Overview
Brenda’s main interests include American Sign Language (ASL) and Deaf studies, concentrating on Deaf culture art, film and theatre. She coordinated the annual Maine Deaf Film Festival for twelve years and most recently co-chaired the Deaf Rochester Film Festival in 2017. An independent study on Deaf View Image Art (De’VIA) led to a first ever documented and curated exhibit organized in 1993 which led to successive exhibits in Boston and Oakland. These exhibits presented the Deaf experience through art and film. With the support of Harlan Lane and Northeastern University, Brenda organized a year-long, seven-city National Touring Exhibit of Deaf Culture Art in 1999. In 2018, she curated the exhibition Beyond Form: Non-Objective Art by Deaf Artists for the Dyer Arts Center at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf.
Brenda’s other interests include Translation and Deaf Interpreting. She has taught courses related to translation, focusing on ASL to English and English to ASL, showing how translation theories can be applied to the process. She offers seminars related to Deaf interpreting, a process in which a specialist deaf interpreter takes a spoken message that has been interpreted into ASL, and interprets it into a form that is fully comprehensible to a consumer.
Publications
Schertz, B., & Lane, H. (1999, Fall-2001, Winter). Elements of a culture: Visions by Deaf Artists. Visual Anthropology Review, 15(2), pp. 20-26.
Schertz, B. (1999). 20 deaf artists: Common motifs. In College of Continuing Education (Ed.). Deaf studies IV: Making the connection, 1999 conference proceedings (pp. 417-440). Washington DC: Gallaudet University.
PDFs are at my personal website at https://brendaschertz.weebly.com/published-works.html.
In the news
- Congrats to our Grads!
- American Sign Language has found a growing home on the Hill
- American Sign Language Has Found a Growing Home on the Hill
- ASL 1101 American Sign Language I to be Offered in Winter Session
- New ASL minor, events expand opportunities for students
- Students can learn ASL during summer, winter sessions
- Visiting Storyteller to Perform Narrations in American Sign Language
- ASL at Cornell: It’s More Than a Language
- Brenda Schertz Awarded Sophie Washburn French Instructorship
- ASL Offered in Summer 2022
ASL Courses - Fall 2024
LING Courses - Fall 2024
ASL Courses - Spring 2025
- ASL 2202 : Intermediate American Sign Language II
- ASL 2301 : Modern Deaf Culture
- ASL 3215 : Deaf Art, Film and Theatre