The first meeting of the “Formal and Experimental Advances in Sign language Theory” (FEAST) colloquium will take place at the University of Venice on June 20-22, 2011.

FEAST aims at becoming a regular forum to discuss formal approaches to sign language grammar (in particular in the generative tradition), experimental approaches to sign languages, and their interaction. Tentatively, the 2012 “FEAST” should be organized by the University of Göttingen.

The keynote speakers of Venice FEAST will be:

Karen Emmorey (San Diego State University)

Gaurav Mathur (Gallaudet University)

Markus Steinbach (University of Göttingen)

Submissions are now invited for Venice FEAST. Authors are asked to submit their abstracts as e-mail attachments in .pdf to the following address: venicefeast@unive.it

We plan to have oral presentations (about 30 minutes long) as well as a poster session. The poster session will be preceded by a special session in which each poster presenter will be allotted 5 minutes to introduce the topic of his/her poster.

The anonymous abstract should include the title and indicate whether it is intended for poster or oral presentation. The title of the paper, name of the author(s), affiliation(s), surface mail address and e-mail address should be included in the e-mail message. Abstracts should not be longer than two pages in length (including tables, examples and references), in 12-point type, single line spacing and 2,5 cm. margins. Abstracts will be reviewed by an external panel and the reviewing process will be double-blind.

The official languages of the conference will be English and ASL. ASL/English interpreting will be provided.

Conference dates: June, 20-22

Deadline for submission: February, 28 2011.

Notification of acceptance/rejection: April 6, 2011.