Deaf conference explores the creativity that flows in various deaf cultures
By Rachel Hooper, Features Co-Editor
A conference that stretched the mind and the imagination was held from February 29 to March 1, sponsored by Swarthmore College’s linguistics department. The title, “Around the Deaf World in Two Days (It’s a Small World): Sign Languages, Social Issues/Civil Rights, Creativity” let attendees know that a broad range of topics would be presented.
The parking lot was the first hint that this weekend would be something special. The lot was crammed with license plates from Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, Maryland, Virginia and even farther away, far out numbering those from Pennsylvania where the conference was held.
The entrance to the building and hallways was plastered with posters of Hand Art—a special form of photography displaying hands painted and posed to represent delightful animals and imaginary beings. This was a special treat for the arriving educators, professionals and students who had traveled distances to attend this two-day deaf event with an international focus.
The conference was free of charge because of the generous sponsorship of the William J Cooper Foundation. The speakers traveled from Texas, Illinois, Washington DC, Virginia and Connecticut. Several of the panelists were from Great Britain. There was standing room only and enthusiastic students found seats for themselves on railings and windowsills.
Who knew that sign language took so many different forms from different countries and regions of the world? The opening speaker, Carol Padden from the University of California San Diego, asked how many sign languages are there in the world? The exact number is unknown, but each presenter went on to tell of more new and different sign languages from small cultural groups and remote parts of the world like Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
Professor Mark Rust, coordinator of the graduate program in deaf education, attended the conference along with a few McDaniel students. He appreciated the overall focus of the conference.
“It was very encouraging to see,” said Rust.
A presentation that Rust particularly enjoyed was the lecture by Karen Nakamura from Yale University entitled, “Deaf in Japan: Signing and the Politics of Identity.”
The conference presenters repeated a disturbing set of statistics from the World Federation of the Deaf. There are 70 million people who are deaf throughout the world; 80% of deaf children in the world are illiterate and most are in developing nations. Most are not born deaf; they become deaf because the families can’t afford medical care.
The presentation by Debora Karp, director of the Deaf AIDS Project in Landover, MD, and Leila Monaghan, University of Wyoming, “HIV/AIDS in Deaf Communities,” was particularly disturbing and so was the prevalence of HIV and AIDS in the deaf communities within developing countries. The difficulty of communication and isolation from sources of health information has led to this knowledge gap.
People who are being tested for HIV/AIDS require counseling services, and currently with government funding cuts there were no counseling services available for the deaf. Maryland is fortunate to have a strong AIDS education program, according to Rust.
“Harry Woosley is one particular reason,” said Rust about the activist from Baltimore. “He’s the founder of the Deaf AIDS project.”
McDaniel student Antoinette Smith had never been to a conference such as this before. She is taking ASL I and feels the conference was a good learning experience, especially with the multi-media services.
The technological assistance supporting the speakers was impressive, with each signing presenter projected onto an enlarged video screen, voice interpreters, British ASL interpreters and a projection screen with written English called CART (Communication Access Real-Time Transcription). She could choose to listen to the voice interpreters if she wished but she found it possible to understand much of the signing.
Even students who have never studied ASL or deaf studies but were interested in international affairs or civil rights could have appreciated this program. Others interested in the arts would have found the art and poetry presentations fascinating. The evening poetry presentation was given by British poets Rachel Sutton-Spence from the University in British Sign Language (BSL) and Paul Scott, described in the conference flyer as “one of Britain’s foremost British Sign Language poets.”
Smith described the poetry as “very visual, so even if you didn’t know sign language you could kind of see where he was going….what he was portraying.”
“He was very visual and very active so it was good,” Smith added. “I liked it.”
Smith also loved the hand art saying it was “pretty cool to look at…how people can make their hands out of different animals and just by a pose and using different fingers…I’ve never seen anything like that in my life.”
All in all it was a valuable learning experience for Smith.
“I didn’t even know sign language was almost 200 years old…so it was a great experience,” said Smith. “I’m definitely going again in two years.”