After this course, students are able to:
- Hold a simple conversation in Irish Sign Language and interact with members from the Deaf community
- Define Deaf ethnicity and Deafhood
- Describe the historical context within which notions of Deafhood are grounded
- Describe the major influences on responses to deafness, for example, legal, religious, educational, rehabilitation, normalization, eugenics, human rights, socio-cultural, medical views
- Describe how educational context influences policy which impacts on a community
- Debate the role of hearing people in the Deaf world
- Consider the central themes of the course from different perspectives
- Use cross-disciplinary thinking in their approach to studying a new topic
- Take a position in an academic debate and support this position with arguments based on scientific literature
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The course is, in the most general terms, a case study of deafness and Deaf culture, as well as a language course. Students learn Irish Sign Language in the first four weeks of the summer course, and subsequently put it to practice on a field trip to the Deaf community in Ireland in the fifth week.
The topic of Perspectives on deafness and Deaf culture will be approached from different academic perspectives including anthropology/sociology, history, biology, medicine, philosophy, and linguistics. There are four main themes: (1) the Deaf world and Deaf identity, (2) history and politics of deafness, (3) social versus medical perspectives on deafness, and (4) sign languages and sign linguistics.
What is understood by Deaf culture, how Deaf people around the world live, and the difference between biological and cultural deafness are the main topics of theme (1).
Theme (2) includes such topics as history of deaf communities in Europe and around the world, the status of sign languages, deaf education, and oralism.
Theme (3) considers the causes of deafness and treatments available, as well as the attitudes of medical and other professionals and Deaf individuals towards the notion of treatment at all.
Finally, theme (4) takes a look at what it means for a language when its primary articulators are the hands, the face and the body. When does gesture grammaticalize? Where do modality differences play a role?
Format
1. Learning Irish Sign Language
- Active instruction and practice: 5 x 3 hours in the morning weeks 1-4
- Sign language lunches
2. Perspectives on deafness and Deaf culture
- 4 x 3 hours in the afternoon weeks 1-4
- (Guest) lectures about themed topics
- Movies and documentaries about deafness, Deaf culture and sign language
- Group discussions
- Excursions to visit Deaf communities, and to experience buildings which have been designed for visual language, in, for example, Ede, Groningen
3. Field Trip/Immersion Trip to Dublin
- Students stay for five days and six nights in units of 3 to 4 people at the Deaf Village in Cabra, Dublin
- Activities are organized together with people from the Dublin Deaf community, include trips to musea and art galleries; special events, to be determined when the city agenda is known, communal meals, and weather permitting, trips outside of the city.
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