March 2001   

Dear Colleagues,

As you are aware, the College has been undergoing an intensive planning process in preparation for submitting a macro-plan for the coming years and a budget proposal for the coming year. Each college in the university was asked to outline a direction for the future, a focus that also should be reflected in each college's budget plan. In the College of Liberal Arts, our departmental plans were reviewed by the Dean's Advisory Committee on Resource Allocation. In response to this committee's review, I have worked with my staff and our chairs and directors to establish priorities for resource distribution next year. Our planning has revealed areas where we have great strength and that we must continue to support with existing and new resources. It also has revealed areas where we may need new direction.

Our theatre program is one area that we need to examine with care. Enrollments in theatre have been steadily declining over the last decade, and the campus productions do not have the visibility that is needed to make the program more central to campus life and a more vigorous part of our curriculum. There are many individual instances of excellence in the program, including several recent outstanding productions, yet overall the program has waned. We will take the time necessary to work with the theatre faculty and program administrators to determine the best route to make the program stronger within the resources that we have available. Most important to our task will be the charge to define what kind of program is best, given the students who choose to come to WSU and the role theatre may play in our College of Liberal Arts. I look forward to hearing your views on this topic and ask for your support as we move to build a more successful theatre program.

As this issue of "The Chronicle" demonstrates once again, our faculty and students across the College are a productive and hard-working group, achieving recognition for scholarly and creative work in the local, regional, national and international arena.

Please join me in congratulating the faculty and students of our music program who were winners at the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival at the University of Idaho. Our initial count suggests that Wash-ington State University's music program placed more student winners than any other participating college or university.

Also, please note in this issue's calendar the several lectures offered by our Anthropology Department and the Asia Colloquium. Not to be missed is the Performing Arts Gala, to be presented the evening of President Rawlin's inauguration, March 28. And, you may want to assure that your schedule includes our cross-college interdisciplinary symposium, "East Meets West," March 30-31. I hope to see you at one or more of these inspiring events sponsored by our colleagues.

Best wishes as you continue your work for WSU and the College.

Barbara Couture
Dean, College of Liberal Arts

Sue Peabody (History, Vancouver) will present a lecture entitled “Slave, Subject, Citizen: Gender and the Transition to Freedom in the French Caribbean, 1635-1848" at Yale University’s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition on April 17. Peabody is a faculty fellow at the center while on sabbatical this spring.

Rachel Halverson (Foreign Languages) has received a grant from the American Association of Teachers of German and the Federal Republic of Germany to participate in the TraiNDaF (Transatlantisches interkulturelles Nachwuchsförderungsprogramm Deutsch als Fremdsprache) leadership program. Funding covers travel to two meetings in Washington, D.C., and a three-week summer seminar in Germany. The program’s goal is to develop a “strong leadership cadre” for promoting German studies.

Gregory Yasinitsky (Music) was a featured guest artist and composer at the San Joaquin Valley Jazz Festival in California. He performed with internationally renowned trumpeter Bobby Shew. Yasinitsky also performed as a member of the Lionel Hampton Big Band at the Lionel Hampton-Chevron University of Idaho Jazz Festival last month.

Yasinitsky has been commissioned to create a series of “pops” arrangements for the Spokane Symphony Orchestra. The first of these, Yasinitsky’s setting of the Benny Goodman classic “Sing, Sing, Sing,” was premiered in February.

Yasinitsky’s new composition, “A Statement of Principles,” scored for choir and concert band, will be performed by over 300 musicians at the dedication of the new Clarkston Performing Arts Center on March 1.

The concert will also include Yasinitsky’s composition for jazz band “The Blue Bridge” and his arrangement for jazz choir of the standard “Chicago.” These pieces are the result of Yasinitsky’s appointment as Composer-in-Residence for Clarkston High School. His residency is funded by the Commission Project of New York.

Noriko Kawamura’s (Asia Program) book Turbulence in the Pacific: Japanese-U.S. Relations during World War One is nominated for the 2000 Best Book Prize for the Historical Society. The prize will be announced in June 2001.

Mary Blair-Loy’s (Sociology) article “Career Patterns of Executive Women in Finance: An Optimal Matching Analysis” was nominated for the first Rosabeth Moss Kanter Award for Excellence in Work-Family Research by the Center for Families at Purdue University.

The India Scholarship and Research Fund, established in 2000, has reached endowment status and will make its first award in 2001. Scholarships go to students interested in studying India. Prem Kumar (Ph.D. English ’78), founder of the Indian American Education Foundation and member of the CLA Advisory Council, initiated the fund and conducted the fundraising effort.

Christopher Lupke (Foreign Languages) gave two presentations in the fall, one in English and one in Chinese. “Kicking the Habitus: Cultural Critique, Refracted Memories, and Representability Among China’s Elites” was delivered at the New England Conference of the Association for Asian Studies in October at Brown University. “The Fiction of Peng Ge, the Criticism of T. A. Hsia: A Historical Inquiry into the Development of Modern Fiction in Taiwan” was presented at the Taiwan Literature Colloquium at the University of California, Santa Barbara in August.

Paul Brians (English) was interviewed for the January 23 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education. The resulting article mentioned his Web sites, including his most popular, “Common Errors in English,” and his satisfaction with publishing on the Web as compared to traditional scholarly publishing.

Gene Rosa (Sociology) served as an external reviewer for the Tulane University Strategic Research Initiative on Global Environmental Change.

Lori Irving (WSU Vancouver) is coordinator of the Columbia River Eating Disorder Network, a community-based organization that provides education and advocates treatment and prevention of eating disorders. This month, the network is hosting the sixth annual Columbia River Eating Disorder Network Conference for Professionals: Understanding and Treating Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa, in conjunction with Clark College, WSU Vancouver Center for Continuing Education, WSU Cooperative Extension, and Southwest Washington Medical Center.

In March, Don A. Dillman (Sociology) will present a series of invited seminars at Statistics New Zealand, in Wellington, on “Redesign of the U.S. Decennial Census 2000 Procedures” and “Principles for Visual Layout and Design of Self-Administered Questionnaires.”

Lori Wiest (Music) has been appointed to the National Board of the American Choral Directors Association as national chair of Youth and Student Activities. She previously held the Washington State and Northwest Divisional chair prior to this appointment.

The WSU Concert Choir, under the direction of Lori Wiest (Music), will tour Austria, the Czech Republic and Hungary in May for two weeks. The tour includes musical performances in Salzburg, Vienna, Prague, Budapest and smaller cities in the region. The Concert Choir will perform in Seattle at Plymouth Congregational Church on May 15 prior to their departure.

Camille Roman (English) has signed a contract with Harcourt Publishers to serve as senior author for a new text for college and university students entitled Harcourt’s Introduction to Poetry. Designed to present poetry in relation to race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity and post-coloniality, it will foreground culture, history, politics, the media and psychology. “The Harcourt project will offer the first major new approach to teaching poetry in higher education in over twenty years and will draw upon the latest research in both poetry and composition pedagogies,” said Roman.

Ella Inglebret (Speech and Hearing Sciences) was a featured speaker at the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians’ Winter Conference. Her presentation highlighted research that has been completed through the Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences relevant to American Indian communities.

Interdisciplinary, collaborative efforts among students and faculty in the Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences and the Department of Teaching and Learning were presented at the annual convention of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA). Presenters were Ella Inglebret (Speech and Hearing Sciences) and Speech and Hearing students Elizabeth Cobb and Leslie Lynes, as well as Susan Banks, faculty member in Teaching and Learning. In addition, Inglebret participated in an ASHA-sponsored presentation featuring nationally recognized experts in the area of multicultural issues in speech-language pathology.

Jim Short (Sociology) has been appointed to a new National Research Council Committee, the Studies of School Violence Committee. The committee is a response to a congressional mandate to the National Academy of Sciences.

Fine Arts students are exhibiting work in a show called “Work in Progress” at the POAC Gallery in Sandpoint, Idaho. Exhibiting artists are Joel Allen, Ryan Belnap, Sarah Belnap, Julia Cordone, Tobe Harvey, Richard Kerr, Nik Meisel, Rafael Mendoza, Nathan Orosco, Ann Porter, David Schu and Cynthia Zyzda. The show runs until April 6.

E. San Juan, Jr. (Comparative American Cultures) gave a lecture on the “Filipino Diaspora as a Challenge to Cultural Studies” at the University of California, Los Angeles, in February sponsored by the Multi-Campus Research Group on Transnational and Transcolonial Studies and the UCLA Asian American Studies Center.

Paul Brians (English) gave an Art a la Carte presentation on “Krishna the Lover in the Arts.” Brians discussed the traditional Hindu depiction of Krishna as not only a fierce warrior but as a great lover and illustrated how Krishna’s affairs, seen as a metaphor of the relationship between the human and the divine, find expression in painting, dance and song.

Keating Johnson and David Turnbull (both Music) appeared as conductor and trumpet soloist respectively with the Pleven Philharmonic Orchestra in February, in Pleven, Bulgaria. Johnson was asked to conduct a program that included Bulgarian pianist Maria Price performing a Mozart concerto and a symphony of Johannes Brahms. For the remainder of the program Johnson suggested bringing WSU trumpet faculty member David Turnbull as soloist performing the Alexander Arutunian Trumpet Concerto, a very demanding virtuosic work. Turnbull performed this work to high artistic acclaim locally with the Washington Idaho Symphony several seasons ago.

Sociology graduate students Debb Thorne, Anne Lincoln and Heath Dingwell received Graduate Student Travel Awards awarded jointly by the Graduate and Professional Student Association and the Graduate School. All three will use the awards to help defray travel costs to the Pacific Sociological Association conference in San Francisco in late March, where they will present papers.

Gail Chermak (Speech and Hearing Sciences) delivered two invited papers on central auditory processing disorders at the meetings of the Pan American Society of Audiology and the Puerto Rican Academy of Audiology, both held in Puerto Rico.

Ryan Belnap (Fine Arts graduate student) has been accepted into the Second International Photography and Digital Image Biennial Exhibition at the Wellington B. Gray Gallery at East Carolina University, Greenville, NC. The show runs through March 7. Ryan’s work was featured on the front page of the Lewiston Tribune Arts Section in early February.

Heather Streets (History) has been awarded a Bernadotte E. Schmidt Grant by the American Historical Association to support research for a book on British military and imperial history.

Ann Christenson (Fine Arts, ceramics) exhibited her work in Clay on the Wall at Gallery 128 in New York City in January and February. The work exhibited included four pieces from her series entitled “Greetings” based on the concept of postcards.

David Sonnenfeld (Sociology, WSU Tri-Cities) was an invited panelist at a workshop on “Globalization and Human Rights” at the Center for Global, International & Regional Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz, in December. He presented a paper on “Transnational Influences on the ‘Greening’ of Industry in Thailand.”

Tim Doebler (MFA ’84 and WSU Fine Arts instructional technician) has an exhibit of his sculpture at the Esvelt Gallery of Columbia Basin College in Pasco through March 15. The work shown represents 15 years of his creative endeavors. He held a workshop on welding techniques for sculptors in conjunction with the show. Doebler is known locally for the creation of the official University mace, which is used each May at commencement, the stone and bronze Terrell Mall dedication plaque in front of Wilson Hall, and the benefactors’ plaque in the open stairwell in French.

Photography by Francis Ho (Fine Arts) was a part of a group show with three other Northwest photographers at the Lorinda Knight Gallery in Spokane, which ran in December and January. The gallery then hosted a 16-piece show by Chris Watts (Fine Arts) entitled “New Work.” Watts presented a gallery talk during the show.

Carol Ivory (Fine Arts) has developed a new Web site, www.pacificarts.org, for the Pacific Arts Association, with technical assistance from BFA student Wilbert “P.J.” Fields. A vice-president of the Pacific Arts Association, she attended the annual meeting of its international executive committee in Chicago in late February. She will also chair a panel, “Pacific Artists in a Global World,” at the annual meeting of the College Art Association, also in Chicago.

David Demers (Communication) announced that GESCA Ltd., a Canadian newspaper corporation that publishes La Press, Montreal’s largest French-language daily, is donating $3,000 to the WSU Center for Global Media Studies. Demers, executive director of the Center, said the funds would be used to pay for the costs of publishing the Center’s newsletter, “Global Media News.”

Heather Nissley (graduate student, Psychology) presented a paper at the annual meeting of the International Neuropsychological Society entitled “ Perceptually based implicit learning following closed head injury.” Maureen Schmitter-Edgecombe (Psychology) is co-author.

Camille Roman’s book, Elizabeth Bishop’s World War II-Cold War View is one of the first releases of the new Palgrave imprint of St. Martin’s Press. The book will be released in England late this spring.

Marina Tolmacheva (Asia Program, Associate Dean) has eight entries in the recently published encyclopedia Trade, Travel, and Exploration in the Middle Ages: An Encyclopedia. Her entries are: “Albertus Magnus,” “al-Idrisi,” “Cartography, Arabic,” “Caspian Sea,” “Mare Oceanum,” “Mecca,” “Medina,” “Navigation, Arab,” and “Women Travelers, Islamic.”

Azfar Hussain’s (English doctoral candidate) essay entitled “Serajul Islam Choudhury and His Oppositional Work of Cultural Politics” will appear in an anthology devoted to South Asian Marxist Choudhury’s work, in May from Dhaka, Bangladesh. Hussain’s article titled “Joy Harjo and Her Poetics as Praxis: Towards a ‘Postcolonial’ Political Economy of the Body, Land, Labor, and Language” appeared in the fall 2000 issue of Wicazo Sa Review: A Journal of Native American Studies. In May, he will present a paper called “Exorcizing the Postmodern Ghosts of Globalization and Spatialization: Toward a Marxist Political Economy of Space” at the annual Sociology Association Conference to be held in San Francisco.

Stanton Linden’s (English) latest book, George Ripley’s “Compound of Alchymy,” was published in February by Ashgate Publishing Ltd. and is a critical edition of the fifteenth-century alchemical poet’s major work. Linden has also received a travel research grant from the Wellcome Trust (London) to support work at the Wellcome History of Medicine Library on a new book, The Alchemy Reader: From Hermes Trismegistus to Isaac Newton, under contract with Cambridge University Press.

Michael Myers’ (Philosophy) new book, Brahman: A Comparative Theology, is available from the University of Hawaii Press. “The book is aimed at the general reader who is interested in comparing the Christian worldview to others—especially the Hindu,” according to the book jacket.

Carol Siegel’s (English) book, New Millennial Sexstyles, which came out in November of 2000, has been well received. Her research was featured in the “Living Section” of The Oregonian on Wednesday, January 17 and, as a result, she will be the featured speaker for International Women’s Day at Barnes and Noble of Vancouver, where she’ll do a book signing on March 8. She will also speak and sign books at Broadway Books in Portland on March 13.

An article by Carla Chandler (Psychology) and former graduate psychology students Gary Gargano and Brian Holt, “Witnessing post-events does not change memory traces, but can affect their retrieval,” appeared in Applied Cognitive Psychology.

Paul Whitney (Psychology), former faculty member Peter Arnett, and former graduate students A. Driver and Desiree Budd had an article, “Measuring central executive function: What’s in a reading span?” in Brain & Cognition.

Michael Delahoyde (English) has supplied 16 encyclopedia entries on music and film for The Guide to United States Popular Culture, just published (at last) and selling for $150. His articles included Jurassic Park, Stop-Motion Animation, E.T., and popular music entries co-authored with former English 201 (Research and Writing) students.

Jana Argersinger (English), associate editor of ESQ and Poe Studies, had an article titled “Family Embraces: The Unholy Kiss and Authorial Relations in Warner’s Wide, Wide World” accepted for publication in the journal American Literature.

Two recent publications by Jim Short (Sociology) are “Technology, Risk Analysis, and the Challenge of Social Control” in Contemporary Issues in Crime and Criminal Justice: Essays in Honor of Gilbert Geis, and “Youth Collectivities and Adolescent Violence” in Handbook of Youth and Justice.

E. San Juan, Jr. (Comparative American Cultures) published “Aime Cesaire’s Poetics of Fugitive Intervention” in Third Text (London) and “The Limits of Contemporary Cultural Studies” in Connecticut Review.

Scott Lowery’s (Speech and Hearing Sciences) review article, “Assessment and measurement tools used in the evaluation of swallowing,” has been accepted for publication in Current Opinion in Otolaryngology.

Christopher Lupke (Foreign Languages) completed three scholarly entries, which are forthcoming: “The Taiwan Nativists” in The Columbia Companion to Literature; “The Taiwan Modernists” in The Columbia Companion to Literature; and “Chinese Literatures” in Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies. He also wrote a book chapter, “Chinese a preliminary analysis of 1950s Taiwan Literature,” in Culture, Identity, Social Change: Proceedings of the International Conference on Post-War Taiwan Literature. Lupke also wrote an article, “Peng Ge, T. A. Hsia and Taiwan Literature of the 1950s,” for the Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese and translated and published an essay, “On the Left Side of the City Moat, Lin Wenyi,” and a short story, “Bizhu’s Choice, Chen Ruoxi.” For The Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese, he reviewed a book by Wang, Ban, The Sublime Figure of History: Aesthetics and Politics in Twentieth-Century China. 

Until April 1  Exhibition, “Large Drawings,” from the Arkansas Arts Center Foundation Collection, Museum of Art.

March 1  Orchestra, Wind Symphony, Symphonic Band, Bryan Hall Theatre, 8 p.m.

March 2  Comparative American Cultures Lecture, “Zapatismo, Democratization and the Role of Civil Society in Social Change,” Norberto Valdez, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Todd Hall 320, 2 p.m.

March 6  Foreign Languages Art and Life Film, “Huozhe” (To Live, 1994, Chinese with subtitles), presented by Christopher Lupke, Fine Arts Aud., 7 p.m.

March 7  Asia Symposium Lecture, “The Architecture of Shanghai,” Paul Lee, Fine Arts Aud., 4:30 p.m.

March 8  Choral Concert, Lori Wiest, conductor, Bryan Hall Theatre, 8 p.m.

March 8  Visiting Writer Series, Reading, Poet and Novelist Joy Passanante, Bundy Reading Room, Avery Hall, 7:30 p.m.

March 11  Solstice Wind Quintet, Museum of Fine Arts, 2 p.m.

March 12  Anthropology Colloquium, Kristen Hawkes, University of Utah, College Hall 125, 12:10 p.m.

March 13  Foreign Languages Art and Life Film, “Mifunes Sidste Sang” (Mifune, 2000, Danish with subtitles) presented by Kim Andersen, Fine Arts Aud., 7 p.m.

March 13  Comparative American Cultures Film, “Salt of the Earth,” Herbert Biberman, director. Jose Alamillo, discussion leader, Wilson Hall 13, 7 p.m.

March 14  Anthropology Colloquium, “Kinship in the American Soap Opera,” Linda Stone, WSU, College Hall 125, 12:10 p.m.

March 28  Faculty Honors Convocation and Presidential Inauguration, Beasley Coliseum, 3 p.m.

March 28  Performing Arts Gala, Beasley Coliseum, 7:30 p.m.

March 28  Anthropology Colloquium, “The Untouchables and Culture Change,” Shila Baksi, WSU, College Hall 125, 12:10 p.m

March 30  Women’s Music, Holland Library Atrium, 12 p.m.

March 30  Comparative American Cultures Lecture, “Sovereignty and Ethics in Tribal Government,” Victoria Adele Santana, Blackfeet Community College, Todd Hall 320, 2 p.m.

March 30-31  Asia Symposium, “East Meets West,” Kimbrough Hall 101, Friday 5:30–9 p.m., Saturday 9 a.m.–12 p.m. and 1–5 p.m. (See below.)

MARK YOUR CALENDAR! BERNARD SHAW WILL DELIVER THE MURROW SYMPOSIUM ADDRESS April 18 AT 7:30 P.M. AT BEASLEY COLISEUM.

East Meets West is an interdisciplinary, public symposium that will provide a glimpse at the encounter between East Asia and the West from an Eastern perspective. The symposium may be taken as Asia 301 for one credit. To enroll contact Lydia Gerber, 335-7425, e-mail lgerber@wsu.edu. Find more on the Web at www.wsu.edu/~hallagan/Me/eastwest.html.

Symposium events include Paul Lee’s lecture on March 7, “Architecture of Shanghai” (see calendar above), which will be available on video. Later on March 30, the main part of the symposium convenes with lectures by Tom Kennedy, “Testimonies of Confucian Feminists,” and Lydia Gerber, “Strange Tales from Distant Lands: A Glimpse at the Diaries of the First Chinese Ambassadors to Europe,” and a video entitled “The Japanese Version.”

On March 31, morning presenters will be Noriko Kawamura on “The Japanese Imperial Court’s View of the US on the Eve of Pearl Harbor,” Fritz Blackwell on “Gandhi’s ‘Anti-Westernism’: Gandhi’s Reaction to British Imperialism,” and Judy Chang on “Growing up as a Second Generation Asian-American.” The symposium reconvenes after lunch with lectures by Roger Chan, “Distorted Images: How Asian-Americans and Other Americans Perceive Each Other”; David Wang, “Why Chinese Architectural Styles Did Not Change”; Christopher Lupke, “Gao Xingjian and the Nature of the Chinese Nation”; and conclude with Carol Ivory, “Asian Artists in the West.”

Members of the WSU Chapter of the Association of Women in Communications will serve as conversation partners for interested international students. This is the group’s service project for the year. Interested students can contact the group’s president, Tara Clark, at taralynn07@hotmail.com

Norberto Valdez, professor of anthropology and coordinator of the Latino/Chicano Studies Center for applied Studies in American Ethnicity at Colorado State University, Fort Collins, and this year’s Semana de la Raza keynote speaker, will be at the WSU Chicana/o Latina/o Student Center on Friday, March 2 from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m.. He would like to meet with members of our community to share his scholarly work on racism, identity, multiculturalism and globalization as well as indigenous struggle in the jungles of Guerrero and in Chiapas, Mexico. He will also give a lecture the same afternoon at 2 p.m., in Todd 320.

Congratulations to the music program’s faculty and students who performed at the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival. WSU received numerous awards:

Vocal
Best Alto Soloist–Julie Silvera Jensen
Best Baritone Soloist–Gus Kambeitz
First Runner Up, Jazz Choir Division–VOJAZZ 2001
First Runner Up, Vocal Combo Division–VOJAZZ SIX

Composition
Best Vocal Composition–Gus Kambeitz
Best Instrumental Composition–Gus Kambeitz

Instrumental
Best Alto Saxophone Soloist–Sparky LaPlante
Best Jazz Flutist–Jessica Mardis
Runner Up, Guest College Big Band Division–Jazz Big Band