Corporealities, gestures and visualities - an ethnography of bilingual schools for the deaf

• Grant number: 21/06206-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: December 01, 2021
• End date: June 30, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology
• Principal Investigator: Cynthia Andersen Sarti
• Grantee: Cibele Barbalho Assensio
• Host Institution: Escola de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (EFLCH). Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus Guarulhos. Guarulhos , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 24/12637-8 - Deaf people in France and Brazil: institutions, (ab)normalities and Corporeality, BE.EP.DR

Abstract

This project proposes an investigation into the corporeality present in the classrooms of bilingual schools for the deaf. The ways of using the sense of sight, the ways of using the hands, facial expressions and the body are the scope of attention of this doctoral research proposal. Starting from the debates about anthropology of the body and about the forms of body education in these schools, I try to explore the following questions: what embodiment can be inferred from this school environment, in which we speak with your hands and can you hear with your eyes? In what ways can the experiences described by the linguistic-cultural discourse of deafness be embodied? The present research aims to describe body building in the environment of bilingual schools for the deaf, taking corporality as an indeterminate methodological field, and to analyze the process of embodying gesturality and visuality from the body experiences mapped in communication between deaf students. To achieve the stated objectives, ethnographic research will be carried out, using participant observation. This undertaking will involve the researcher's bodily learning of gestures and visuality, as well as her previous research experiences with Libras and the deaf and her professional trajectory in bilingual schools. Still, the position occupied by the researcher in terms of her condition as a hearing/non-deaf person will be an object of reflection. Issues of gender, class, race, generation and, other possibly notable markers, in the research universe and in the relationships researcher/respondents will also be considered.