Around the Deaf World in Two Days

Our East Coast readers (or those willing to travel) will want to make plans to attend an exciting upcoming conference at Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA, on Deaf Studies from a global perspective.

The conference kicks off Friday evening, February 29 [its leap year]. At the welcoming reception linguistics scholar Carol Padden will be speaking on “Sign Language Geography: Creation and Spread of Sign Languages Around the World.” The following morning, Gaurav Mathur will be looking at the underlying structure of signs, like grammer in spoken languages, drawing upon examples from around the world, including Australian, German and Japanese Sign Languages. An exceptionally broad range of topics and regions will be represented over the course of that Saturday, March 1, 2008. Teachers can receive Act 48 hours (CEU's) for attending and participating in the conference. ASL teachers may acquire Clock Hours for ASLTA.

This conference is organized by the Linguistics Department at Swarthmore College and sponsored by the William J. Cooper Foundation. The entire program and directions to the campus can be found on the conference website.