Positionality in the Deaf Community

Positionality as a professional sign language interpreter: 

• One’s own experiences of privilege and oppression and connection to social systems (family, education, health care, employment, justice, etc)
• How professional power and privilege interact with personal privilege and personal intersectional experiences of oppression
• Possibility and implications of using one’s position of power to reinforce the status quo
• Examination of one’s own positionality in a variety of professional and community settings 

 Impacts of oppression on Deaf-hearing interactions and the role of the interpreter: 

• Power held by professional interpreters in systems 
• Current practices in sign language interpreting as part of an evolution of historical perspectives
• Oppressive treatment by interpreters as experienced by persons who are D/deaf, hard of hearing, Deafblind
• Critical race theory and its application to interpreting
• Language deprivation and its relevance to interpreting
• Envisioning interpreters as agents of change toward social, economic and racial justice
• The interpreter as ally or accomplice or other

 Human service systems that impact the lives of Deaf, hard of hearing, Deafblind people:

• Component parts of the service systems and their interactive dynamics within our local and national community context
• Advocacy organizations and movements influencing the Deaf community and interpreters
• Living in an unjust society and working within unjust systems
• Inequity as systemic and self-sustaining
• Impact of social policies on social justice, considering decolonization, Truth & Reconciliation, anti-racism, gender diversity, intersectional Deaf experiences