Sign Language Research Video Collective

We are delighted to announce a new online resource for access to sign language research in American Sign Language (ASL) produced by Brenda Schertz (Cornell University) and Sandra Wood (University of Southern Maine).  The Sign Language Research Video Collective provides a translated summary of published sign language research in a series of ASL videos.

For many in the Deaf community, publications of linguistic articles on sign languages are not accessible, given that English is not their first language and/or their recourse to understanding English was limited in their educational system. Also, many are unaware of seminal articles that not only impacted the field of sign language linguistics, but also contributed significantly to the literature in the wider linguistic research community. There is a deep need in our community to understand more about the research that is done on ASL and other signed languages regarding the linguistic structures and the acquisition of said signed languages. We aim to provide access to such articles in ASL, making these articles available to a wide range of individuals interested-- members of the Deaf community, sign language and linguistics researchers, linguistics graduate students, ASL students, and ASL/English interpreting students, among others.

In our debut, pilot videos have been produced with four classic articles with summaries signed by Emily Blachly, Vyron Kinson, Elisa Velez, and Ivy Velez.

This project was sponsored by the Central New York Humanities Corridor from an award by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Cornell Department of Linguistics. 

Central New York Humanities Corridor Sign Language and Deaf Culture Working Group Members