The remarkable Allen sisters of Deerfield, Massachusetts, Frances (1854-1941) and Mary (1859-1941), overcame challenges presented by their progressive deafness, gender, and rural isolation to earn international recognition as two of the foremost American women photographers and benefitted from the suffrage era. View a CLIO virtual exhibit about the Allen sisters. Check out the books below and the Deaf Artists website to find more information.
Frances S. Allen, Mary E. Allen with view camera, ca. 1885 from the CLIO virtual exhibit.
Deaf Subjects: Between Identities and Places
The Positive Image: Women Photographers in Turn of the Century America
The Positive Image tells the largely untold story of women photographers in turn of the century America. Women like Gertrude K sebier, Frances Benjamin Johnston, Alice Austen, Catherine Weed Ward, and Eva Watson-Sch tze were among thousands of women who as professional and amateur photographers sought personal, artistic, and professional fulfillment while still connected to the traditional domestic environment. These women created a positive experience for themselves in photography through an identifiable female network of women photographers, through membership in camera clubs, and in many cases, through their association with photography great Alfred Stieglitz. Theirs became an alliance between women, art, culture, and technology in a time of intense social change in the United States.
Women and Deafness
e and print books available. This new collection bridges two dynamic academic fields: Women's Studies and Deaf Studies. The 14 contributors to this interdisciplinary volume apply research and methodological approaches from sociology, ethnography, literary/film studies, history, rhetoric, education, and public health to open heretofore unexplored territory. Part One: In and Out of the Community addresses female dynamics within deaf schools; Helen Keller's identity as a deaf woman; deaf women's role in Deaf organizations; and whether or not the inequity in education and employment opportunities for deaf women is bias against gender or disability. Part Two: (Women's) Authority and Shaping Deafness explores the life of 19th-century teacher Marcelina Ruis Y Fernandez; the influence of single, hearing female instructors in deaf education; the extent of women's authority over oralist educational dictates during the 1900s; and a deaf daughter's relationship with her hearing mother in the late 20th century. Part Three: Reading Deaf Women considers two deaf sisters' exceptional creative freedom from 1885 to 1920; the depictions of deaf or mute women in two popular films; a Deaf woman's account of blending the public-private, deaf-hearing, and religious-secular worlds; how five Deaf female ASL teachers define "gender," "feminism," "sex," and "patriarchy" in ASL and English; and 20th-century American Deaf beauty pageants that emphasize physicality while denying Deaf identity, yet also challenge mainstream notions of "the perfect body."
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