Dorothy Casterline, ’58, and Carl Croneberg, ’55, were two of the first international students to enroll at Gallaudet University. Casterline, a Deaf Asian woman from Honolulu, Hawaii, and Croneberg, a Deaf man born in a small town in Sweden, are well-known for pioneering in the field of American Sign Language. Croneberg coined the term Deaf culture and was the first to discuss the differences between Black ASL and white ASL. Both of them were recruited by and worked closely with William C. Stokoe for many years as students and as professional researchers. They went on to study Deaf people using Sign Language and document natural language use. They noticed that ASL has a linguistic system, therefore they recognized ASL as a natural language with its own rules of grammar and syntax. Casterline and Croneberg, along with Stokoe, wrote the publication of the history making “A Dictionary of American Sign Language on Linguistic Principles” in 1965. That was the book that ignited the interest ...