American Sign Language (ASL) Program Overview
The American Sign Language (ASL) program teaches the primary language of the Deaf community in the U.S. and Canada, offering students insight into its unique structure and rich cultural heritage. By studying ASL, students gain a deeper understanding of language diversity, enhance their career prospects in fields related to deafness, and develop a new perspective on language as a whole.
Courses & Requirements | Highlights | Faculty
Requirements
ASL cannot be used to satisfy the RC language requirement.
RCASL 100 is a prerequisite for all ASL courses in the RC.
The ASL Program at Michigan
The Residential College offers a 5-course sequence in American Sign Language. Introduction to Deaf Culture (RCASL 100) serves as a pre- or co-requisite to beginning the language courses. The fourth semester language course (RCASL 202) may be used to fulfill the undergraduate language requirement of the College of Literature, Science, and Arts.
RCASL 100: Introduction to Deaf Culture
RCASL 101 and 102: Elementary American Sign Language
RCASL 201 and 202: Intermediate American Sign Language
Advising for ASL
Paula Berwanger is the primary instructor and head of the ASL Program.
Why study American Sign Language?
American Sign Language (ASL) is the language of the Deaf community in the United States and much of Canada. ASL uses a gestural-visual modality in which manual signs, facial expressions, and body movements and postures all convey complex linguistic information. It is a fully developed language, with its own systems for articulation, forming words and sentences, and meaning. ASL is separate from English, and is also distinct from other signed languages. An excellent example of the separateness of signed languages from each other and from the surrounding spoken language(s) is that, although English is the shared spoken language of the U.S. and Britain, speakers of ASL do not understand speakers of British Sign Language.
ASL is estimated to be the fourth most commonly used language in the U.S. Through learning the preferred language of the Deaf community, students who study ASL gain access to the rich cultural heritage of that community, which includes a distinguished tradition of visual poetry, narrative, and theater. Students of ASL also learn about other aspects of American Deaf culture, including the values and outlooks of Deaf people, and social and educational aspects of deafness.
Students of ASL may find that they gain a new perspective on how human languages are structured. Through learning a language that uses a different modality of expression than the oral-auditory modality of spoken languages, students begin to discover properties that are common to all languages. Linguists' research on the commonalities between signed and spoken language provides strong evidence that all languages are governed by the same basic properties.
Finally, study of ASL also provides practical training for students entering a range of professions in the field of deafness, and may strengthen students' qualifications for various non-deafness careers.
Faculty
Residential College: American Sign Language NEW
Professor Emerita Arts and Ideas in the Humanities Program, Department of Afroamerican and African Studies, and Women's Studies
Director, Residential College; Professor and Head, Science, Technology and Society Program
Lecturer II, Semester in Detroit, Creative Writing & Literature, and First Year Writing Seminar
RC Lecturer III and First-Year Writing Seminar Program Head; Adjunct lecturer, School of Education
Lecturer II, German Intensive I & II, Humanities in Arts and Ideas, Cultural Anthropology and CBL in Social Theory and Practice
Professor, Social Theory and Practice, Richard A. Meisler Collegiate Professor of Afroamerican and African Studies, and History
Clinical Associate Professor Emeritus, Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation; Instructor, RC Social Theory and Practice Program
Teaching Professor and Program Head, German; Arts and Ideas in the Humanities Program; First Year Writing Seminar
U-M Detroit Center
Lecturer Emeritus, Social Theory and Practice; Faculty Scholar Integrative Medicine; Faculty Fellow, Mellon Faculty Institute on Arts Academic Integration; Academic Advisor
Director of Residential College Admissions, Recruitment & MLC Administration; Adjunct Lecturer
Theodore Roethke Distinguished University Professor of English Language and Literature, RC Creative Writing and Literature Program
Professor of Theatre & Drama and the Residential College, Prison Creative Arts Project, Carceral State Project
Walgreen Drama Center, room 2435
RC Community Programs Business Manager; Associate Director, Prison Creative Arts Project
Lecturer Emerita, Spanish, Comparative Literature, Arts and Ideas, American Culture, Latino/a Studies, Women's Studies
701 E. University
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1245
Social Theory & Practice Major Advisor; General Academic Advisor; Living/Learning Issues; Mental Health Referrals
Lecturer, Spanish Program, Social Theory and Practice; Coordinator Intensive Spanish II
Lecturer Emerita, Creative Writing and Literature, First Year Seminar Program Head, Academic Advisor
Lecturer, Social Theory and Practice, and Spanish Language Internship Program Coordinator
Collegiate Professor of History and African American Studies in the History, Afroamerican and African Studies Departments and in the Residential College Social Theory and Practice Program
Associate Director for RC Faculty; Arthur F. Thurnau Professor; Associate Professor, Semester in Detroit, Social Theory and Practice Program; Advisor, Urban Studies minor; Faculty Director, Semester in Detroit
Professor, Arts and Ideas in the Humanities Program; Professor, Afroamerican and African Studies; Professor, History
