Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!think.com!yale!bunker!hcap!hnews!300!14!James.Womack From: James.Womack@f14.n300.z1.fidonet.org (James Womack) Newsgroups: misc.handicap Subject: ASL lit.7 Message-ID: <18844@bunker.isc-br.com> Date: 16 Apr 91 20:29:57 GMT Sender: wtm@bunker.isc-br.com Reply-To: James.Womack@f14.n300.z1.fidonet.org Organization: FidoNet node 1:300/14 - The Emerald Isle, Tucson AZ Lines: 41 Approved: wtm@bunker.hcap.fidonet.org Index Number: 14998 [This is from the Silent Talk Conference] In recent years, ASL has been used in schools and colleges to teach ASL as a foreign language. I still have one question. Spanish is accepted as a foreign language and its literature is studied. ASL is now accepted as a foreign language, but where is its literature? Its literature is oral. We had to change the way people thought about literature. They realized we were right. We have to be careful when we talk about what literature means. Oral literature is literature. If ASL h ad no literature then perhaps it wouldn't be accepted as a foreign language. That really had an impact on me. Also schools around the country are setting up deaf studies courses. ASDB is doing that. That's an exciting idea to be establishing cour ses in deaf studies. What is included in the deaf studies curriculum? Suppose we are talking about a high school deaf studies class. ASL literature can be a part of that course. ASL and the deaf experience should be included in these courses for deaf children not just in the courses for hearing students at the college level. Deaf children should be learning about this too! Ben Bahan, a deaf man who is the director of the Deaf Studies Program at Boston University, and I have talked about this a lot. We both have the same interest in traveling around the country giving ASL storytelling performances. I give a fu ll two-hour performance which includes eight or nine different stories in ASL. Some of the stories are stories that I created myself. Others are old stories that deaf people have told for generations. Others are translations from English. I do t hree different kinds of stories. Most of my stories are originals, stories that I made up myself. Ben and I do the same thing traveling around the country telling our stories. What would happen to those stories if something happened to me? My sto ries would be gone. My work, my stories, would be gone with me. Would peoople remember those stories, I would hope so. Do I have to keep traveling and traveling around the country with my stories? What's going to happen when I get old or have c hildren? Times and circumstances change. -- Uucp: ..!{decvax,oliveb}!bunker!hcap!hnews!300!14!James.Womack Internet: James.Womack@f14.n300.z1.fidonet.org