The Chronicle

  Nov/Dec 2003

Dean's Message
Worthy of Note
Professional Productivity
Student Activities and Awards
Alumni News
Other News
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Dean's Message

Dear Colleagues,

Our department chairs and college leadership will participate this November in the University’s administrative leadership retreat. This gathering will focus on involving our departments more directly in strategic planning. Last week, I forwarded the fall 2003 revision of our college area plan to our provost; the plan has been reviewed by all of our department chairs and program directors and includes the area plans submitted by all of our departments.

One goal featured in the plan is to increase scholarship and curriculum on international issues and topics. Our college moved forward on this objective this fall with the visit of several faculty and graduate students to International Christian University in Japan. We joined President Rawlins, Robert Harder, and President Masakichi Kinukawa and Provost Norihiko Suzuki of ICU in committing to assist ICU in their five-year effort to develop a Center of Excellence on peace and security studies. The project will be coordinated through the Foley Institute for Public Policy and Public Service at WSU. Over the next few months, you will be hearing much about this effort from WSU coordinators Ed Weber, director of the Foley Institute, and Noriko Kawamura, director of the Asia Program. They seek faculty and student involvement; the project is generously funded by ICU with support from WSU.

Another important development this month is our completion of WSU’s mid-term accreditation assessment, coordinated by Jane Sherman, which includes our college and department plans for program assessment. Our unit chairs and directors have been working with Associate Dean Marina Tolmacheva to complete these plans, due mid-November. A critical factor for reinstating accreditation is the effective implementation of unit plans that identify learning outcomes, assess whether these outcomes have been achieved, and demonstrate how this assessment is used to improve curriculum.

I hope that you will take a moment after reading this issue of the Chronicle to congratulate our colleagues who participated in our Authors’ Recognition Reception, featured in this issue. Each semester, we honor our faculty composers, artists, and musicians at a similar event. We had a substantial audience of well-wishers, graduate students, and current and emeritus faculty members at October’s ceremony; many who attended expressed their appreciation for this opportunity to learn about the scholarly work of their colleagues across the college. My special thanks to Marina Tolmacheva, who organized the event.

As always, best wishes as you continue your work in teaching, scholarship, and service to the University, our community, and your profession.

Barbara Couture, Dean
College of Liberal Arts

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Worthy of Note

*  Lisa Johnson (writing center), Barbara Monroe (English), and Jim Heidelberger (public school rep.) have received a $65,000 grant from the Office of the Superintendent for Public Instruction to work with remote Whitman County schools to involve pre-service English teachers (particularly those enrolling in English 324, Rhetoric and Composition for Teaching) an opportunity to learn to work with special education students via an On-line Writing Lab (OWL) environment. A revision of WSU’s current On-line Writing Lab will be funded through this grant.

*  Julie Kmec (sociology) won an honorable mention for the 2003 Upjohn Institute Dissertation Award. Her dissertation summary will be published in the institute’s working paper series.

*  Camille Roman (English) will chair a special session entitled “Fifties Cold War Cultures, Sexualities, and Poetry” at the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association in San Diego December 27–30.

*  Carol Ivory (fine arts) co-curated the exhibition “The Marquesas: Two Centuries of Cultural Traditions,” which opened October 23 at the Mission Houses Museum, Honolulu, Hawai’i. Ivory attended the opening, gave a lecture on Marquesan art and culture, and helped host six Marquesan artists and cultural leaders who participated in the opening week program. The exhibition runs until early December.

*  Robert Bauman (history, WSU Tri-Cities) has been invited to present his research at a conference on “The War on Poverty at 40” at the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton University on November 21. His presentation is titled “‘The Air Was More Filled with Tension than Smog’: Race and the War on Poverty in Los Angeles.”

*  William Willard (professor emeritus, anthropology), Benedict J. Colombi, and Bradford Wazaney (both Ph.D. candidates, anthropology) will participate in a panel on “American Indian Agriculture: Reservation Economies, Native Farmers, and Federal Agricultural Programs” at the annual meeting of the American Society for Ethnohistory in Riverside, California, November 5–9. Colombi is presenting a paper entitled “Dammed in Region Six: The Nez Perce, Agribusiness, and the Inequality of Scale.” Wazaney is presenting “Leasing Pine Ridge, 1900–1955.” Willard is panel chair and presenting “Comparative Analysis of the Impact of the Bureau of Reclamation and Irrigation on Yakama Fishermen and Mohave Flood Water Farmers.” The panel is one in a series of reports on studies of American Indian agriculture since 1491.

*  A number of speech and hearing sciences faculty and graduates will present papers at the annual convention of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association in Chicago November 13–15. Ella Inglebret and Trina Branch (M.A. ’02) will present a paper on Native Americans’ perceptions of the translucency of graphic symbol sets/systems commonly used in augmentative and alternative communication systems. Inglebret and alumna Britney Peterson will present a poster describing the classroom accommodations most frequently provided for students with learning disability, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and auditory processing disorder. Inglebret will also present a co-authored paper on assessment practices used by bilingual speech-language pathologists. Charles Madison will present one paper analyzing characteristics of published articles in the discipline and a second reporting the results of a survey that examined reasons professionals elect to pursue or not to pursue doctoral education. Teresa Paslawski co-authored a paper describing the speech characteristics of patients diagnosed with para-neoplastic cerebellar degeneration. Jayanti Ray will deliver a paper on cultural factors affecting communication in non-native English speakers. Gail Chermak will participate in a special session examining the evidence for a neurobiological basis of auditory processing disorders, sponsored by the convention program committee. Chermak also presented an invited session on the differential diagnosis of auditory processing disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder at the fall conference of the Washington State Association of School Psychologists at the Davenport Hotel in Spokane on October 17.

*  ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance, one of the Department of English’s two nineteenth-century literary journals, is cohosting a symposium on literary globalism at Yale November 14. (Details are available on-line.) Papers drawn from the symposium and other new scholarship on globalism will be gathered into a special issue of ESQ, guest edited by Wai Chee Dimock and Lawrence Buell.

*  Patty Ericsson (English) had a paper accepted for the Rhetoric Society of America’s annual conference to be held in Austin, Texas, in May 2004. The topic of this paper is “Kairos, Decorum, and Public Policy: Back Together and Better than Ever.” She has also been appointed to the Council of Writing Program Administrators’ (WPA) recently constituted media committee. This committee was formed by the WPA executive board to increase the presence of literacy educators’ voices in the media. Ericsson will also present a paper, titled “Making Composition Matter through the WPA Outcomes Statement: The OS as Transformative Policy,” at the Conference on College Composition and Communication convention in March.

*  Brenda Bowser (anthropology) will present a paper entitled “A Life History Approach to Transmission of Pottery Style in the Ecuadorian Amazon” at the annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) in Chicago in November. The paper will be part of a session that she organized with colleagues Lee Horne (University of Pennsylvania Museum) and Miriam Stark (University of Hawai’i) on “Breaking Down Boundaries: Anthropological Approaches to Cultural Transmission and Material Culture in Memory of Carol Kramer.” The session is sponsored by the AAA archaeology division. Bowser’s 2002 dissertation, “The Perceptive Potter: An Ethnoarchaeological Study of Pottery, Ethnicity, and Political Action in Amazonia” (University of California, Santa Barbara), has been nominated for the Dissertation Prize of the Society for American Archaeology.

*  LeRoy Ashby (history) was a commentator at a session of the annual Western History Association conference in Fort Worth in mid-October.

*  Greg Yasinitsky (music) was featured as a soloist with the Spokane Jazz Orchestra for “Best of the Northwest,” the opening concert of their twenty-ninth season. The SJO is the oldest continually playing community-based jazz ensemble in the country. Featured on the program was Yasinitsky’s original composition “Inside Passage” and Charles Argersinger’s (music) arrangement of Clifford Brown’s jazz classic “Joy Spring.” Yasinitsky and the SJO recently recorded “Inside Passage” and “Joy Spring” for the band’s upcoming CD “Best of the Northwest,” which will be released summer 2004. Yasinitsky has also been selected to conduct the Wyoming All-State Jazz Band in March 2004.

*  David Shier (philosophy) was on the program of the Northwest Conference on Philosophy at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, presenting comments on linguist Guy Dove’s paper “The Importance of First-Person Indexicals to Performatives.”

*  George Kennedy (English) will chair a Conference on College Composition and Communication special interest group on “Preparing Future Faculty: Past, Present, and Future” and will be a panel member of a workshop called “Designing and Developing Preparing Future Faculty Programs.” The CCCC 2004 meetings will take place in San Antonio in March.

*  Michael Delahoyde (English) presented “Visualizing Shakespeare” at the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association conference in Missoula, connecting Giulio Romano’s Trojan War paintings in the Palazzo Ducale in Mantua with the Lucrece poem. At the conference, Delahoyde also served on a panel discussion of “The Vital Balance: Achieving Career Goals [which he said he was not] while Maintaining a Healthy, Holistic Personal Life [which he said was none of their business].” He served additionally as a C.V. consultant and general swell diplomatic guy—and what a wit at the banquet!
     Collin Hughes (English) presented “The Heroic Cycle” at the RMMLA conference, a “best practices in the classroom” demonstration of using the archetypal journey as a resource for engaging students with contemporary literature. Hughes, Delahoyde, and Susan Kilgore (general education) showed fruitful uses of PowerPoint presentations and images in the classroom.
     A number of WSU graduate students and faculty were at RMMLA, including Michael Kramp and Michelle Sauer (both Ph.D. ‘00, English), who are now teaching at other institutions. Melanie Austin (English) also presented a paper, “Redefining Terror: Victor Frankenstein’s Axis of Evil.”

*  The School of Music and Theatre Arts hosted sixteen high school and middle school choirs at their annual Choral Festival, held October 18. Students were involved in performances and workshops with clinicians throughout the day and performances by WSU ensembles, including VoJazz, Madrigal Singers, and Concert Choir. The Choral Festival is organized by Lori Wiest, assisted by Julie Anne Wieck, John Weiss, Sheila Converse, and Jennifer Scovell (all music).

*  Christopher Lupke (foreign languages) has been elected to the post-1900 East Asian literature division of the Modern Language Association.

*  Paul Brians (English) has donated his collection of movie soundtrack recordings to the music library to support a planned film music course to be offered as part of the curriculum of the interdepartmental film studies minor.

*  Marina Tolmacheva (history, associate dean of liberal arts) was a participant in the fourth annual meeting of the Central Eurasian Studies Society, which took place at Harvard University October 2–5. Tolmacheva’s paper “Writing Kyrgyz History: Historiography in the Year of Kyrgyz Statehood” was presented at the session on “Power and Prestige in Representation.” She also chaired the panel titled “Imagining the Self: Mechanisms and Channels.” On October 24–26, Tolmacheva took part in the roundtable on the “Role of Research in Modernizing Teaching and Learning in Social Sciences and Humanities in Central Asia and Mongolia.” She was discussant on the panel titled “(Re)writing the National and Region’s Histories: Sources and Interpretations.” The roundtable was held in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, and sponsored by the Open Society Institute’s Central Asia Research Initiative.

*  Romana Hillebrand’s (English) article on framing devices, “It’s a Frame-up: Helping Students Devise Beginnings and Endings,” will be included in a booklet published by the National Writing Project as part of its thirtieth anniversary celebration. The booklet, “Celebrating 30 Years with 30 Ideas that Work,” is a compilation of classroom strategies and features NWP teachers’ tips that have appeared in NWP publications in recent years. Hillebrand’s article was not only published in The Quarterly journal, but also in the Breakthrough text.

*  Ann Christenson (fine arts), who will be returning from sabbatical leave in January, has exhibited her works as follows: “In Form: Five Ceramic Artists,” Archer Gallery, Vancouver, Washington; “Divine Vessels,” Art Works! Gallery, New Bedford, Massachusetts; “Sixth International Biennial of Ceramics,” Museu de Ceramic de Manises, Valencia, Spain; and “To Dream the Impossible,” The Pottery Workshop, Hong Kong.

*  Three papers stemming from research conducted through the Division of Governmental Studies and Services will be presented at the American Society of Criminology conference in Denver November 18–22. Nicholas P. Lovrich, Michael J. Gaffney (both DGSS), and Mitchell Pickerill (political science) are co-authors with Clayton Mosher (sociology, WSU Vancouver) and Vancouver students Robert Griffin and Chad Smith (both Ph.D. candidates, sociology) on the first paper, entitled “Legal and Extra-Legal Variables Influencing Police Discretion during Traffic Stops.” The second paper, entitled “The Impact of School Resource Officers on Student and Faculty Perceptions of Safety and the Educational Experience: A Preliminary Evaluation of Spokane’s School Resource Officer Program,” is co-authored by Lovrich, Gaffney, and Sgt. Keith Cummings of the Spokane Police Department. The third paper, authored by Lovrich, Jihong (Solomon) Zhao, and Ni He (both University of Nebraska, Omaha), is titled “Environmental Attributes and the Changing Dynamics in Female Officer Employment: Results from a Panel Study on U.S. Police Agencies.”

*  Kevin Haas (fine arts) was a visiting artist at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville in October. While there he presented a lecture about his work, conducted demonstrations, and produced two new artworks that are featured in the Fine Arts Faculty Exhibition at the Museum of Art.

*  As a member of the Trainernetz-werk for the Pacific Northwest (Goethe-Institut Internationes), Rachel Halverson (foreign languages) conducted a half-day workshop entitled “Kaffee, Kuchen, und Bach: Wie man mit Musik Geschichten lebendig macht” August 12 for German Immersion Week, Flathead Lake, Montana, sponsored by the Goethe-Institut and the University of Montana, and an abbreviated version of this workshop was presented at the Washington Association of Foreign Language Teachers conference in Wenatchee on October 11.

*  Marcel Wingate’s (professor emeritus, speech and hearing sciences) letter to the editor entitled “Major Problems with a Revisit” appears in the December 2003 issue of the Journal of Speech, Language, Hearing Research.

*  Fishtrap, the western region writer’s institute in Oregon, has invited Azfar Hussain (English) to be a guest speaker at its Winter Fishtrap writer’s conference in February. The conference will focus on tension within world affairs and issues of forgiveness or non-forgiveness.
     Hussain has been invited to give a public lecture, which is now titled “Latin American Poetry: When You Rub Those Words, They Catch Fire,” at Old Dominion University (ODU), Norfolk, on November 3. He has also been invited by the Theory Studies Group at the ODU English department to give a special talk titled “Beyond the Pomo-Poco Politburo: It Ain’t ‘Lit.Crit.Shit’ but Political Econ-omy, Stupid!” on November 4. Hussain’s paper “Tricontinental-ism on the World Stage: Re-reading Mao, Che, Cabral, and Umar in the Era of Tele-techno-electro-mediatic-hydrocarbon Capital” has been accepted for presentation at Rethinking Marxism’s Fifth International Gala Conference, to be held November 6–9 at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. This conference will bring together a host of theorists and activists from around the world.

*  The WSU jazz studies program was recently featured in Jazziz, Down Beat, and Jazz Times, the three leading international jazz magazines. The October issue of Jazziz includes a recording of the WSU Jazz Quartet (featuring Scott Ryckman, saxophone; Kelvin Monroe, piano; Jesse Hadley, bass; and Scott Tenhulzen, drums) on a “Jazziz on Disc” CD described in the magazine as a “CD featuring...today’s hottest student players.” The disc includes performances from the best jazz programs in the country, including WSU, the Julliard School, and the New England Conservatory. Down Beat magazine’s “Where to Study Jazz 2004” lists WSU among 142 U.S. college and university programs (unranked). WSU is included among thirty-two programs in the western U.S. and among only six programs in the Pacific Northwest. “The Jazz Education Guide 2002/2003” presented by Jazz Times magazine includes WSU among 292 US college and university programs (unranked) and among only seven programs in the Pacific Northwest.

50-year-old Dutch, epileptic, female southpaw breaks into the major leagues
This past summer, Linda Kittell (English) was called to The Show for a brief appearance at a Seattle Mariners–San Diego Padres game. Her poem “What Baseball Tells Us about Love” was read at home plate as part of a pre-game wedding ceremony. After the nuptials, June bride Holly Richardson threw out the first ball. Seattle announcer Dave Neihaus reported that the bride had a good arm, but not as good as Lefty Linda’s. Kittell reports she’s still feeling spring strong.

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Professional Productivity

*  Birgitta Ingemanson (foreign languages) is the co-author, with Larissa Aleksandrovskaia, of a biography of the famous Vladivostok merchant Otto Lindholm (1832–1914), published by the Society for Amur Studies in the Russian Far East, 2003. The book is in Russian. Ingemanson assisted with the research and editing of the main text and also prepared a large photo section with captions, excerpts from Lindholm’s 1850s diary, and testimonials from primary sources (diaries, letters, photo albums) in Vladivostok, 1894–1914. Cecil Williams (technology coordinator, foreign languages) expertly scanned more than 100 Lindholm photos so that they could be transmitted electronically to Vladivos-tok for the book project.

*  Donald Bishop (professor emeritus, philosophy) published an article in the October/November issue of Gandhi Marg, the journal of the Gandhi Peace Foundation.

*  Two articles Jim Short (professor emeritus, sociology) wrote for the Encyclopedia of Crime & Justice, 2nd edition, have now been published, “Criminology: Modern Controversies” and (with Elijah Anderson) “Delinquent and Criminal Subcultures.” Also, at the recent American Sociological Association meetings in Atlanta, Short moderated a Town Hall Meeting sponsored by the Section on Crime, Law, and Deviance, titled “What’s Missing, Undervalued, and Forgotten in Criminology.”

*  Tahira Probst’s (psychology, WSU Vancouver) “Job insecurity: Exploring a new threat to employee safety” appears in The Psychology of Workplace Safety, recently published by the American Psychological Association.

*  In late September, Terrence Cook (political science) published Separation, Assimilation, or Accommodation: Contrasting Ethnic Minority Policies (Praeger). On each head, chapters look at often antagonistic, variant strategies favored by dominant and subordinate ethnic groups. Then the book closes with two chapters on conflict resolution: eight ways out of a zero-sum conflict (Kashmir as case study) and then broader reflections on a “transformational” or “transgenic” game theory, focused on facilitating exit from any bad game rather than letting it play out to the ruin of one or both sides.

*  Ana María Rodríguez-Vivaldi’s (foreign languages) article “Shaking the Soul, the Mind, and the Reader: Laura Esquivel and the Multimedia Novel” appears in Pacific Coast Philology 38.

*  Greg Yasinitsky’s (music) compositions for vocal jazz ensemble “Just the Spot” and “D’lish” were both recently published by Sound Music Publications.

*  Tien-Tsung Lee (communication) has two co-authored papers accepted for publication: “Journalistic ideologies versus corporate interests: How Time and Warner’s merger influences Time’s content” in Communication Research Reports, and “Looking presidential: A comparison of newspaper photographs of candidates in the United States and Taiwan” in Asian Journal of Communication.

*  Jeff Joireman’s (psychology) article “Empathy and the Self-Absorption Paradox II: Self-rumination and self-reflection as mediators between shame, guilt, and empathy” is in press with Self and Identity. His coauthored chapter “The Zuckerman-Kuhlman personality questionnaire: Origin, development, and validity of a measure to assess an alternative five factor model of personality” will appear in On the Psychobiology of Personality: Essays in Honor of Marvin Zuckerman, R. M. Stelmack, ed., Oxford: Elsevier (publication in 2004). He’s also coauthored “A social dilemma analysis of organizational citizenship behaviors: Theoretical and methodological developments,” to appear in A Handbook on Organizational Citizenship Behavior: A Review of ‘Good Soldier’ Activity in Organizations from Nova Science Publishing.
     Joireman also co-wrote “Structural equation models assessing relationships among ethnicity, poverty, parents’ education, student activities, and academic achievement,” Technical Report No. 7, Washington School Research Center. This technical report provided support for a structural model of academic achievement in which student activities (amount of TV watched and homework done) mediate the relationship between various familial factors (ethnicity, parents’ education, and poverty) and academic achievement.

*  Shannon Densmore’s (English) story “Sun and Shadow” appears in Northwest Edge: Fictions of Mass Destruction.

*  Diana Pulido’s (foreign languages) article “Modeling the Role of Second Language Proficiency and Topic Familiarity in Second Language Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition through Reading” appears in Language Learning 53 (2).

*  Gene Rosa’s (sociology) article “Historical Perspectives on Re-shaping Knowledge, Re-shaping Society” is being published in Transaction Books’ Biotechnology between Commerce and Civil Society, edited by Nico Stehr. An article by Rosa and Jim Rice (Ph.D. candidate, sociology), titled “Public Reaction to Nuclear Power Siting and Disposal,” is being published in the International Encyclopedia of Energy, edited by Cutler J. Cleveland. An article titled “Key Challenges to Ecological Modernization Theory: Institutional Efficacy, Case Study Evidence, Units of Analysis, and Pace of Eco-efficiency,” by Rosa and Richard York (Ph.D. ’02, sociology), is being published in Organization and Environment. York, Rosa, and Thomas Dietz have two articles being published, “Footprints on the Earth: The Environmental Consequences of Modernity” in American Sociological Review, and “A Rift in Modernity? Assessing the Anthropogenic Sources of Global Climate Change with the STIRPAT Model” in the International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy.

*  Travis Pratt (political science, criminal justice) co-authored an article, “Replicating Sampson and Grove’s Test of Social Disorganization Theory: Revisiting a Criminological Classic,” that was published in the November issue of the Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency.

*  Bottom Dog Press is pleased to announce the publication of O Taste and See: Food Poems. Among the poets in this beautiful volume, released October 1, are Denise Levertov, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Frost, Gertrude Stein, Louise Bogan, Frank O’Hara, Pablo Neruda, Allen Ginsberg, James Wright, William Carlos Williams, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Carolyn Forche, Li-Young Lee, Wendy Bishop, Robert Hass, Wendell Berry, Pattiann Rogers, Mark Doty, Charles Simic, W.S. Merwin, Rita Dove, Diane Wakoski, Erica Jong, Ira Sadoff, Gerald Stern, Jane Hirchfield, and—most notably—Linda Kittell (English).

*  Christopher Lupke’s (foreign languages) essays “The Taiwan Modernists” and “The Taiwan Nativists” have recently appeared in The Columbia Companion to Modern East Asian Literature, edited by Joshua Mostow, and his essay on the writer Huang Chunming has just appeared in Pendergast and Pendergast, eds., The Reference Guide to World Literature.

*  Craig Parks (psychology) wrote a chapter on “The Social Psychology of Small Groups” in the Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems, which is a United Nations project issued through UNESCO to compile basic research on natural science, social science, engineering, and public policy that pertains to global stability and security issues. The encyclopedia is published on-line at www.eolss.net.

*  Vilma Navarro-Daniels’ (foreign languages) recent publications include “Divine Love, Lesbian Love: Appropriation and Re-signification of Catholic Imagery in Pedro Almodovar’s Entre Tinieblas,” in Power in Latin American and Iberian Literature and Film, proceedings of the Eleventh Annual Columbia and NYU Graduate Conference, Columbia University, 2002; “‘Un olor a mbar’: A reading from the relationship between power and discourse,” in Estreno 29 (1); and “Convent as territory of sin: The creation of a heterotopic space in Pedro Almodovar’s Entre Tinieblas,” in Monographic Review: “Permutations of Sin in Hispanic Literature” 18.

*  Azfar Hussain’s (English) article “Towards a Political Economy of Racism and Colonialism” will appear in Racial Ruptures: Race, Cultural Amnesia, and Disciplinary Transformations, forthcoming from the University of Illinois Press in 2004, while his popular essay “Conversations with Writers of Color” recently appeared in Meghbarta, a journal of activism.

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Student Activities and Awards

*  Jennifer Chiotti (Ph.D. candidate, criminal justice) won first place in the student writing competition at the annual meeting of the Western and Pacific Association of Criminal Justice Educators held in Park City, Utah, in October. Her paper was titled “Female Sex Offenders: A Gendered Perspective.”

*  C. David Johnson (Ph.D. candidate, anthropology) will present a paper, coauthored with Tim Kohler (anthropology) and entitled “Modeling Household Response to Fuel Wood Availability: Using Long-Term Data to Help Solve Current Problems,” in a symposium entitled “The Socio-natural Connection: Integrating Archaeology and Environmental Studies for 21st-Century Conservation” at the upcoming annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in Montreal, Quebec.

*  Crystal Gray (M.A. candidate, psychology) was invited to present two workshops at the Washington School Social Work Conference, “Bridging the Gap: Removing Barriers to Student Success,” on Saturday, October 25, in Chelan. Her workshops were titled “Interventions with Autism Spectrum Disorders” and “Social Skills with Autism Spectrum Disorders.”

*  Melissa Hussain’s (Ph.D. candidate, English) article “‘Hers the worst tortures that our souls can know’: Towards a Third Space Black Feminism in the Poetry of Phillis Wheatley” will appear in Panini, a journal of language, literature, and culture, in fall 2003. She presented her paper “Can the Subaltern Dream? A Rereading of Spivak in the Post-September 11 World” at the Pacific Northwest American Studies Association conference in Lincoln City, Oregon, in April 2003. She also presented her paper “The Political Economy of Anger: A Hermeneutic for Third World Women’s Texts” at the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association conference in Missoula, Montana, in October. Finally, her paper “Rethinking Feminist Political Economy in the ‘Post-September 11 World’” has been accepted for presentation at Rethinking Marxism’s Fifth International Gala Conference, entitled “Marxism and the World Stage,” to be held at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in November.

*  Elizabeth G. Wilmerding (Ph.D. candidate, anthropology) provided a talk for visiting primary and secondary school science teachers on the use of the Charles Conner Museum research collection during the recent Washington Science Teachers Association conference held at WSU. In early November she will present a paper, “Palynology as a Tool for Investigating Plant Use in a Prehistoric Context in the Aleutian Islands,” at the Eleventh Annual Arctic Conference hosted by the University of Washington in Seattle.

*  The latest issue of COLUMBIA: The Magazine of Northwest History (Washington State Historical Society, fall 2003) has an article by Jeff Crane (Ph.D. candidate, history) titled “The Elwha Dam,” drawn from his dissertation research.

*  Benedict J. Colombi’s (Ph.D. candidate, anthropology) article entitled “Medicine Crossing: Representing Native American Lived Experience” is being published in the Journal of Northwest Anthropology 37 (2).

*  Jessica Feldmeier, María Mercedes Ortola-Ramón, Charles Parrish, Berta Villa, Beatriz Vargas, and Gabriela Gámez (all M.A. candidates, foreign languages) gave presentations at the annual conference of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association in Missoula, Montana, the weekend of October 9–11.

*  Jessica Woelke, a senior in political science with a minor in Chinese, and David Goodman, a University of Idaho undergraduate taking Chinese at WSU, have both won David L. Boren Scholarships from the National Security Education Program to carry out advanced Chinese language study abroad in Taiwan and China. Each was ranked the top candidate from his or her institution in the internal competition and then won this prestigious and lucrative ($20,000) scholarship at the national level. Woelke is studying in the fall in the Inter-University Program at Tsing-hua University in Beijing; Goodman will first go to Taiwan and study in the International Chinese Language Program at National Taiwan University before moving to the ACC Program in Beijing this fall.

*  Melissa Baty (senior, English) presented a paper entitled “Scenes of the Sea: The Influence of Travelogues of Italy on Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway” at the Rocky Mountain MLA conference. She incorporated research from the Leonard and Virginia Woolf Collection of the library into the paper, which explored the similarities in oceanic imagery between Woolf’s novel and the travelogues.

*  Tia-Maria Hoeller (M.F.A. candidate) opens November 13 in a showcase of contemporary emerging artists. The exhibition, entitled “Fresh,” will run through January 17 at the Art Ark in Kelowna, British Columbia.

*  Congratulations to the following undergraduates, whose writing portfolios have been selected as the best of all submissions for spring 2003: Nicola Hayes, English; Jessica Swanson, English; Adam Rasmussen, religious studies; Brian Stone, philosophy; Paul Long, social sciences; and Maximilian Raducu, business/finance. The recognition includes a $100 scholarship. Congratulations also to Colin Harbke (M.S. candidate, psychology) for his successful project proposal to develop and implement peer-led behavioral skills training workshops to teach college students the benefits of comprehensive literature reviews and the skills necessary to complete such reviews. Harbke will receive a $2,500 fellowship. Awards are made possible by the Harold and Jeanne Rounds Olsen Writing across the Curriculum endowment fund.

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Alumni News

*  Neil L. O’Brien (Ph.D. ’01, history) recently had his book published, An American Editor in Early Revolutionary China: John William Powell and the “China Weekly/Monthly Review.”

*  Heather Mills (M.A. ’02, political science) is currently putting her master’s degree to work in New Hampshire working for the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), a public charity working to reduce the threats from nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons and materials. Currently she is the project coordinator for the state of New Hampshire for NTI’s nonpartisan public education campaign to elevate this key national security issue and make it a higher priority for elected officials and policy makers.

*  Nickolus Meisel (M.F.A. ‘02) has been awarded a Public Art Commission in the amount of $12,000. His commission will be located in the Seattle Chinatown/International District Community Center located at Eighth Avenue and Dearborn.

*  Brenda Jackson (Ph.D. ‘02, history) has recently received a contract from the University of Nebraska Press for her dissertation, “Finding Solace after the Storm: Thomas and Elizabeth Tannatt and the Post-Civil War Inland Empire.” In this exceptionally well-written double biography, Jackson examines the impact of the Civil War on this eastern couple and sees their westward movement and their very conscious effort to spread middle class culture as an important nationalizing factor in the history of the American West.

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Events Examine Lewis and Clark Expedition

The Department of History has announced a statewide program in observance of the Lewis & Clark Bicentennial spanning four years.

“Each presentation has a common theme,” according to Roger Schlesinger, history department chair. “All of the events will share the objective of introducing tribal perspectives.”

The first event is titled “Sacagawea/Sacajawea and the Lewis & Clark Expedition: American Indian Perspectives” and will be held November 12, 2003, at 7 p.m. in CUE 203 on the Pullman campus.

“All of the participants in the series are recognized authorities on various aspects of the Lewis and Clark expedition,” said Schlesinger. Participants for the first event include Sally McBeth, professor, University of Northern Colorado; Amy Mossett, Mandan/Hidatsa, Three Affiliated Tribes of North Dakota, and tribal liaison for the National Council of the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial; Reba Teran, cultural director for the Eastern Shoshone Tribe, Wind River Reservation, Wyoming; and Roderick Ariwite, Lemhi Shoshone, Idaho.

“People attending these presentations are likely to learn about the conflicting tribal accounts surrounding the identity of Sacagawea/Sacajawea,” said Professor Orlan Svingen (history). “Was she Lemhi Shoshone or was she Hidatsa? There are also disagreements about her name and how long she lived. Did she die at the age of 24 in present-day South Dakota, or did she live into her nineties at the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming?” Svingen asked. “Tribal perspectives, including tribal oral histories, are vital to our understanding of the expedition.”

During November 2004 and November 2005, the series goes on the road to cities across the Northwest with historian, performer, and professor Jeanne Eder (Ph.D. ‘00, history), Dakota Sioux, presenting her portrayal of Sacagawea, the Shoshone woman who accompanied the Lewis and Clark expedition. Performances will be held in the Vancouver, Washington–Portland, Oregon, area; the Tri-Cities; Lewiston, Idaho; and Spokane. Eder’s performance examines the myths about Sacagawea’s life and presents an often overlooked historical perspective of Indian women. Historians and local tribal representatives will provide additional historical and cultural context.
The final event of this series will be held in March 2006, “Reflections on the Lewis & Clark Bicentennial.” For more information, see libarts.wsu.edu/lewisandclark/.

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DGSS Activities

The Division of Governmental Studies and Services (DGSS), with the Washington State Institute for Community Oriented Policing (WSICOP) and the Spokane Police Department, is serving as the “research partner” for the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Washington on Project Safe Neighborhoods. This national program to reduce gun violence through targeted prosecution and public awareness calls for a three-year effort to coordinate prosecution, a media campaign, and data collection and analysis, as well as providing funding for evaluation of the program. The first phase of the evaluation project, a mail survey of 10,000 households in eastern Washington, begins this month. Nicholas P. Lovrich (director, DGSS), Michael J. Gaffney (associate director, DGSS), and Michael J. Erp (director, WSICOP) will be coordinating the data collection and analysis as well as the evaluation elements of the program.

November will be the first month of public activities on two projects performed by the DGSS for the Spokane Police Department. Lovrich and Gaffney are co-PIs on the latest in a series of one-year contracts for research, consultation, and support. Key elements in this year’s contract include the development, delivery, and evaluation of a contact-feedback process to assess perceptions of citizens who have had contact with the Spokane Police Department, and evaluation of a pilot project to test the effect of a department-sponsored exercise program on commissioned officer stress and physical health.

DGSS will issue a final report of the third observational study conducted for the Washington Traffic Safety Commission, a project involving field research on the use of child safety seats in Washington. Lovrich and Steven Stehr (political science) are co-PIs. Over the three-year period DGSS has performed observational studies of Washington drivers on the use of seatbelts, infant carseats, and child booster seats. This year’s project included comparisons of drivers in rural and urban areas as well as drivers in Hispanic, Russian-speaking, and Native American communities.

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Authors' Recognition Reception

The College of Liberal Arts celebrated faculty achievement October 29 with the fall Authors’ Recognition Reception.

Press release

Photos from the reception

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Conference on Northeast Asian Security

 As part of a WSU visit to International Christian University in Japan, four liberal arts graduate students were selected in a competitive process to attend a three-day conference at ICU on the issue of northeast Asian security. They joined students from ICU, South Korea, and Rotary Peace Scholars from around the world in simulated peace negotiations among Japan, South Korea, North Korea, the United States, Russia, and China. They successfully crafted an agreement and held a public press conference on the final day of the conference outlining their achievements. Professor Thomas Preston (political science) served as one of several faculty advisors of the student conference.

Pictured, from left): Graduate students Michael Infranco (political science), Hilary Elmendorf (American studies), Asako Stone (psychology), and Jason Blazevic (history) represented Washington State University at the Conference on Northeast Asian Security.

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Departmental Innovation Award
Deadline: December 5

The College of Liberal Arts is pleased to announce the annual competition for the Departmental Innovation Award. This $5,000 award will be given to the liberal arts department or academic program that submits a promising plan for departmental innovation and for specific use of the award funds. The award may be used for operations or as a salary and benefits supplement and must be expended within two years of the date of the award. The department/program winner will be announced in January.

College Fellows Award
Deadline: January 30

The College of Liberal Arts is pleased to announce the annual College Fellows Award. This award, of $2,000 a year for two years, will be presented to a tenured or tenure track faculty member in the college who submits a successful proposal describing an ongoing academic, scholarly, artistic, or teaching project that he/she plans to complete or make substantial progress on over a two-year period. The intent of the award is: first, to provide recognition to faculty members who are pursuing substantive projects involving original research, scholarship, or creative effort and/or the improvement of teaching; and, second, to engage our faculty in public discussion of such work. The application should be accompanied by a department or program endorsement. The funding may be used for supplies, research or creative activities support, or as a salary and benefits supplement. The award will be announced at the annual college awards ceremony, with funding commencing the subsequent fall term.

For full details on both these awards, as well as other faculty awards and nomination opportunities, please see libarts.wsu.edu (click For Faculty & Staff, then Grants).


February 1: Nominations due for Outstanding Graduating Senior.

March 1: Nominations due for college awards: Distinguished Achievement Awards (faculty, alumni and friends), Outstanding Staff Award, and the William F. Mullen Excellence in Teaching Award.

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Former Chair, Professor of History Remembered

Raymond Muse, 88, longtime chair of the Department of History, died October 28 in San Diego after a long illness.

In 1948, Muse became an instructor in the Department of History and Political Science at WSU. The following year he was promoted to assistant professor. By 1956 he had become chair of the newly formed Department of History, a position he held until his retirement in 1979, by which time it was ranked among the top 15% of history departments in the U.S. When he retired, Muse had been chair of a department longer than anyone else in WSU history. Muse played a major role in the establishment of the Faculty Senate at WSU and the creation of the American Studies and Asia Programs.

“Ray’s strong suit was the ability to cast a rosy glow on the direst conditions or the gloomiest prospects and make a person or an entire department feel good about themselves,” offered David Stratton, Muse’s successor as chair. “He was a ‘human engineer,’ who specialized in building self-confidence and a sense of hope and well-being in people.”

Muse’s sense of humor was legendary. Students didn’t come late to his classes for fear of missing his opening joke. He loved teaching and was a fervent supporter of civil liberties and free speech, demonstrated best perhaps by his testimony in the landmark John Goldmark libel trial in 1964.

In addition to his wife, Marianne, Muse is survived by three sons, seven grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren, as well as one sister (of seven siblings).

Memorial gifts may be made to the Raymond Muse Scholarship Fund in the WSU Department of History.

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Art of sculptor Rafael Mendoza: couple dancing and work in progress
Artist Rafael Mendoza received his bachelor of fine arts and master of fine arts from Washington State University in 2000 and 2002, respectively. His life and talent were cut short by an aneurysm in October 2003 at the age of 28. A retrospective of his work was featured in Fine Arts Gallery III, including a sculpture in progress (right); this final piece, the artist’s tools, and the surrounding debris were moved to a central location in the gallery, placed just as they were found in the artist’s studio.

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