We Didn’t Know: How a Mid-career Research Project Taught Us about Disability, Advocacy, and Ourselves

Authors

Lee Ann Fullington, CUNY Brooklyn CollegeFollow
Jill Cirasella, CUNY Graduate CenterFollow

Document Type

Book Chapter or Section

Publication Date

2023

Abstract

We—Lee Ann and Jill—are mid-career faculty librarians at different campuses of the City University of New York (CUNY), and we are both hard of hearing. Lee Ann has bilateral hearing loss and uses two hearing aids; Jill has single-sided hearing loss and uses only one. However, even with hearing aids, which do not restore normal hearing, our hearing loss complicates our lives at work and in the broader world. This chapter describes how we found community in each other, how our conversations about hearing loss led to a mid-career research collaboration, and how that collaboration launched us into a larger project of learning and advocacy.

Comments

This chapter was originally published in: West, B., & Galoozis, E. (Eds.). (2023). Thriving as a Mid-Career Librarian: Identity, Advocacy, and Pathways. Association of College & Research Libraries.

This work is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).