Presentation on Abbé de l’Épée
Retired Gallaudet French professor Rachel Hartig will present "The Abbé de l’Épée as Seen through the Eyes of Yvonne Pitrois" at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library, 901 G Street, NW, Washington, D.C., Room A-10 (lower level) on Monday, May 6 at 6 p.m.
Yvonne Pitrois (1880-1937), deaf and for numerous years blind, although virtually unknown today, was celebrated during her lifetime for her personal courage and her talent as a committed biographer. One of her most accomplished studies was of the Abbé de l’Epée, an early educator of the deaf whom she revered and who is being honored this year both in America and in France for his contributions to the deaf community.
Why might Pitrois have been selected by the leadership of the French deaf school as the scholar to be his official biographer? What makes her work uniquely insightful? In this talk, Dr. Hartig will attempt to answer these questions.
During her tenure as a faculty member in Gallaudet's World Languages and Cultures Department, author and lecturer Rachel M. Hartig also served on the Office of Students with Disabilities advisory panel, was a member of the Faculty Senate, and was faculty representative to the Board of Trustees' Academic Affairs Committee. She received her B.A. magna cum laude with honors in French from Brooklyn College and her Ph.D. in modern languages and literatures, with a concentration in nineteenth and twentieth century French literature, from The Catholic University of America. She is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Pi Delta Phi, the French National Honor Society, and has been a New York State Regents Scholar, a National Defense Title IV Fellow, and a Predoctoral Fellow of the American Association of University Women.
Hartig also served as reviewer for Peter Lang Press in Baltimore, Md. from 1992-1994 and is the author of Man and French Society: Changing Images and Relationships, Struggling under the Destructive Glance: Androgyny in the Novels of Guy de Maupassant and Crossing the Divide: Representations of Deafness in Biography. She has also written articles on the methodology of teaching foreign languages to deaf students. In retirement, she is doing research and writing in the field of French Deaf studies, with a particular focus on the genre of biography.
ASL and voice interpreters will be present.
Hosted by the DC Public Library Adaptive Services Division. If you have questions, please contact Janice Rosen, librarian, Library Services for the Deaf Community, Adaptive Services Division at (202) 559-5368 (voice or video).
