I was born in Washington, DC, the second deaf child of deaf parents who were both on the faculty at Gallaudet University. I attended preschool and the first two grades at Kendall School for the Deaf on the Gallaudet campus. In third grade, I transferred to a public school and remained in the public school system until I graduated from high school. The experience of leaving a small and intimate school for deaf children for a large public school was a long adjustment for me, one which I have described as akin to being “educated abroad.” My interest in language is strongly rooted in the experience of moving between different worlds and languages. While at school, I was often the only deaf child among hearing classmates, but at the end of the day, I returned home to the familiarity of sign language with my parents and brother.
While an undergraduate at Georgetown University, I worked with Bill Stokoe in the Linguistics Research Laboratory at Gallaudet. Upon graduation, I worked briefly for the National Association of the Deaf before entering graduate school in Linguistics at UCSD where I studied with David Perlmutter, Ursula Bellugi and Ed Klima at the Salk Institute. After completing my Ph.D in 1983, I accepted a faculty position in the Department of Communication at UCSD. My work is broadly about language and communication. I teach courses to hearing undergraduate and graduate students on topics ranging from mind and culture, language and globalization and sociocultural theory. The Communication Department is an interdisciplinary department whose faculty undertake critical studies of communication, including cultural psychology and language in context.
I am married to Tom Humphries, and we have a daughter who is hearing and bilingual in ASL and spoken English. Tom and I volunteer for a number of community organizations, and are active on university committees. My past service includes the Board of Directors of Deaf Community Services of San Diego, the Board of Trustees of Gallaudet University and currently, the Board of Directors of the Deaf West Theater in Los Angeles, California. Our passions include our families and our work which allows us to travel and meet deaf people and signers from around the world.
