Acknowledgments

Thinking about and writing acknowledgments is one of my favorite things to do, although it leaves me terrified that I will forget someone. I am also deeply aware and regretful of the fact that there are so many people in this book whom I do not and cannot name, yet my research and this book would not be possible without their willingness to share their knowledge, experiences, and passion for their work. To all the surgeons, audiologists, speech and language therapists, teachers, families, and government officials (not listed in order of importance) in this book, a huge thank you. I acknowledge that many of you might not agree with my analyses and conclusions. My sincere hope is that this work helps us imagine and bring into being many possibilities for deaf children’s flourishing.

I thank the Department of Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago, which has been an exceptionally collegial and stimulating space in which to think about development from all angles. I am grateful that I get to ask Jennifer Cole, Susan Goldin-Meadow, Eman Abdelhadi, Guanglei Hong, John Lucy, Eugene Raikhel, Marisa Casillas, and Terra Edwards questions about topics from brain plasticity to rehabilitation trajectories to turn-taking in language development. We also have the best undergraduate and graduate students to teach and think with. In our department and across the university, I am very appreciative of support from our department, grants, and financial administrators; these folks make a huge difference. Our interdisciplinary disability studies reading group/laboratory/workshop is a generative space for thinking through disability theory as well as empirical fieldwork. And my office is a particularly delightful and beautiful space in which to work—if only the coffee situation were a bit better. I also want to thank Pamela Block and Lisa Diedrich, my former colleagues and mentors at Stony Brook University, who modeled excellent collegiality and care. I continue to be in awe of Stefan Helmreich, my postdoctoral adviser at MIT, and now mentor for life, for all of his support and encouragement. To my dissertation adviser Lawrence Cohen, who also looms large in my research and on these pages: thank you for being incredible to think with!

Throughout India, again, a huge thank you to all of the families, audiologists, therapists, surgeons, teachers, and government officials. A special thank you to the child I call Imran and his family, who granted me access to their lives; I value their friendship and support. I also thank the therapist in Pune whom I call Tanima and the surgeon in Pune whom I call Dr. Parel. The therapist in Pune whom I call Kalpana also provided sage advice and wonderful analyses. I am deeply appreciative to all of the staff in Dr. Parel’s clinic: thank you for answering my questions, for allowing me to observe and hang out, and for the cups of coffee. In Mumbai, I thank the therapist I call Zahra for her perspectives and insights, and I also thank all of the therapists who work with her. In Bangalore, I thank the mother, teacher, and trainer I call Sasikala and all of the mothers at the Mothers Teaching Center, as well as the surgeon I call Dr. Murthy. In Chennai, a special thanks to two audiologists and speech and language pathologists for a very illuminating and never-ending coffee date on Chalmers Road. And to the audiologists and therapists around India who experiment with different methods and who are open to different approaches “below the radar”: thank you for sharing your stories. There are some people I can name. In Delhi, I thank Sachin Singh, Vishwajit Nair, Khushboo Soni, Neha Kulshreshta, Rahul Sharma (a special debt of gratitude for driving me to Palwal and for making a meeting happen), Kasturi Shridhar, Pallavi Kulshrestha, Dorodi Sharma, Rema Nagarajan, Muralidharan, and Satendra Singh. I especially thank Rema Nagarajan for her important research and writing. Mike Morgan tends to show up in Delhi whenever I am there. In Kolkata, I thank Nandini Ghosh and Snigdha Sarkar. In Chennai, I thank the administration of Balavidyalaya, Ranjith Rameswaran, the faculty at Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research, Amba Salekar and the Equals team, and the Tamil Nadu Association for the Rights of All Types of Differently Abled and Caregivers (Taratdac).

I would be remiss if I did not mention dear friends who took care of my senses in all ways. In Bangalore, I love spending time with Vanita, Lydia, and Joella Thomas in “my house,” even though the coconut tree is no longer there. Lydia in particular calmed my nerves and prayed for me when I was afraid to cross literal busy streets. Meenu Bhambani and her family have always welcomed me for meals and long days spent together in conversation. Padma Dasari always manages to rock my world foodwise. In Pune, Rajani and Sanjiv Vaidya cared for my sensorium through stories, walks, food, and flowers. I clocked more hours in speech than ever before when staying with them—they should become speech and language therapists! (Shruti, thank you for sharing your parents with me.)

For research support extraordinaire, I thank Sravanthi Dasari, Deepa Palaniappan, Rajani Vaidya, and Anjali Murthy for help with fieldwork, conducting participant observation, forgoing lunch, translating in multiple directions, and visiting schools, clinics, and hospitals with me. Anjali Murthy, an incredible medical researcher, dug out a whole archive of medical, public health, and audiological research articles with genuine curiosity and interest. Kristen Busch spent time in auditory verbal therapy archives with me, figured out how to copy important documents, and found people to interview. Arya Muralidharan did great work with the ADIP data, and Elizabeth Shen read the entire manuscript and gave honest feedback (I hope) while also patiently helping with the illustrations.

For very helpful feedback and generous readings of individual chapters, I thank Eman Abdelhadi, David Ansari, Michaela Appeltova, Tarini Bedi, Kavi Bhalla, Lisa Bjorkman, Jennifer Cole, Janet DesGeorges, the University of Chicago Disability Studies Reading Group, Terra Edwards, the 2020–21 University of Chicago Franke Institute for the Humanities Fellowship cohort, E. Mara Green, Cassandra Hartblay, Stefan Helmreich, Erika Hoffman-Dilloway, David Howes, Jennifer Iverson, Alison Kafer, Annelies Kusters, Stephanie Lloyd, the Medicolegal Working Group (Lisa Davis, Amy Krauss, Kenneth MacLeish, Sameena Mulla, Sarah Pinto, Harris Solomon, Kaushik Sunder Rajan, Catherine Trundle), the Mobile Deaf Reading Group, Erin Moriarty, Vijayanka Nair, Alyson Patsavas, Eric Plemons, Christine Sargent, Bambi Schieffelin, Kristen Snoddon, Mette Sommer, James Staples, Jonathan Sterne, Bharat Venkat, and Matthew Wolf-Meyer. Tarini Bedi, Stephanie Lloyd, James Staples, and Matthew Wolf-Meyer read multiple chapters and served as enthusiastic sounding boards.

For generative comments on the research, I thank Debra Bellon, Pamela Block, Stuart Blume, Alison Bobzin, Diane Brentari, Marisa Casillas, Rama Chari, Tina Childress, the wonderful people at Child’s Voice Chicago, John Lee Clark and the participants in the Spring 2020 Protactile Seminar, Lawrence Cohen, Maartje De Meulder, Suzanne Gaskins, Tina Greico-Calub, Aimi Hamraie, Michelle Havlik, Anja Hiddinga, Listening Together, Amber Martin, Laura Mauldin, Mara Mills, Amy Moran-Thomas, Anjali Murthy, Colleen Polite, Eugene Raikhel, Rebecca Sanchez, Sarah Sparks, Dana Suskind, Benjamin Tausig, Jaipreet Virdi, Susanne Wengle, Tyler Williams, Karen Woolman, and Tyler Zoanni, as well as the participants in the 2019 University of Chicago Delhi Center conference “Disentangling Disability and Human Rights,” participants in the 2018 preconference symposium “The Fix in South Asia” at the Annual Conference on South Asia, and participants in the New England Journal of Medicine’s 2019 “Case Studies in Social Medicine” series. I also thank Rahul Bjorn Parson and Jason Grunebaum, Hindi teachers for life, for going over Hindi words, concepts, and phrases with me.

I received generous funding for this book from the University of Chicago’s Department of Comparative Human Development, an American Institute of Indian Studies Senior Short-Term Fellowship, a National Science Foundation Science, Technology, and Society standard grant (grant no. 1922066), the University of Chicago Committee on Southern Asian Studies, the University of Chicago Franke Institute for the Humanities, the Center for International Social Science Research at the University of Chicago, and the American Association of University Women. The Center for International Social Science Research at the University of Chicago made it possible for this book to be open access. The Giannino Family provided funding for preliminary research for this book. Stephanie Lloyd and I were coinvestigators on a Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Seed Grant from 2017 to 2019. I thank Anna Brailovsky for her grant-whispering skill.

For the manuscript review process, I was fortunate to have two amazing reviewers, one of whom was Mara Mills. The people at the University of Minnesota Press, particularly Jason Weidemann and Zenyse Miller, have been encouraging, responsive, and excited about the project. I thank Adrean Clark for her wonderful illustrations created for this book and Judy Selhorst for her meticulous and careful copyediting.

For friendship and listening to me talk about this project ad nauseum, I thank Naomi Baer, Kavi Bhalla, Emilie Cassou, Mara Green, Liz Mazur, and Karen Weingarten. The very active MKM WhatsApp group (Mara Karen Michele) has provided much sustenance, encouragement, and sage advice. I thank my husband, Jamie Osborne, for his steadfast patience and commitment to the project, to the research, and to us and our child, Saffron Orly Friedner Osborne. A particular (one-sided) joy is to practice AVT techniques with Saffron. I thank them both for all the sensory joys they bring to my life, although I would prefer a bit less noise, thank you very much. I also thank my mother, Ann Friedner, for sitting down with me for an interview and for her commitment, all along, to always striving for and working toward the best possible future for me. Karen Woolman, my sister, and Shmuel Yochanan Friedner, my late father, also worked toward this future: it was a family project. Interestingly and perhaps ironically, Karen became an audiologist. Jim and Susie Osborne have inquired constantly about the state of the project and the book, and I thank them for coming along for the journey.