Rachel Mazique

Rachel Mazique specializes in Deaf literature, Deaf studies, and disability studies. Her research interests are interdisciplinary and include cognitive approaches to literary studies, human rights issues, and theories of ethnicity. Rachel successfully defended her dissertation, Transatlantic Deaf Literature and the Human and Group Rights Claims of Sign Language Peoples, at the University of Texas at Austin (UT) in 2017.

By examining the portrayal of Deaf ethnicity, or “Deafnicity,” in transatlantic Deaf literature, her work asks how this literature engages “rights” discourses, including disability rights, human rights, group rights, as well as bioethical issues.

Rachel teaches Writing Seminar and Critical Reading and Writing to students of the National Technical Institute for the Deaf at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Courses taught at UT include courses Rachel designed for the Departments of English and Rhetoric and Writing: “Literature, Visual Culture, and Deaf Studies,” and “Disability in Pop Culture,” respectively.