
Jan./Feb. 2006

Dean's Message

Everyone together now: This is SPRING semester! Happy New Year greetings to all, and of course—Welcome back! Thinking “Spring” will enhance our forward-looking efforts! Just click your heels three times, saying “Spring!” each time and...

Currently before you in draft form is the new College Mission Statement. The draft received comment from college leadership last semester and your responses by January 10. Chairs and directors met at a January 17 College Leadership Retreat with the latest version in hand. We may choose to revise it slightly after we receive revised departmental plans on March 1 or during the revision of the College Plan. The target is to complete a draft of the College Plan this spring. Continuing revisions of our Mission and Plan will occur during fall 2006, the beginning of the final year of the University’s 2002-2007 Strategic Plan. This schedule should allow us to collaborate effectively with university-wide planning processes.

Provost Bates’ allocation of nine new faculty positions to liberal arts allows us to fill some of these effective August 2006 and the remainder effective August 2007. The Dean’s Advisory Committee on Resource Allocation (DACRA) has agreed to play a more involved role in recommending allocation of these positions. In past years, DACRA met only in the late spring; this year we met regularly in fall 2005 and will continue throughout spring 2006. The new faculty positions, as well as administrative costs and personnel resources for instructional delivery, are the focus of our discussions. DACRA will review the March 1 departmental submissions and make recommendations on hiring and other resource matters by May.

My November comments advocated use, for all constituencies, of a single message—compelling, concise, and aspiring. Companion to our revised Mission and College Plan is the College Development Campaign Plan, a document now over eighteen months in the making, improved by numerous unit-level submissions and edits. It uses three integrated and integrating elements: the Public Academy, Living the Murrow Legacy, and the Integrated Arts Initiative. These elements have now also served as the basis for our college’s Major Capital Plan. The elements integrate within our goal to have societal impact locally to globally. Our facilities requests embrace this integration through identification of Terrell Mall as our “Main Street”—a place where enrichment of our culture, our work and play together, our efforts to improve the world engage us in ways broadly applicable to individual and collective socio-economic issues. Your unit chair or director will likely share this facilities plan with you soon.

We hope to officially implement a College of Liberal Arts Season for 2006-2007. Each year we offer many significant opportunities to our students, our public, and our faculty and staff. Last year and this year, we have attracted collaboration in coordination and funding of events from units across the University. The Season is an embodiment—in high-visibility settings—of our Public Academy, Murrow Legacy, and Arts Initiative elements. Please forward your suggestions via your chairs and directors; we plan to advertise the Season in the summer 2006 Washington State Magazine.

All best wishes for the coming semester—yes, the SPRING semester! Please accept my continuing thanks for your contributions to all that makes our progress possible!

Erich Lear, Dean
College of Liberal Arts

Worthy of Note

Noël Sturgeon (women’s studies) was honored with a 2006 Martin Luther King Jr. Distinguished Service Award. These annual awards recognize Palouse-area individuals and organizations for their outstanding contributions to promoting human rights. Nominators wrote that Sturgeon’s commitment to human rights and social justice is realized through her teaching, research, and community activism. She is an active mentor for students and consistently teaches the ideals espoused by Dr. King inside and outside the classroom. She is known to take special interest in supporting junior faculty members, particularly those from underrepresented communities.

Nicholas Kazan, a Hollywood screenwriter, will employ John E. Kicza (history) as an historical advisor for his screenplay "Cortés," which begins principal filming in September of this year. The film will be shot entirely in Spanish and native languages and is budgeted at $40 million.

Ryan M. Hare (music) was selected to receive a 2005 Artist Trust/Washington State Arts Commission fellowship. The award recognizes an artist’s creative excellence and accomplishment, professional achievement, and continuing dedication to their artistic discipline.

The Kennedy Center/American College Theatre Festival has sent out Meritorious Achievement Awards for WSU’s fall production of Romeo and Juliet. One was awarded to Richard Slabaugh (theatre arts) for set design, and one was awarded to Stan Brown (theatre arts) for direction.

Joan Grenier-Winther (foreign languages and cultures) has received an NEH fellowship to support her project involving the development of an online critical edition of the late medieval anonymous French lyric poem "La Belle dame qui eut mercy" (The Beautiful Lady Who Had Mercy).

John Irby (communication) has been selected as a 2006 American Society of Newspaper Editors Institute for Journalism Education fellow. The key objective of this prestigious program is to update educators’ hands-on experience and to impact the newsroom’s understanding of journalism education. Irby, one of approximately fifteen professors selected from across the United States, will work in a large newspaper newsroom for six weeks this summer under rigorous work conditions. The location has yet to be determined.

David Pietz (history) has received a twelve-month NEH research fellowship to continue work on "“Engineering a State of Nature: Hydraulic Engineering on the North China Plain, 1949–1999." Pietz also presented a paper, "Creating State, Nature, and Identity: Water on the North China Plain," at the “Water and Civilization” conference sponsored by UNESCO in Paris December 1–4.

Ana María Rodríguez-Vivaldi (foreign languages and cultures) presented a paper on "Fantasy as Strategy: Contemporary Views of Cuba through Literature and Film" during the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association annual conference in Malibu, California, in November.

Jennifer Scriggins (music), French horn instructor, has been appointed editor of the Northwest Horn Society newsletter.

Gene Rosa (sociology) has been selected as an expert reviewer of the report "Going the Distance? The Safe Transport of Spent Fuel and High-level Radioactive Waste in the United States" by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), and he was a coauthor of the NAS report "Thinking Strategically: The Appropriate Use of Metrics for the Climate Change Science Program." He has also been appointed to a National Research Council/NAS committee to advise the National Oceanographic and Aeronautics Administration on improving the understanding of the human dimensions of global climate variability and change. In December, Rosa served as an invited panelist at the symposium on the "White Paper for Risk Governance," prepared for the European Commission of the European Union, at the annual meetings of the Society for Risk Analysis in Orlando, Florida.

Paula Coomer, Andrea Mason (both English), and Billy Merck (Ph.D. candidate, English) each facilitated one night of the Moscow Community Creative Writing Workshop, a free writing workshop for community members sponsored by the Idaho Commission on the Arts, Western States Arts Foundation, and Latah Community Foundation.

Michael Myers’ (philosophy) book Let the Cow Wander (University of Hawaii Press, 1995) is cited in the second edition of John Koller’s The Indian Way (Pearson Prentice Hall, 2006) as "an interesting examination of key metaphors in the Vedas and Upanisads."

Augusta Rohrbach (English) attended the annual meeting of the American Studies Association in November, where she presented "The Diary May Be from Dixie: Mapping Southern Literary History." The paper is drawn from the final chapter of her work in progress, "Ar’n’t I a Writer? Trading on Race and Gender in the U.S. Literary Marketplace."

Camille Roman (English, American studies, women’s studies) has learned that the University of California Libraries is acquiring the page proofs of her project The New Anthology of American Poetry (Rutgers University Press), which will include three volumes when completed. The page proofs will be housed in the archives of the Riverside campus, where scholars will be able to study and trace the final phases of editorial development for each volume. Roman is editing the anthology with Steven Gould Axelrod and Thomas Travisano. In November, Roman presented the paper “‘The Caged Bird’s Song’ and Its Discontents” in the 2005 vice-presidential Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association forum "The Present and Future of Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Class Studies" in Malibu, California. Other featured panelists included Anne Cheng (University of California, Berkeley), Susan McCabe (University of Southern California), and George Haggery (University of California, Riverside).

C. Richard King, Carmen R. Lugo-Lugo (both comparative ethnic studies), and Mary K. Bloodsworth-Lugo (philosophy) have received a contract from Rowman & Littlefield for a book with the working title "Animating Difference: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Contemporary Children’s Films."

Paul Brians (English) presented a demonstration-lecture on "Techniques for Mixing Text, Stills, and Clips in Computer-based Film Lectures" at the annual conference of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, October 21. An interview with Brians was one of the sources used by Candace Murphy, staff writer for the Oakland Tribune, in her October 25 column for their publication "Inside Bay Area" titled "Good Words Gone Bad." The October 27 Art a la Carte program consisted of Brians’ multimedia presentation "The Roots of Star Wars, or Why Princess Leia Fights like a Girl."

The 2005 WSU Jazz Festival was presented November 9. Eighteen school bands from throughout the Northwest came to WSU to present performances, work with distinguished adjudicators, participate in clinics presented by WSU’s outstanding faculty and students, and attend a concert featuring Jazz Northwest, the WSU faculty ensemble. A highlight of the festival was the gala concert featuring the award-winning WSU Jazz Big Band, directed by Greg Yasinitsky (music), performing with faculty soloists and the special guest artist, nationally-renowned jazz and salsa trombonist Wayne Wallace. The concert was well attended by the WSU community and the music students visiting campus. The audience was enthusiastic, giving the performers a standing ovation. The WSU Jazz Festival was made possible by the support of the WSU Jazz Society (a student organization), the ASWSU Student Entertainment Board, the School of Music and Theatre Arts (Gerald Berthiaume, director), and the College of Liberal Arts (Erich Lear, dean).

Susan Armitage (history) has been appointed by the governor to the fifteen-person advisory committee for the Women’s Consortium, which was funded by the legislature to gather and publicize women’s history in Washington. She has also been asked by the incoming president of the Organization of American Historians, Richard White, to serve on the Lerner-Scott Committee, which yearly gives a prize for the best dissertation in U.S. women’s history.

Michael Delahoyde (English) presented "Visible Knowledge in the Shakespeare Classroom" at the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association conference in Coeur d’Alene in October. He also served on a journal editors’ panel and provided CV consultations. The conference enjoyed record attendance, and the WSU Department of English was very well represented.

The WSU jazz studies program has been included in the feature "Where to Study Jazz 2006" in Downbeat magazine, and also in the "2005–2006 Jazz Education Guide" published by Jazz Times magazine. Both publications feature photos of WSU student musicians.

Kevin Haas (fine arts) has a solo exhibit, titled Perimeters & Markings, at Shift Gallery in Seattle through the month of January. In February he will chair a session of international speakers at the ninety-fourth annual conference of the College Art Association, to be held in Boston. The session, titled "Convergent Theories: Printmaking, Photography, and Digital Media," will examine how artists working in the field of printmaking have responded to changing technologies as the boundaries between different media shift or disappear. Examples of his artwork and further information on the session can be found at http://www.accumulated.org.

Diane Berger (program support supervisor I) retired on December 31 from the Department of Political Science/Criminal Justice Program. She worked in the department for twelve years; prior to that she was employed with the Budget Office in position control. Her length of service at Washington State University was approximately 27 years.

On January 20, Jim Short (professor emeritus, sociology) spoke at a festschrift honoring a long-time University of Chicago colleague, Irving Spergel. The theme of the festschrift was "What Works: Addressing the Community Youth Gang Problem in the United States." Short’s talk was titled "Promoting Research Integrity in Community-based Intervention Research." Lorine A. Hughes (Ph.D. ’03, sociology) was among the respondents to papers presented at the festschrift.

Joddy Murray (English, WSU Tri-Cities) presented a paper entitled "Teaching Digital Poetry: Animating the 'Body Electric'" October 22 at the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association conference.

Roberta Kelly (communication) judged the nonfiction, nontechnical book category and the CD-ROM educational reference category for the thirty-third Clarion Awards competition, sponsored by the Association for Women in Communications. The Clarion is widely recognized as a hallmark of communications achievement. Awards were presented at the AWC’s annual professional conference held in Lubbock, Texas, on October 22.

On November 6, Meyer Distinguished Professor of Music Greg Yasinitsky (music) was a featured composer at the Rochester (NY) Institute of Technology in a special concert celebrating the one hundred seventy-fifth anniversary of the institution. Eight of Yasinitsky’s works were performed by a variety of ensembles in addition to pieces written by four other composers from around the country. The concert was organized by the Commission Project of New York, one of the nation’s top organizations supporting the creation of new music. On November 18, Yasinitsky was the guest artist for the College of San Mateo (CSM) Jazz Festival in California. Yasinitsky was featured as a saxophone soloist with the CSM Jazz Band in a program that included a number of his own compositions.

Carol Ivory (fine arts) has been invited to chair a panel discussion with Maori (New Zealand) and Northwest Coast Indian weavers, as part of events connected with the February 3–5 opening of The Eternal Thread, an exhibition of Maori textiles at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture in Seattle.

Barry Hewlett (anthropology, WSU Vancouver) traveled to the Central African Republic in November and December 2005 to conduct a study of cosleeping patterns among Aka foragers and Ngandu farmers. The project was supported by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. In October, Hewlett gave invited lectures on "Ebola, Culture, and Politics in Central Africa" and "Human Sexual Diversity" at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

A print of Susan Swan’s (general education) watercolor painting Hotel de Paris will be framed and displayed by Hotel Abbatial Saint-Germain in Paris, France.

Andrew Jorgenson (sociology) has been invited to present his research on the environmental impacts of the structure of international trade at a workshop at the University of Lund, Sweden, February 15–16. He has also been invited to give a talk on the environmental impacts of foreign investment at Vilnius University, Lithuania, on February 17.

T.V. Reed (associate dean of liberal arts, director of American studies, professor of English) appeared on CNN’s "The Situation Room," anchored by Wolf Blitzer, on December 13, providing historical and cultural context for their story on the award-winning "gay cowboy" film Brokeback Mountain. Reed’s recently published work, The Art of Protest: Culture and Activism from the Civil Rights Movement to the Streets of Seattle, was the featured book in the Chronicle of Higher Education’s "Verbatim" interview column for January 6, 2006.

The WSU chapter of the National Society of Collegiate Scholars has recognized Roberta Kelly (communication) as a Distinguished Member.

Tim Kohler (anthropology) will give an invited lecture on "The Bandelier Archaeological Excavation Project: A Look Back and a Look Ahead" to the Friends of Anthropology of the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in Santa Fe on February 10. He has also been invited to give a talk at Harvard University in December 2006 in a symposium entitled "The Neolithic Demographic Transition and Its Consequences," co-organized by Ofer Bar-Yosef of Harvard and Jean-Pierre Bocquet-Appel of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (France). His title will be "Is There Evidence for a Neolithic Demographic Transition in the Northern North American Southwest?"

Jeanne Johnson (speech and hearing sciences) presented an all-day workshop in December for speech-language pathologists from North Thurston School District on assessment and intervention with children who have significant communication challenges due to multiple disabilities.

Otwin Marenin (political science, criminal justice), at the invitation of the Ministry of the Interior of the United Arab Emirates, gave a presentation on "Human Trafficking as a Threat to States, Society, and Victims" at the Security and Safety Conference and Exhibition: Middle East 2005, held in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, November 14–17, 2005. He then journeyed to Moscow, Russia, where he had been invited to be a commentator on research reports presented by the National Project Institute–Social Contract, the INDEM Foundation, and the Moscow State University Department of Economics at the conference on "Public Safety and Security: Delivery, Assessment, and Modernization," held November 18.

Zheng-min Dong (foreign languages and cultures) has been selected to serve on the selection committee for the 2006–2007 Eurasian Undergraduate Exchange Program (UGRAD) sponsored by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State, and administered by the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX).

Don Dillman (sociology) was the featured speaker at two recent conferences, the annual meeting of the Midwest Association for Public Opinion on November 18 in Chicago and the eleventh annual Graduate Education and Graduate Student Research Conference in Hospitality and Tourism on January 6 in Seattle.

Karen Lupo (anthropology) received the fall 2005 Edward R. Meyer Grant Development Award and will use the time to write grants for a project to gather longitudinal ecological markers from archaeological sites in the Central African Republic to monitor prehistoric rainforest ecology. She also organized a symposium for the International Council for Archaeozoology (ICAZ) conference to be held in Mexico City in 2006. She will be giving two papers at that meeting.

The Solstice Woodwind Quintet, made up of WSU music faculty, collaborated with Bill McGlaughlin, long-time host of National Public Radio’s "Saint Paul Sunday," to record an installment of the classical music radio show at WSU’s Bryan Hall in September 2005. It will be aired on Northwest Public Radio stations this spring. In October, the group also presented a full program in a return appearance on the chamber music series at Whitman College in Walla Walla and made recruiting visits to several of the region’s leading high school music programs, where they performed for and interacted with high school music students.

Washington State University and the Edward R. Murrow School of Communication were strongly represented at the National Communication Association’s annual convention in Boston in November. Faculty members Rick Busselle, Jolanta Drzewiecka, and Mary Meares, as well as graduate students Jezreel J. Graham, Sudeshna Roy, Joy Scott, Lingling Zhang, Erin Gallagher, Hyeonjin Kang, Brian Lempke, and Pritha Sen, presented papers. Meares was elected secretary and Drzewiecka completed her term as the chair for the International and Intercultural Division. Professor Patty Sias was the program planner and became chair for the Organizational Communication Division.

Andrew Duff (anthropology) presented a paper, "Participation, Place, and the Social Construction of Great House Communities,"” at the tenth biennial Southwest Symposium in Las Cruces, New Mexico, January 13.

Stephen Chalmers (fine arts) chaired a panel titled "Imaging in the Arts: A Bridge between Disciplines" at the 2006 Hawaii International Conference on Arts and Humanities, held January 10–15 in Honolulu. The panel discussed how digital media has united otherwise disparate areas in the studio arts and included Brian Goeltzenleuchter (Central Washington University) and Garth Amundson (Western Washington University). In March, Chalmers’ work will be included in the juried show Sun Pictures to MegaPixels: Archaic Processes to Alternative Realities (Pre- and Post-Modernist Photography) at the Williamsburg Art and Historical Center in New York City. His work will also be included in the exhibition (and catalog for) Road Show at the Florida State University Museum of Fine Arts February through April.

Todd Butler (English) presented two papers at the 2005 Modern Language Association (MLA) conference in Washington, D.C. The first, for a standing session on law and literature, was entitled "Bedeviling Spectacle: Images of Law and Theater in Early Modern Witchcraft." The second, part of a special session on "Politics and Public Opinion in Seventeenth-Century England" organized by Butler, was entitled "Hobbes and the Presbyterian Confessional." Butler was also elected to the executive committee of the MLA discussion group on law and literature.

The Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences was the only department asked to participate in the November 10, 2005, Multicultural Student Retention Summit, sponsored by the Office of Multicultural Student Services, Office of the Vice President for Equity and Diversity, and Enrollment Services of the Office of Student Affairs and the Office of the Provost. The department’s work with Native American students was identified as a model during discussions at the summit.

Samantha DiRosa (fine arts) was recently included in two exhibitions, Empirical/Experimental at Manifest Creative Research Gallery in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Being in Body at Weber State University in Utah. Her video "Containing Lightness" is also featured in the Loop Sanctuary III video festival at the Chapel + Cultural Center at Rensselaer in Troy, New York, in January.

Irenee Beattie (sociology) has accepted an invitation to join the editorial board of the Journal of Marriage and Family, a top specialty journal for interdisciplinary scholarship on families.

Ruth Kirk, author of more than thirty books on natural history, archaeology, and ethnography, received the Humanities Washington Award October 14 at the Washington State History Museum in Tacoma. As the 2005 honoree, Kirk received a $1,000 award to support a public humanities project at the organization of her choice. Kirk has opted to donate her award to the WSU Department of Anthropology Scholarship Fund, which benefits advanced students based on excellence and leadership.

Faculty in Print

Michelle Kendrick (English, WSU Vancouver) has published “Invisibility, Race, and the Interface” in the most recent Rhetoric Review 24(4).

Mary K. Bloodsworth-Lugo (philosophy) and Carmen R. Lugo-Lugo (comparative ethnic studies) published an article, "'The War on Terror' and Same-Sex Marriage: Narratives of Containment and the Shaping of U.S. Public Opinion," in the October issue of Peace and Change. The article was profiled in the October 26 online edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Andrew Jorgenson’s (sociology) article "Foreign Direct Investment and Pesticide Use Intensity in Less-developed Countries: A Quantitative Investigation" is forthcoming in the journal Society and Natural Resources.

Bernadette H. Hyner (foreign languages and cultures) published an article titled "'The Nasty Little Pea'’: Gisela von Arnim’s Proto-feminist Re-Vision of Hans Christian Andersen’s 'The Ugly Duckling'" in the spring 2006 issue of the journal Germanic Notes and Reviews.

Michael Hanly’s (English) critical edition and translation of a fourteenth-century French poem appeared in 2005 as Medieval Muslims, Jews, and Christians in Dialogue: The "Apparicion maistre Jehan de Meun" of Honorat Bovet (Medieval & Renaissance Texts and Studies). The book presents comprehensive explanatory notes to the reformist dream vision, including comments on seventy-five Latin marginalia added by the medieval author. The poem stages a wide-ranging discussion of contemporary crises in Western Europe and is remarkable for the central role played by a Muslim speaker, who utters many of the text’s harshest criticisms of Christian negligence and transgression.

MIT Press published the book Law and Social Justice, edited by Joseph Keim Campbell (philosophy), David Shier (philosophy), and Michael O’Rourke (University of Idaho). The book includes two chapters authored by Harry Silverstein (philosophy). This is volume three of the series Topics in Contemporary Philosophy; volumes in this series feature papers that originated with presentations at the annual Inland Northwest Philosophy Conference, cohosted by the WSU and University of Idaho philosophy departments.

"Can We Talk? Communication Technologies, Social Informatics, and Systemic Change" by Barbara Monroe (English) was solicited and published in the edited collection Technology and Education: Issues in Administration, Policy, and Applications in K12 Schools, volume eight of the Advances in Educational Administration series.

Ella Inglebret (speech and hearing sciences) published a ‘focus on multiculturalism’ piece, titled "Connecting Culture and Community: Washington State University Builds Partnerships with Northwest Tribes," in the November 29, 2005, issue of the ASHA Leader, the house organ of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. A personal narrative by A. Noelle Phillips (M.A. candidate, speech and hearing sciences), entitled "A Student Perspective," accompanied the article.

Erica Weintraub Austin and Stacey J.T. Hust (both communication) recently published "Targeting Adolescents? The Content and Frequency of Alcoholic and Nonalcoholic Beverage Ads in Magazine and Video Formats November 1999–April 2000" in the Journal of Health Communication 10(8). The article is a content analysis of alcohol ads in print and on TV. Austin and Hust note that three of every four beverage ads is for an alcoholic beverage and that many of the strategies used in alcohol ads are similar to those for nonalcoholic drinks (like soda pop) and clearly include elements that appeal to children and teenagers. In addition, they discovered that one of every six magazine ads for alcohol and one of every thirteen TV ads appeared to target teenagers.

Barry S. Hewlett (anthropology, WSU Vancouver), Alain Epelboin, Bonnie L. Hewlett, and Pierre Formenty published "Medical Anthropology and Ebola in Congo: Cultural Models and Humanistic Care" in the French medical journal Bulletin de la Société de Pathologie Exotique 98.

Todd Butler’s (English) essay "Paid in Smoke: Addiction, Tobacco, and the Body Politic" recently appeared in Proteus: A Journal of Ideas. The issue’s special focus was "Pleasures and Addictions." Research for Butler’s article was supported by a College of Liberal Arts Initiation Grant.

Monica Kirkpatrick Johnson (sociology) has two forthcoming articles: "College Expectations and Aspirations among Latino Adolescents in the United States" with Stephanie A. Bohon and Bridget K. Gorman in Social Problems, and "Gendered Patterns in Adolescents’ School Attachment" with Robert Crosnoe and Lyssa Thaden (Ph.D. candidate, sociology) in Social Psychology Quarterly.

Buddy Levy’s (English) book American Legend: The Real-Life Adventures of David Crockett was released on December 29 by G.P. Putnam’s Sons, New York (an imprint of the Penguin Group). Levy gave a reading and did a book signing on the release date in Ketchum, Idaho, at Iconoclast Books in support of the national release. The book has received favorable reviews by Booklist and Book Crossings. Levy has scheduled readings/signing events at the Bookie and at BookPeople of Moscow for January/February. The release of his new book has so far garnered features in the Idaho Mountain Express, the Wood River Journal, and the Lewiston Morning Tribune.
Levy also published two articles in national magazines in December. Couloir, a backcountry skiing journal, featured his article on yurt skiing in Oregon’s Wallowa Mountains, entitled "The Wild Wild West." Big Sky Journal published his article "Bigger than Life: The Warren Miller Circuit" about his experiences working as a comic ski stuntman for Warren Miller Ski Films. His article "Spinning Wheels and Singing Reels" has been accepted for publication in Fly Rod & Reel magazine.

Joddy Murray (English, WSU Tri-Cities) recently published the following poems: "The Repentance of Everyday Things" and "Sacrament" in Phantasmagoria 4(2); "Segue" in the Texas Review 25; "Sounding On" in Confrontation 88–89; "Recent Passage" in Carquinez Poetry Review 2(2); "Natural Measure" in the Baltimore Review 9(1); "Yukatan" in Poetry East: Love Poems 53; and "Breaking, Pieces" in Oregon East Magazine 35.

Paula Coomer (English) has had the following accepted for publication by Sandhill Press: Road, a single-poem chapbook released as part of the Off the Beaten Path Series (anticipated release date March 2006); Devil at My Crossroads, a collection of poems (anticipated release date June 2006); and Summer of Government Cheese, a collection of short fiction (anticipated release date February 2007). The last two will appear under Sandhill’s Lewis–Clark imprint, which features exclusively writers living in the Pacific Northwest. Coomer will be the fourth artist to be published under this imprint.

Travis Pratt (criminal justice) recently had two articles accepted for publication. The first, coauthored with Chris Sullivan (University of South Florida), Jean McGloin (University of Maryland), and Alex Piquero (University of Florida) and titled "Rethinking the ‘Norm’ of Offender Generality: Investigating Specialization in the Short-Term," is scheduled to appear in the February 2006 issue of Criminology. The second is coauthored with McGloin and Noelle E. Fearn (criminal justice) and titled "Maternal Cigarette Smoking during Pregnancy and Criminal/Deviant Behavior: A Meta-analysis," which is scheduled for publication in a 2006 issue of the International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology.

Gail Chermak (speech and hearing sciences) published a coauthored critique in the December 2005 issue of the American Journal of Audiology on the implications of the nonmodularity of the central nervous system for (central) auditory processing disorder.

Boyd W. Benson’s (English) poem "Performance" will appear in the April 2007 issue of the Iowa Review.

Noelle E. Fearn’s (criminal justice) article "A Multilevel Analysis of Community Effects on Criminal Sentencing" was published in the December 2005 issue of Justice Quarterly. She also coauthored "The Stability of Punishment Hypothesis Revisited: A Comparative Analysis," published in the June 2005 issue of the International Journal of Comparative Criminology, and the article "Simplistic Explanations Are Part of the Problem: Crime, Homicide, and the Zimring–Hawkins Proposition," coauthored with Rick Ruddell, is forthcoming in Criminal Justice Studies: A Critical Journal of Crime, Law, and Society.

Karen Lupo (anthropology) has just published an article in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, entitled "Small Prey Hunting Technology and Zooarchaeological Measures of Taxonomic Diversity and Abundance: Ethnoarchaeological Evidence from Central African Forest Foragers," and she has another in press with the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory.

C. Richard King (comparative ethnic studies) is editor of Native Athletes in Sport and Society, published by the University of Nebraska Press, 2005.

A chapter titled "Autism as Public Policy" by Dana Lee Baker (political science, criminal justice, WSU Vancouver) was published as part of the book Critical Disability Theory: Essays in Philosophy, Politics, Policy, and Law from the University of British Columbia Press. The book was edited by Dianne Pothier and Richard Devlin and was released on December 5, 2005.

Leonard Burns (psychology) and his colleague Stephen Haynes (University of Hawaii) published a chapter with the title "Clinical Psychology" in Michael Eid and Ed Diener’s Handbook of Multimethod Measurement in Psychology (American Psychological Assocation).

Rebecca Craft (psychology) and Michael Leitl (B.S. ’05, neuroscience) have an article, "Potentiation of Morphine Antinociception by Pentobarbital in Female vs. Male Rats," in press with PAIN, the journal of the International Association for the Study of Pain.

Camille Roman (English) has published a book review of Jean Hegland’s (B.A. ’79, general studies) second novel, Windfalls, in the winter 2005 issue of Washington State Magazine.

Jeffrey Joireman (psychology), Dishan Kamdar, Denise Daniels, and Blythe Duell (Ph.D. candidate, psychology) have an article in press with the Journal of Applied Psychology titled "Good Citizens to the End? It Depends: Empathy and Concern with Future Consequences Moderate the Impact of a Short-term Time Horizon on OCBs.”" Joireman, Daniels, Jane George-Falvy, and Kamdar have an article, "Organizational Citizenship Behaviors as a Function of Empathy, Consideration of Future Consequences, and Employee Time Horizon: An Initial Exploration Using an In-basket Simulation of OCBs," in press with the Journal of Applied Social Psychology.

Aimee Phan’s (English) collection of short stories, We Should Never Meet, was published in paperback by Picador. Phan recently completed a two-week writing residency at the MacDowell Arts Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire.

Robert Patterson (psychology) is coauthor of the article "Altitude Control in Simulated Flight Using 3D Objects and Terrain Texture" in the Journal of the Society for Information Display 13.

Student Activities and Awards

Ayano Ginoza, Sarah Hentges, and Loren Redwood (all Ph.D. candidates, American studies) presented their panel, "Reconsidering Women’s Work in Global Contexts: From Survival to Activism," at the GRACe conference in Vancouver, Washington, in October. They were invited to submit this panel for consideration at the National Women’s Studies Association conference in June 2006.

Megan Olson (Ph.D. candidate, psychology), Daniela Hugelshofer (Ph.D. candidate, psychology), Paul Kwon (psychology), and Robert Reff (Ph.D. candidate, psychology) have published "Rumination and Dysphoria: The Buffering Role of Adaptive Forms of Humor" in Personality and Individual Differences 39.

Deborah Ungar (M.A. candidate, music) was invited to present a paper at the fifth International Music Theory Conference, "Principles of Musical Composition: Creative Process," that took place in Vilnius, Lithuania, October 13–15.

Irene Ryan Acting Competition nominees have been announced for the Theatre Program’s fall productions: for STAGE One, Dave Herigstad, Pat Ryan (both seniors, theatre arts), and Chaya Glass (senior, theatre arts and communication); and for Romeo and Juliet, Anna Yoshida (freshman), Joe Monohon (B.A. ’05, theatre arts), and Mallory Johnson (sophomore, speech and hearing sciences).

Siskanna Naynaha’s (Ph.D. candidate, English) review of Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy (Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild, eds.) has appeared in the most recent issue of Radical Teacher: A Socialist, Feminist, Anti-Racist Journal on the Theory and Practice of Teaching.

Daniela Rumpf (M.F.A. candidate) exhibited one of her ceramics pieces at The Intimate Object IV at the Charlie Cummings Clay Studio in Fort Wayne, Indiana, from November 19 through January 6. The exhibit was juried by Linda Arbuckle, who chose to include 148 pieces from 325 submitted entries.

At its 2005 annual conference held in Lubbock, Texas, the Association for Women in Communications recognized the WSU chapter with the Rising Chapter Award. The Association for Women in Communications is a professional organization that champions the advancement of women across all communications disciplines by recognizing excellence, promoting leadership, and positioning its members at the forefront of the evolving communications era. This was the seventh national honor for WSU’s student group.

In October, Zach Mazur (M.F.A. candidate) was selected to give a talk at the Society for Photographic Education Northwest Regional Conference on his two-year photographic project "A Recent History," which explores issues of history and place in the rural Palouse. In the last few months, Mazur has received the Society for Photographic Education Scholarship Award, the North American Nature Photography Association Student Scholarship Award, and the Washington State University TA Excellence Award. He also received first place in the Outdoor Photography Exhibit at WSU in several categories.

Sarah Hentges’ (Ph.D. candidate, American studies) book, Pictures of Girlhood: Modern Female Adolescence on Film, has been published by McFarland Publishing, Inc. She is also teaching a course this spring based on this work, CES 495/W St 311: Girls’ Film: Race, Identity, and Cultural Negotiations.

Two of the student-written one-act plays featured in the October production of STAGE One have been chosen for competition at February’s ACTF/Northwest Drama Conference, to be held in the Tri-Cities at Columbia Basin College February 20–25. The chosen plays are Lasagna Night, written by Patrick McSweeney (senior, communication), and A Man Should Be More than Clitoral Stimulation, written by Audrey Bensel (senior, theatre arts).

Raja Al-Khalili (Ph.D. candidate, English) submitted a paper entitled "Eugene O’Neill and the American Folk Drama" at the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association conference held in October. She also chaired a panel on "The Concept of Knighthood in the Twelfth Century: A Comparative Approach."

Benedict J. Colombi (Ph.D. candidate, anthropology) was awarded the Bill Alspach and Dave Engerbretson Memorial Scholarship in fisheries research and management studies from the Clearwater Fly Casters for his dissertation project, "The Nez Perce Tribe vs. Elite-directed Development in the Lower Snake River Basin: The Struggle to Breach the Dams and Save the Salmon." The award is given to individuals who are involved with the conservation and restoration of wild fish, fisheries management, and/or stream and habitat restoration through research, education, or extension. Colombi defended his dissertation on January 17.

Ana María Rodríguez-Vivaldi (foreign languages and cultures) led a group of students in a workshop presented at the Washington Association of Foreign Language Teachers (WAFLT) annual conference in Spokane on October 15. Melinda Chiprés, Alexsandro Garza (both M.A. candidates, Spanish), and James Eberlein (senior, German) presented teaching modules of their own creation as participants in the "Creating Language Learning Communities: Content-Specific Foreign Language Conversation Courses" project sponsored by a grant from WSU’s Center for Undergraduate Education. Dr. Rodríguez-Vivaldi also presented some of the preliminary findings of the grant project at the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association’s annual conference in Coeur D’Alene, Idaho, on October 21.

Lyssa L. Thaden and Bryan D. Rookey (Ph.D. candidates, sociology) presented their paper "Financial Decision-Making and Economic Inequality: Sources of Influence on College Students’ Financial Literacy" at the annual conference of the Association of Financial Counseling and Planning Education (AFCPE) in November. Their paper also won the Outstanding Student Paper Award from AFCPE.

Brent J. Oneal (Ph.D. candidate, psychology) has been awarded a doctoral dissertation research grant from the Washington Association for Treatment of Sexual Abusers.

College of Liberal Arts Research Awards
Fall 2005

Initiation and Completion Grants
Michiyo Hirai (psychology)
Christopher Lupke (foreign languages and cultures)
Aimee Phan (English)

Edward R. Meyer Projects
Masha Gartstein (psychology)
Ed Weber (political science)

Edward R. Meyer Grant Development Award
Karen Lupo (anthropology)

Boeing Graduate Fellowship in Environmental Studies
Troy Wilson (Ph.D. candidate, anthropology), for "Scale and Sustainability in Washington State’s Apple Industry"

Russian Symposium Inspires New Activities

The symposium “Evidence for Prehistoric Maritime Adaptations in the North Pacific Regions” was organized by Robert E. Ackerman (anthropology) and Jim Cassidy, DOD, Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, California, as part of the international scientific conference "By Traces of Ancient Fires…" held in Magadan, Russia, August 29 to September 8, 2005. Participants in the symposium were from North America, Japan, France, and Russia. The Shared Beringian Heritage Program of the National Park Service (Alaska Division) provided partial support to symposium participants. Three days were devoted to presentations at the conference and two days to view collections at local museums and research institutions in Magadan. Conference participants then flew to the city of Petropavlovsk in Kamchatka. There they viewed archaeological collections in the Historical Museum and then transferred to buses to travel to the Kamchatka River region, where they visited the Late Paleolithic sites of Ushki I–V.

A conference volume, Severnaia Patsifika—Kul’tyrnye Adaptatsii v Kontse Pleistotsena I Golotsena (The North Pacific: Cultural Adaptations at the End of the Pleistocene and into the Holocene), containing abstracts and papers presented at the conference, has been published (Magadan 2005). A final report will be submitted to the Shared Beringian Heritage Program.

As outgrowths of the symposium, Drs. Margarita Dikova and Irina Ponkratova in Magadan will establish an international archaeological field school at the Ushki sites each September. Ackerman and Cassidy will organize a plenary session at the 2007 meeting of the Society for California Archaeology as a follow-up to the Magadan symposium and also are planning an international conference on the methods and techniques of preserving cultural resources impacted by natural and cultural events.

WSU Spokane to Host Foreign Fulbright Scholar

WSU Spokane has been selected to host Visiting Fulbright Scholar Rogayah Binti A Razak during the 2005–2006 academic year. A Razak, who is from Malaysia, is one of approximately 850 outstanding foreign faculty and professionals the Fulbright Scholar Program will bring to the U.S. to teach and do research during the year.

An associate professor with the Department of Audiology and Speech Sciences at the National University of Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur, A Razak will be at WSU Spokane from February through April this year. She will use that time to construct a prototype of a Malay language preschool assessment test that reflects Malay language grammar and the norms of Malay speakers.

At this time, no standardized Malay language assessment exists in Malaysia or even Southeast Asia, according to A Razak.

"The methods currently used for assessing children’s language skills pose difficulties for accurate diagnosis and planning for intervention, and are not representative of the norms of the local population," she said.

She pointed out that the assessment tool she will be developing would help speech-language pathologists, pediatricians, and special education teachers to identify children who are at risk and need further testing and rehabilitation work.

Charles Madison (speech and hearing sciences, WSU Spokane) will host A Razak and provide support for her work on the project. Madison, who lectured at the National University of Malaysia in the mid-1980s, met A Razak while on sabbatical at the university in 2002.

"Dr. Rogayah is positioned to become a leader in clinical linguistics and speech and language sciences in Malaysia and throughout the region," Madison said. "I am pleased to be in a position to contribute to her work of addressing the needs of Malaysia’s handicapped and developmentally delayed children."

A Razak has been on the faculty of National University of Malaysia since 2000. Prior to that, she was a member of the linguistics faculty at University Malaya. She holds a doctorate in Theoretical Linguistics from the Science University of Malaysia and the University of California, Santa Cruz. She also has a Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics and a B.Sc. in English Education from Indiana University.

Established in 1946 under legislation introduced by the late Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, the purpose of the Fulbright Scholar Program is to build mutual understanding between the people of the United States and other counties. America’s flagship international educational exchange activity, the program is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

Festival of Contemporary Art Music
February 9–11, 2006

Ellsworth Milburn, professor emeritus of composition and theory at the Shepherd School of Music, Rice University, will visit Washington State University as the featured composer for the 2006 Festival of Contemporary Art.

As a composer, Milburn has received four grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and commissions from or performances by the Houston Symphony, the Concord and Lark string quartets, and the Da Camera Society. Milburn’s music has been described by critics as craggy, colorful, romantic, aggressive, searing, sweetly poignant, overwhelming, thrilling, powerful, wickedly funny, eloquent, brilliant, raging, and engaging.

“The selection of Ellsworth Milburn as the 2006 featured composer was widely supported by the music faculty,” said Charles Argersinger (music), professor of music composition and creator of the festival. “I believe his compositions will receive broad favor with art music fans in eastern Washington. Milburn’s string quartets have been described as among the finest in contemporary literature.”

The 2006 Festival of Contemporary Art Music is part of the College of Liberal Arts Season, which incorporates high-visibility, world-class events centered on diversity, social justice, peace and security, the arts, and media. The spring CLA Season also includes the Edward R. Murrow Symposium in April.

“The festival is an essential part of our Season,” said Erich Lear, dean of the College of Liberal Arts. “It features the creative element of the College of Liberal Arts, the University, and the community. With creativity, and the performing and visual arts in particular, this college and this university remain at the cutting edge and help to define where that edge will be in the future.”

Established by Argersinger seventeen years ago, the Festival of Contemporary Art Music is a celebration of contemporary classical music showcasing new, original compositions by students, faculty, and a visiting composer. All performances are open to the public and free of charge.

Performances are as follows:

Student Work
Thursday, February 9
11:10 a.m.
Kimbrough Concert Hall

Faculty Compositions
Thursday, February 9
8:00 p.m.
Bryan Hall Theatre

Compositions by Ellsworth Milburn
Saturday, February 11
8:00 p.m.
Bryan Hall Theatre

For more information,
see http://libarts.wsu.edu/artmusic/.

PPLS Adopt-a-Composer Program Joins 2006 Festival

Victoria Ebel-Sabo is the 2005–2006 “adopted” composer of the Piano Pedagogy Lab School. Besides being a composer, pianist, and teacher, she is an avid outdoorswoman and adventure traveler. It is from her mountain climbing, backcountry skiing, and wilderness backpacking experiences that she receives inspiration for her compositions. She and her husband, Daniel, have trekked and skied in numerous mountain ranges throughout the world. Since moving to Washington, Victoria and Dan have summited numerous alpine peaks in the Cascades.

Victoria’s children’s choral compositions, chosen for state music festivals across America, have been published by Boosey and Hawkes, Mark Foster, Santa Barbara Music Publishing, Shawnee Press, and Kjos. Four collections of intermediate piano pieces, Micro Musings, More Micro Musings, Still More Micro Musings, and Micro Meowings have recently been published by Willis Music Company as a part of their popular new composer series, Pianovations. Victoria has been featured on several nationwide broadcasts of Chamber Music Minnesota, a chamber music series showcasing Minnesota composers.

Victoria has become very active in the Bellingham chapter of the Washington State Music Teachers Association, presenting workshops in Bellingham and Seattle and serving as vice president in 2003–2004 and chapter president in 2005 (she will co-chair the chapter in 2006). Before moving to Bellingham, Victoria presented programs for chapters in Minnesota. She has presented programs at the Washington State Music Teachers convention two years in a row and will be one of the featured presenters at the conference in October held in Marysville. The Sabos’ love of performing helped create an active soiree group in Bellingham, consisting of local piano teachers and Western Washington University professors, current and retired.

Piano Recital – Victoria and Dan Sabo
Friday, February 10
8:00 p.m.
Kimbrough Concert Hall
Victoria and Dan Sabo present a joint piano recital with works by Sabo, Messiaen, and Scriabin.

PPLS Recital
Saturday, February 11
11:00 a.m.
Kimbrough Concert Hall
PPLS students perform Victoria Sabo’s original compositions.

Composition Clinic
Saturday, February 11
2:00 p.m.
Kimbrough Hall 101
A clinic for WSU composition majors, student piano teachers, and the community by Victoria Sabo.

Upcoming Deadlines for Proposals, Nominations

February 1: Nominations for Outstanding Graduating Seniors due.
February 17: Proposals due for Edward R. Meyer Grant Development Award.
Proposals due for Edward R. Meyer Project.
Proposals due for Initiation and Completion Grant.
March 1: Nominations for college awards due.
• Distinguished Faculty
• Distinguished Alumni/Friends
• Outstanding Staff Award
• William F. Mullen Excellence in Teaching Award
For more information: Nomination/proposal guidelines and forms for each award may be found on the college Web site.