American Sign Language Literature
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American Sign Language Literature
American Sign Language literature (or ASL literature) is one of the most important shared cultural experiences in the American Deaf community. Literary genres initially developed in residential Deaf institutes, such as American School for the Deaf in Hartford, Connecticut,Bahan, Ben. (2006). "Face-to-Face Tradition in the American Deaf Community." In ''Signing the Body Poetic: Essays in American Sign Language Literature.'' Ed. H.-Dirksen L. Bauman, Jennifer L. Nelson, and Heidi Rose. University of California Press. which is where American Sign Language developed as a language in the early 19th century. There are many genres of ASL literature, such as narratives of personal experience, poetry, cinematographic stories, folktales, translated works, original fiction and stories with handshape constraints. Authors of ASL literature use their body as the text of their work, which is visually read and comprehended by their audience viewers. In the early development of ASL literary genres, ...
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Deaf Community
Deafness has varying definitions in cultural and medical contexts. In medical contexts, the meaning of deafness is hearing loss that precludes a person from understanding spoken language, an audiological condition. In this context it is written with a lower case ''d''. It later came to be used in a cultural context to refer to those who primarily communicate through sign language regardless of hearing ability, often capitalized as ''Deaf'' and referred to as "big D Deaf" in speech and sign. The two definitions overlap but are not identical, as hearing loss includes cases that are not severe enough to impact spoken language comprehension, while cultural Deafness includes hearing people who use sign language, such as children of deaf adults. Medical context In a medical context, deafness is defined as a degree of hearing difference such that a person is unable to understand speech, even in the presence of amplification. In profound deafness, even the highest intensity sound ...
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Ella Mae Lentz
Ella Mae Lentz (born May 5, 1954) is a Deaf American author, poet, teacher, and advocate. Biography Lentz was born in Berkeley, California, to two deaf parents. Her brother was also deaf. Lentz graduated from the California School for the Deaf (currently the California School for the Deaf, Fremont) in Berkeley in 1971. After graduating, she attended Gallaudet University where she received dual bachelor's degrees in Drama and English, graduating in 1975. Lentz has done research on American Sign Language (ASL) at several research institutions, including Northeastern University in Boston, the Salk Institute in San Diego, and the University of California, San Francisco. ASL Presents was founded by Lentz in 2007, located in Hayward, California. The company focuses on the how to coach, consult, present, perform, and teach ASL and Deaf Culture curriculum. Written production Lentz has developed training material as well as educational material such as: * National Consortium of Pro ...
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The Miracle Worker (play)
''The Miracle Worker'' is a three-act play by William Gibson adapted from his 1957 ''Playhouse 90'' teleplay of the same name. It was based on Helen Keller's 1903 autobiography '' The Story of My Life''. The play's title was inspired by a Mark Twain quote: "Helen is a miracle, and Miss Sullivan is the miracle‐worker". Plot In Tuscumbia, Alabama, an illness renders infant Helen Keller blind, deaf, and consequently mute (deaf-mute). Pitied and badly spoiled by her parents, Helen is taught no discipline and, by the age of six, grows into a wild, angry, tantrum-throwing child in control of the household. Desperate, the Kellers hire Annie Sullivan to serve as governess and teacher for their daughter. After several fierce battles with Helen, Annie convinces the Kellers that she needs two weeks alone with Helen in order to achieve any progress in the girl's education. In this time, Annie teaches Helen discipline through persistence and consistency, and language through hand signals, ...
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National Theatre Of The Deaf
The National Theatre of the Deaf (NTD) is a Connecticut-based theatre company founded in 1967, and is the oldest theatre company in the United States with a continuous history of domestic and international touring, as well as producing original works. NTD productions combine American Sign Language with spoken language to fulfill the theatre's mission statement of linking Deaf and hearing communities, providing more exposure to sign language, and educating the public about Deaf art. The NTD is affiliated with a drama school, also founded in 1967, and with the Little Theatre of the Deaf (LTD), established in 1968 to produce shows for a younger audience. Prior to the National Theatre of the Deaf, there were no theatre college-level programs created to support deaf aspiring actors. Furthermore, there were three major deaf theatre groups, these being "The New York Association of the Deaf," "The New York Theatre Guild of the Deaf" and "The Metropolitan Theatre guild of the Deaf." The fi ...
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Jehovah's Witnesses
Jehovah's Witnesses is a millenarian restorationist Christian denomination with nontrinitarian beliefs distinct from mainstream Christianity. The group reports a worldwide membership of approximately 8.7 million adherents involved in evangelism and an annual Memorial attendance of over 21 million. Jehovah's Witnesses are directed by the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses, a group of elders in Warwick, New York, United States, which establishes all doctrines based on its interpretations of the Bible. They believe that the destruction of the present world system at Armageddon is imminent, and that the establishment of God's kingdom over the earth is the only solution for all problems faced by humanity. The group emerged from the Bible Student movement founded in the late 1870s by Charles Taze Russell, who also co-founded Zion's Watch Tower Tract Society in 1881 to organize and print the movement's publications. A leadership dispute after Russell's death resul ...
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New World Translation
The New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (NWT) is a translation of the Bible published by the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society; it is used and distributed by Jehovah's Witnesses. The New Testament portion was released first, in 1950, as ''The New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures'', with the complete New World Translation of the Bible released in 1961. It is not the first Bible to be published by the Watch Tower Society, but it is its first ''original translation'' of ancient Biblical Hebrew, Koine Greek, and Old Aramaic biblical texts. Although commentators have said a scholarly effort went into the translation, critics have described it as " biased". History Until the release of the ''New World Translation'', Jehovah's Witnesses in English-speaking countries primarily used the ''King James Version''. According to the publishers, one of the main reasons for producing a new translation was that most Bible versions in common use, including the '' ...
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ASL Literature -The Tortoise And The Hare
American Sign Language (ASL) is a natural language that serves as the predominant sign language of Deaf communities in the United States of America and most of Anglophone Canada. ASL is a complete and organized visual language that is expressed by employing both manual and nonmanual features. Besides North America, dialects of ASL and ASL-based creoles are used in many countries around the world, including much of West Africa and parts of Southeast Asia. ASL is also widely learned as a second language, serving as a lingua franca. ASL is most closely related to French Sign Language (LSF). It has been proposed that ASL is a creole language of LSF, although ASL shows features atypical of creole languages, such as agglutinative morphology. ASL originated in the early 19th century in the American School for the Deaf (ASD) in West Hartford, Connecticut, from a situation of language contact. Since then, ASL use has been propagated widely by schools for the deaf and Deaf community o ...
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Gallaudet University
Gallaudet University ( ) is a private federally chartered research university in Washington, D.C. for the education of the deaf and hard of hearing. It was founded in 1864 as a grammar school for both deaf and blind children. It was the first school for the advanced education of the deaf and hard of hearing in the world and remains the only higher education institution in which all programs and services are specifically designed to accommodate deaf and hard of hearing students. Hearing students are admitted to the graduate school and a small number are also admitted as undergraduates each year. The university was named after Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, a notable figure in the advancement of deaf education. Gallaudet University is officially bilingual, with American Sign Language (ASL) and written English used for instruction and by the college community. Although there are no specific ASL proficiency requirements for undergraduate admission, many graduate programs require varying ...
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Nonmanual Marker
A Nonmanual feature, also sometimes called nonmanual signal or sign language expression, are the features of signed languages that do not use the hands. Nonmanual features are gramaticised and a necessary component in many signs, in the same way that manual features are. Nonmanual features serve a similar function to intonation in spoken languages. Purpose Nonmanual features in signed languages do not function the same way that general body language and facial expressions do in spoken ones. In spoken languages, they can give extra information but are not necessary for the receiver to understand the meaning of the utterance (for example, an autistic person may not use any facial expressions but still get their meaning across clearly, and people with visual impairements may understand spoken utterances without the need for visual aides). Conversely, nonmanual features are needed to understand the full meaning of many signs, and they can drastically change the meaning of individua ...
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Alliteration
Alliteration is the conspicuous repetition of initial consonant sounds of nearby words in a phrase, often used as a literary device. A familiar example is "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers". Alliteration is used poetically in various languages around the world, including Arabic, Irish, German, Mongolian, Hungarian, American Sign Language, Somali, Finnish, Icelandic. Historical use The word ''alliteration'' comes from the Latin word ''littera'', meaning "letter of the alphabet". It was first coined in a Latin dialogue by the Italian humanist Giovanni Pontano in the 15th century. Alliteration is used in the alliterative verse of Old English, Old Norse, Old High German, Old Saxon, and Old Irish. It was an important ingredient of the Sanskrit shlokas. Alliteration was used in Old English given names. This is evidenced by the unbroken series of 9th century kings of Wessex named Æthelwulf, Æthelbald, Æthelberht, and Æthelred. These were followed in the 10th ...
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Howl (poem)
"Howl", also known as "Howl for Carl Solomon", is a poem written by Allen Ginsberg in 1954–1955 and published in his 1956 collection ''Howl and Other Poems''. The poem is dedicated to Carl Solomon. Ginsberg began work on "Howl" in 1954. In the Paul Blackburn Tape Archive at the University of California, San Diego, Ginsberg can be heard reading early drafts of his poem to his fellow writing associates. "Howl" is considered to be one of the great works of American literature.Bill Savage (2008)Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" and the Paperback Revolution. Poets.org, Academy of American Poets. It came to be associated with the group of writers known as the Beat Generation. It is not true that "Howl" was written as a performance piece and later published by poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti of City Lights Books. This myth was perpetuated by Ferlinghetti as part of the defense's case during the poem's obscenity trial. Upon the poem's release, Ferlinghetti and the bookstore's manager, Shigeyoshi M ...
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Jim Cohn
Jim Cohn is a poet, poetry activist, and spoken word artist in the United States. He was born in Highland Park, Illinois, in 1953. Early poetics and musical influences include Bob Dylan, the subject of a now lost audiotaped for a class project completed in his senior year at Shaker Heights High School, where he also co-captained the varsity football team. He received a BA from the University of Colorado at Boulder in English (1976) and a Certificate of Poetics (1980) from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University where he was a teaching assistant to Allen Ginsberg. He received his M.S. Ed. in English and Deaf Education from the University of Rochester and the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) in 1986. For over two decades, he worked in the field of disability services, taking a siddha approach as a model of Disability Services and Studies practice and scholarship. He believed that the social sciences should be redefined thematically within ...
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