Carrying the Torch for American Sign Language
Cripps
Carrying the Torch for American Sign Language
Jody H. Cripps
SASLJ Editor-in-Chief
Clemson University
I am pleased to reveal the first special issue for Society for American Sign Language
Journal (SASLJ) entitled: Retrospective on Socially Impactful ASL/Deaf Studies Research and
Scholarship from 1960s to 2000s. After the successful release of two issues for SASLJ, I feel
compelled to go back in time and celebrate some of the most socially impactful scholarly works
on deaf people and their language, ASL. This includes the significance of reprinting most of the
manuscripts that were not published in mainstream or well-known journals. Rather these
manuscripts in question were published as a working paper, in proceedings, or as a report, or
through an online blog. I do not want these publications to become more difficult to locate over
time, and I also do not want SASLJ subscribers to forget about these "underdog" scholars who
contributed so much to ASL and Deaf Studies. I consulted with the Society for ASL (SASL)
officers and selected a total of five socially impactful papers to reprint, ranging in publication dates
from 1960 to 2000. One of these selected works was never published, and has remained a doctoral
dissertation to this day.
The selected papers for reprinting in this special issue are alphabetically ordered based on
the authors' last names. The original full references are as follow:
Christie, K. (2009). "Black Hole: Color ASL" - A personal response. Clerc Scar.
Humphries, T. (1977). Communicating across cultures (deaf/hearing) and language
learning. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, Union Graduate School, Cincinnati,
OH.
Johnson, R. E., Liddell, S. K., & Erting, C. J. (1989). Unlocking the curriculum:
Principles for achieving access in deaf education (Gallaudet Research Institute
Working/Occasional paper series, No. 89-3). Washington, DC: Gallaudet
Research Institute.
Stokoe, W. C. (1960). Sign language structure: An outline of the visual communication
systems of the American deaf. Studies in Linguistics: Occasional Paper 8. Buffalo,
NY: University of Buffalo.
Valli, C. (1990). The nature line of ASL poetry. In W. Edmondson & F. Karlsson (Eds.),
SLR '87: Papers from the Fourth International Symposium on sign language
research (pp. 171-182). Hamburg, DL: Signum Press.
I also took the initiative to invite scholars in the field of ASL/Deaf Studies from around the
country to write their commentaries on one or another of the selected socially impactful papers.
For each commentary, the scholars understood the task as outlined below.
SASLJ, Vol. 2, No. 2 – Fall/Winter 2018
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