SUPPORT SERVICES FOR MAINSTREAM DEAF COLLEGE STUDENT WRITERS: THREE INSTITUTIONAL CASE STUDIES

Author

Heidi Maria Williams, Southern Illinois University CarbondaleFollow

Date of Award

5-1-2017

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

English

First Advisor

Dively, Ronda

Abstract

This dissertation acknowledges the fact that research regarding deaf student writers at the post-secondary level is practically void. To initiate an avenue of research that is meant to foreground future research regarding support services for deaf college student writers, I set out to find how college institutions are serving deaf student writers through academic support services by designing three institutional case studies. The first goal of this project was to synthesize research on the topic of deaf college student writers by organizing existing literature relevant to deaf education and language acquisition. The second goal of this project was to generate descriptive portraits of three institutions by illustrating how the schools are serving deaf student writers. The synthesis of the literature, descriptive portraits of the institutions, and discussion of emergent themes revealed from my study will speak to how the fields of Deaf Studies, Disability Studies, and Rhetoric and Composition might proceed in order to make the most of support services for deaf student writers.