Signing the Body Poetic: Essays on American Sign Language Literature [Paperback]

This unique collection of essays, accompanied by a pioneering DVD, at last brings a dazzling view of the literary, social, and performative aspects of American Sign Language to a wide audience. The book presents the work of a renowned and diverse group of deaf, hard-of-hearing, and hearing scholars who examine original ASL poetry, narrative, and drama. The DVD showcases the poems and narratives under discussion in their original form, providing access to them for hearing non-signers for the first time. Together, the book and DVD provide new insight into the history, culture, and creative achievements of the deaf community while expanding the scope of the visual and performing arts, literary criticism, and comparative literature.

H-Dirksen L. Baumanis Professor in the Department of American Sign Language and Deaf Studies at Gallaudet University.Jennifer L. Nelsonis Professor in the Department of English at Gallaudet University.Heidi M. Roseis Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at Villanova University.

This is a startlingly original collection, challenging readers to think well beyond normative contours of the literary text toward a living art of the embodied sign. A significant contribution to literary, performance, and Deaf culture studies,Signing the Body Poeticwill make us all see differently.Della Pollock, editor ofRemembering: Oral History Performance

Signing the Body Poeticis both a book and an eventa long-anticipated work that questions and recasts some of our most embedded definitions of poetry and other language arts. The work of several generations of signing poets has made a place for gesture that eliminates once and for all the hegemony of the spoken word as the single determinant of poetry and language performance. That is the accomplishment analyzed and celebrated in these pages and in the accompanying DVD that clearly shows the work at hand.Jeromelóå