings of American Deaf Education.” 150 Years on Kendall Green. April 2007. Gallaudet University, Washington, D. C.
Bragg, Lois. “Deaf Identity, ASL, and Rallying against Audism.” CCCC
Bragg, Lois, and Diana Gates. “Audism or Advocacy: Lydia Sigourney and the Beginnings of American Deaf Education.” Deaf History International conference, Berlin, July/August 2006.
Bragg, Lois. "The Legendary Offa in Denmark and England: The King's Mute Boyhood." South Atlantic MLA, Roanoke, 2004.
Bragg, Lois. "The Blind Slayer." Scandinavian Studies, Redondo Beach, Calif., 2004.
Bragg, Lois. "Louisa Bunker Haynes and Segregation at the North Carolina School for the Deaf." Fifth International Deaf History conference, Paris, 2 July 2003.
Bragg, Lois. “Deaf World, Deaf History.” Lecture at DC Public Library, 21 August 2002, and Arlington Public Library 31 March 03.
Bragg, Lois. “Deaf Studies: A Model for Disability Studies?” Keynote address at 1999 Society for Disability Studies (SDS) conference.
Bragg, Lois. “Deft Mutes and Daft Brutes: Old Icelandic Tales of Dysglossia,” MLA 1998.
Bragg, Lois. “Muteness and the Supernatural in Early Iceland,” invited lecture at University of Iceland, 24 March 1998.
Bragg, Lois. “Medieval Signing: Fact, Fiction, and Fantasy,” invited lecture for the American Sign Language Program, University of Rochester (New York), 5 December 1997.
Bragg, Lois. “Geoffrey Chaucer: Deafness and Fingerspelling in Fourteenth-century England,” Third International Deaf History Conference, Trondheim, Norway, September 1997.
Bragg, Lois. “Deafness and Muteness in the Barbarian Age.” Deaf History International Conference, Hamburg, Germany, 1994.
Miscellaneous Short Publications: Reviews, Advocacy, and Humor
Sayers, Edna Edith. Rvw. of Ovid’s Art and the Wife of Bath: The Ethics of Erotic Violence, Marilynn Desmond (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2006). The Medieval Review, 2007.
Sayers, Edna Edith. Rvw. of The Avenue: A History of the Claremont Institution, Rachel Pollard (Dun Laoghaire, Ireland: Denzille Press, 2006. Deaf History International Newsletter, Summer 2007: 10.
Bragg, Lois. Rvw. of A Deaf Artist in Early America: The Worlds of John Brewster, Jr., Harlan Lane (Boston: Beacon, 2004) and "A Deaf Artist in Early America: The Worlds of John Brewster, Jr," Fenimore Art Museum, 2005. Deaf History International Newsletter, Fall 2005: 3-5.
Bragg, Lois. Rvw. of George Dalgarno on Universal Language, Davd Cram and Jaap Matt (Oxford UP, 2001). Deaf History International Newsletter, Spring 2003: 17-20.
Bragg, Lois. Rvw. of Pagans, Tartars, Moslems, and Jews in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Brenda Deen Schildgen (Gainsville: University Press of Florida, 2001). Studies in the Age of Chaucer 25 (2003): 426-29.
Bragg, Lois. Rvw. of Chaucer and Costume: The Secular Pilgrims in the General Prologue (Chaucer Studies XXVI), Laura F. Hodges. (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000). Studies in the Age of Chaucer 24 (2002): 408-11.
Bragg, Lois. Rvw. of Helen Keller, Public Speaker: Sightless but Seen, Deaf but Heard (Great American Orator Series, No. 23), Lois J. Einhorn (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood, 1998). Disability Studies Quarterly 20.% (2001 for 2000): 358-59.
Bragg, Lois. Rvw. of An Intellectual Look at American Sign Language, Tom Bertling (Wilsonville, Oregon: Kodiak Media Group, 2001). Disability Studies Quarterly 20.4 (2001 for 2000): 450-51.
Bragg, Lois. Rvw. of Assembling the Lyric Self: Authorship from Troubadour Song to Italian Poetry Book, Olivia Holmes (Minneapolis: U Minnesota P, 2000). Annali d’Italianistica 18 (2000): 477-80.
[Bragg, Lois.] Rvw. of "Writing on Hands: Memory and Knowledge in Early Modern Europe." Folger Library, 13 December 2000 - 4 March 2001. Deaf History International Newsletter, Fall 2000: 10-11.
Bragg, Lois. Rvw. of A Prosodic Model of Sign Language Phonology, Diane Brentari (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT P, 1999). Disability Studies Quarterly 20.1 (Winter 2000): 61.
Bragg, Lois. Rvw. of The Body and Physical Difference: Discourses of Disability, David T. Mitchell and Sharon L. Snyder, eds. (Ann Arbor: U Michigan P, 1997). Disability Studies Quarterly 18.3 (March 1999 for Summer 1998): 258-62.
Bragg, Lois. “Planet of the Normates,” review essay on Extraordinary Bodies, Rosemarie Garland Thomson (New York: Columbia UP, 1997), Freakery, ed. Rosemarie Garland Thomson (New York: NYUP, 1996), and Monster Theory, ed. Jeffery Jerome Cohen (Minneapolis: U Minnesota P, 1996). American Anthropologist, March 1998: 177-80.
Bragg, Lois. Rvw. of Silent Poetry: Deafness, Sign, and Visual Culture in Modern France, Nicholas Mirzoeff (Princeton: UP, 1995). Gallaudet Today, Fall 1997: 29.
Bragg, Lois. Report to MLA on access for deaf members, 14 February 1996: 29 pp.
Bragg, Lois. Rvw. of The Cultural World of “Beowulf,” John M. Hill (Toronto, UP, 1995). South Atlantic Review 61.1 (January 1996): 126-29.
Bragg, Lois. Rvw. of Thinking about “Beowulf,” James W. Earl (Stanford: UP, 1994). South Atlantic Review 60.3 (September 1995): 113-16.
Bragg, Lois. Rvw. of Worlds of Sense: Exploring the Senses in History and across Cultures, Constance Classen (London: Routledge, 1993). American Anthropologist 97 (1995): 579-80.
Bragg, Lois. “Hard of Hearing: Funny Zero?” Gallaudet Today, Fall 1994: 30.
Bragg, Lois. Rvw. of when the Phone Rings, My Bed Shakes, Philip Zazove (Washington: Gallaudet UP, 1993) and Listening, Hanna Merker (New York: Harper, 1991). Gallaudet Today Spring 1994: 32.
Bragg, Lois. Rvw. of Humiliation and Other Essays on Honor, Social Discomfort, and Violence, William Ian Miller (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1993). Scandinavian Studies 66 (1994): 469-71..
Bragg, Lois. “Vacation.” Gallaudet Today, Summer 1993: 32-33.
Bragg, Lois. “What’s the Catch?” Gallaudet Today, Spring 1991: 16.
Bragg, Lois. Reviews of various popular novels in Best Sellers, 1978-85.
Education
Ph.D. the State University of New York at Buffalo, 1985
M.A., St. Bonaventure University, 1982
B.A., The Pennsylvania State University, 1972
Employment
Middle Tennessee State Univeristy, Assistant Professor 1985-89
National Technical Institute for the Deaf, Visiting Professor 1989-90
Gallaudet University, 1990-present; Professor 1997-
Courses Developed and Taught
Composition (MTSU, NTID, Gallaudet)
Introduction to Literature (MTSU, Gallaudet)
Surveys of English Literature (MTSU)
Surveys of Medieval Literature (MTSU, Gallaudet)
Methods of Literary Study (Gallaudet)
Chaucer (Gallaudet, Catholic University of America)
Thomas Malory (Gallaudet)
James Fenimore Cooper (Gallaudet)
History of the English Language (University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, MTSU, Gallaudet)
Old English (MTSU)
Beowulf (MTSU)
World Literature to 1600 (Gallaudet)
World Literature from 1600 (Gallaudet)
Masterpieces of English Literature (Gallaudet)
Women Writers (Gallaudet)
Deaf Literature (Gallaudet)
Deaf Characters in Literature (Gallaudet online course)
Deaf Authors (Gallaudet online course)
Book Forum New titles in Deaf studies (Gallaudet online course)
Mythology (Gallaudet)
Disability and Literature (Gallaudet)
Current and Recent Service to the Profession
Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, Gallaudet co-chair,2007-
Secretary/Treasurer, Deaf History International, 2006-
Foundations of Excellence, Philosophy Dimension, 2006.
Vice-President, Faculty Senate, 2004-07.
Editor, Deaf History International Newsletter, 2000-05
Gallaudet University Faculty Committee D (Grievance) 2000-04; Chair 2003-04
Gallaudet U. Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures Program Review, Chair, 1999.
Gallaudet U. English Department Faculty Forum, co-chair, 1996-99.
MLA ad hoc committee on Disability in the Profession, 1994-96.
Gallaudet University Press Editorial Board, 1990-98.
Deaf Employees Caucus, Faculty Representative to Steering Committee, 1995-97
Gallaudet University Faculty Committee G (Standards): 1991-97.
Gallaudet University Honors Specialist, 1995-2000. Gallaudet University English Department Majors Program, Coordinator 1991-94.
(Revised 30January 2008)
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