May 2000   

Dear Colleagues:

Please join me in congratulating our faculty, students, and staff whose work is recognized in this issue of the Chronicle. We report the results of a year of marvelous success in scholarly achievement, teaching, and service.

Both the College and many of our departments and programs sponsor recognition events as we near graduation. I hope that you have been able to join your colleagues and students at these celebrations. And, of course, I hope to see many of you at our special “stand alone” graduation ceremony for the year 2000, featuring Washington’s Attorney General Christine Gregoire as our commencement speaker.

Best wishes as you prepare for the end of the spring term.

Barbara Couture
Dean, College of Liberal Arts

Results of a national survey led by Victor Villanueva (English) found that the nation’s English teachers are not prepared to cope with the diverse students who make up their classrooms. The three-year study, “Language Knowledge and Awareness Survey,” was recently released by the National Council of Teachers of English.

The survey of 2,000 K-college teachers found that most teachers accept the idea of language diversity but that acceptance is not being translated into classroom practice. Many teachers had not received any training they themselves believed necessary. Villanueva and his colleagues found that attitudes about language diversity were related to the educational level and racial/ethnic background of those surveyed. “For example, significantly more People of Color disagreed with the statement that students whose primary language is not English should be taught solely in English.“

Paul Brians’ (English) grammar Web site was recently named an “Incredible site” in the book 300 Incredible Things to Learn on the Internet by Freedman and Leebow. It was selected for a second time as a Hot Site by USATODAY.com. You can find it at http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/index.html.

E. San Juan (Comparative American Cultures) was keynote speaker at the Conference of the American Studies Colloquium, (Re)Defining America, held at UW in April. He will be a panelist at the Latino Critical Theory Conference at Breckenridge Resort in May.

Buddy Levy (English) worked as lead writer for Quokka Sports covering the Marathon des Sables, a 150-mile footrace in the Sahara Desert in Morocco. Quokka is a Web site that covers international sporting events around the globe. Levy wrote daily race coverage and essays on the event which took place in April.

Paul Lee (Fine Arts) was appointed to a three-year term on the board of directors of Artist Trust, a state-wide organization that provides support for visual artists, writers, poets, musicians, dancers and choreographers.

Two of Lee’s photographs were chosen for an exhibition at the Wing Luke Museum in Seattle. The exhibition, titled “Through Our Eyes: 20th Century Asian American Photography of the Pacific Northwest,” opened in April and will run a year.

Michelle Sauer (English) will present a paper titled “Community Discourse: An Exploration of ‘Bodytalk’ and Overlapping Rhetoric in the Lofsongs of Mary and Jesus” at the International Medieval Congress in Kalamazoo this month.

Sue Armitage (History) and her husband Bob Greene have been chosen to be queen and king at this spring’s Moscow Renaissance Fair.

Sharon Miller (Honors College, microbiology/German, Dec. ‘99) received a Fulbright Teaching Assistant Scholarship for Austria for 2000-2001.

In April Riley Dunlap (Sociology) gave a WSU talk titled “How Americans View the Environment and Environmentalism: Results of Gallup’s National Earth Day 2000 Poll.” Dunlap, who served as an advisor for the poll, is the Gallup Organization’s Gallup Scholar in Environment. Sponsors were the Thomas S. Foley Institute, ASWSU, the Environmental Task Force, and the departments of sociology and rural sociology. He also gave an invited lecture at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville on “Americans’ Concern for the Environment: Implications for the 2000 Election.“

At the annual banquet sponsored by national broadcasting honorary Alpha Epsilon Rho’s local chapter, a special award was announced. Students named it for the person who showed “the most wholehearted devotion to their work,“ Elsa Camacho. The first recipient was, of course, Elsa Camacho. Among other presentations were the Edward R. Murrow Award to Brian Temple, and the Judith Waller Award to Angela Gramprie. Neal Robison received the new Outstanding Professor Award. Banquet speaker was Rich Cowan (Communication ‘79), director of the movie “The Basket.”

Val Limburg (Communication) recently presented panels at the meeting of the Broadcast Education Association in Las Vegas: “Birth of Digital Telecom Systems: The Death of the Broadcast Curriculum? Can Education Afford the New Technology?” “Adjunct Faculty in Broadcasting” and “Integrating Old and New Methods: The BEA Syllabus Project” which reported on his cross-institutional work arranging for Internet course syllabi. At the conference, he was recognized for more than thirty years work for BEA.

Noriko Kawamura (History) is quoted in a Maingate.com story by reporter Stacey Killingsworth about the Pulitzer Prize winning book by John Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II.

Patty Sias’ (Communication) paper “From Friends to Coworkers: Narratives of Workplace Friendship Deterioration” was selected as a “Top Four” paper in Organizational Communication for the National Communication Association 2000 Convention.

Tom Rotolo (Sociology) was co-presenter of a paper at the international Sunbelt Social Network conference in Vancouver, B.C., titled “Homophily or Hierarchy: Status and Similarity in Social Choice.”

Karen Weathermon (English, assistant editor of Frontiers journal) will present a paper for the Katherine Anne Porter Society session at the American Literature Association Conference in Long Beach, Calif., in May.

Jennifer Ross (History doctoral student) will be a summer intern at the Johnson Space Center Oral History Project in Houston.

Congratulations to all Liberal Arts winners of 2000 President’s Awards. This award recognizes “leadership and service” to the WSU community. Winners were treated to a banquet with President Smith April 30.

Chia-Fang “Sandy” Hsu’s (Communication) paper “The influence of self-construals, family and teacher communication patterns on communication apprehension among college students in Taiwan” won a second place in the GPSA research competition. Her paper was also accepted for the National Communication Association convention in Seattle in November.

Jay Wright (Psychology) will give an opening session talk at the International Conference on Cell Surface Aminopeptidases in August, in Nagoya, Japan. His talk is titled “The role of aminopeptidase A in the conversion of angiotensin II to the active forms angiotensin III and IV, and the physiological significance of these peptides.”

Wanda Costen’s (Sociology) paper titled “Is the Glass Unbreakable: Habitus, Fields, and the Stalling of Women and Minorities in Management” will appear in the Journal of Management Inquiry.

Lonnie Schaible (Sociology) was co-presentor of a paper entitled “Exploring the Exotic Dance Realm: Social Psychological Implications” at the 2000 Pacific Sociological Association meetings in San Diego.

Chris Biga (Sociology) presented a paper entitled “Effects of Attitude towards Authority on Anthropocentric Attitudes” at the 2000 Pacific Sociological Association meetings in San Diego.

Stanton Linden (English) has accepted an invitation to give the keynote address at the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association annual conference in May at Snowbird Resort Conference Center, Utah. His paper will be on “John Milton’s Emblematic Practice.”

Bethany Blankenship (Ph.D candidate, TA, English) received a summer research assistantship from the graduate school.

Michael Delahoyde (English) was interviewed by The Discovery Channel in Toronto concerning mummies in popular culture. His material was used in conjunction with an April 23rd “Sunday Showcase” feature: “Mummies: The Real Story”

Joan Grenier-Winther (Foreign Languages) was awarded a prestigious NEH Summer Stipend to support a Web-based, database-driven scholarly edition of an anonymous, 15th century, lyric poem, “La Belle dame qui eut mercy“ (the Beautiful Lady who had mercy). This poem is found in 16 manuscript witnesses, but has never been edited before. Her edition will present transcriptions in diplomatic and critical forms, plus scanned images of the original manuscript folios and offer search capabilities so that scholars can make specific queries.

The Mortar Board honor society honored two CLA professors at its Freshmen Recognition Dessert. Lance T. LeLoup (Political Science, Thomas S. Foley Institute) was honored for his “outstanding commitment and dedication to his students.“ He is “always available to help,” his students say. Carol Maloney (instructor, English as a Second Language) was honored for “constantly striving to help students outside of the classroom and maintaining a student-centered curriculum.“

LeRoy Ashby (History) and Amy Mobley (TA, Foreign Languages/Spanish) were among the nominees for the WSU Disability Awareness Association’s “Faculty of the Year” award which honors those who “treat students with dignity and respect, but don’t make them feel really different because of their disabilities,” according to association president Jolene Crancer.

William Lipe (Anthropology) was the 2000 Faculty Library Award recipient. The award recognized his more than 20 years of support for the library.

Sara Ewert (History) won honorable mention in the Association for Faculty Women’s Harriet B. Rigas competition.

Susan McLeod (English) will be a featured speaker at the International Global Conversations on Language and Literature conference in Utrecht, Netherlands, in August. The conference is sponsored by the National Council of Teachers of English (U.S.) and the National Association of Teachers of English (U.K.)

Dean Barbara Couture gave several April presentations. At the Conference on College Composition and Communication in Minneapolis, she spoke on “Dialogue, Knowledge-Making and Composition: A Re-Imagination;” at the Pullman Kiwanis, her talk was titled ”The College of Liberal Arts Meets the New Millennium;” and, as keynote speaker at the WSU Phi Beta Kappa initiation banquet, she discussed “Accepting the Challenge of a Liberal Arts Education.”

Warren Roby (Foreign Languages) gave a presentation on foreign languages in careers at the Lincoln Middle School on their Career Day.

Communication students who have recently won awards are Petra Guerra, the Lily Endowment Inc./Hispanic Scholarship fund Scholar national award of $2,500, and Dennis Bautista, a TA Excellence award. Stacy Hust and Chia-Fang “Sandy” Hsu won second place awards at the Wiley Research Expo.

Bethany Blankenship’s article “Tennis Balls in Dekker’s Shoemaker’s Holiday” will appear in the July 2000 issue of Notes & Queries.

Michael Delahoyde’s (English) article on Chaucer’s special effects with poetic technique, “‘Heryng th’effect’ of the Names in Troilus and Criseyde,” will shortly be appearing in The Chaucer Review, 34.4 (2000).

John Kicza’s (History) article “Formación, identidad y estabilidad dentro de la élite colonial mexicana en los siglos XVI y XVII” has been published in Beneméritos, aristócratas y empresarios (Frankfurt: Vervuert, 1999).

Social Deviance and Crime: An Organizational and Theoretical Approach, a book co-authored by Charles Tittle (Sociology), is being published by Roxbury Publishing.

Bill Condon’s (Writing Program) new book, Assessing the Portfolio: Principles for Practice, Theory, and Research, is out, from Hampton Press.

The Bunchgrass Historian is publishing part two of James Nazzal’s (History) biography of Whitman Co. pioneer, Union army officer Captain William Inman in May. Part one appeared in December, 1998. The Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society will publish his article titled “Cora Agnes Benneson: A First Wave Feminist?” about this Illinois native who “heralded the transition in American feminist ideology“ of the late 1800s.

A special issue of the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science will include Amy Wharton’s (Sociology) article, “Feminism at Work.”

Ellen Gorsevski’s (English) book review of William L. Benoit’s Seeing Spots: A Functional Analysis of Presidential Television Advertisements, 1952-1996 will appear in an upcoming issue of Rhetoric & Public Affairs.

E. San Juan (Comparative American Cultures) edited three monographs for the CAC Working Papers Series in Cultural Studies, Ethnicity and Race Relations: Darko Suvin’s “Looking at Science Fiction,” Alan Wald’s “Revising the Barricades,” and Arif Dirlik’s “Theory, History, Culture;” and published “The Filipino Diaspora and the Centenary of the Philippine Revolution” in Journey of 100 Years.

Wendy Dasler Johnson (English, WSU Vancouver) has received a contract from Southern Illinois University Press for her book, Serious Sentimentalism: A Rhetoric of Antebellum American Women’s Poetry. Her essay, “Male Sentimentalists Through the ‘I-s’ of Julia Ward Howe’s Poetry” was published in the fall issue of the South Atlantic Review.

May 6  Liberal Arts Commencement, Beasley Coliseum, 8 a.m.

On July 27-30, 2000, the Washington State University Department of History will host the fifth Women’s West conference in Pullman. The conference theme, “Gender, Race, Class and Region,” reflects the fact that the history of women and racial/ethnic groups suggests that a new approach to regional history is needed.

The conference will open with a performance of “Sacagawea Speaks” in which Dakota historian Jeanne Eder recreates the famous Lemhi woman who was a member of the Lewis and Clark expedition. Other special features of the conference are a plenary panel on gender and race in the Pacific Northwest, an exhibit by contemporary and traditional women artists, a quilt exhibit, and a reading by local authors Mary Clearman Blew and Janet Campbell Hale.

The conference is cosponsored by the Coalition for Western Women’s History, the organization that initiated the first Women’s West conference in 1983. Organizers are Sue Armitage (History) and graduate student Brenda Jackson. Approximately 200 people–faculty, graduate students, secondary school teachers and interested local people are expected to attend. Details of program, registration, housing and transportation to Pullman are available on the conference website.