The Leading Edge

Events

February 17

Center for the Humanities guest lecture: Drawing on a range of recent biographies in science including her own studies of scientists Jean Perrin, P.M.S. Blackett, and Michael Polanyi, Mary Jo Nye, Professor Emerita of History at OSU, will speak on “Biography and the History of Science,” at 4:00 p.m. in the Autzen House, 811 S.W. Jefferson Avenue.

Fairbanks Gallery: Art, Only Part of the Story, an exhibit of large-scale drawings by Samantha Wall, opens today in Fairbanks Gallery. There will be a reception for the artist, free and open to the public at 4:30, Wed., Feb. 19. Wall, based in Portland, immigrated to the United States from Seoul, South Korea at the age of four. A person of mixed ethnicity, Wall examines the psychological spaces where the individual meets the group.

February 18

Please attend a research presentation by Sami Schalk, candidate for a position in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, 12:00 p.m.-1:00 p.m. in MU 208. Her talk, “Re-Imagining the Mind and Body: Reading Disability in Black Women’s Speculative Fiction,” will provide an overview of her research on the representation of ability and disability in contemporary black American women’s speculative fiction. She will use Octavia Butler’s Parable series as a concrete example to illustrate her points.

Join us as we posthumously pay tribute to the first African American football player at OSU—Dave Mann (1951-54) and the subsequent generations of young black players who have helped the Beavers gain a national reputation as a strong Division 1 team. This historic panel discussion will include past football players: Earnel Durden (1956-58); Ken Simonton (1998-2001), football historian Dr. Michael Oriard, author Herman Brame and Sociologist Dr. Dwaine Plaza. The panelist will be focused on telling the story of the desegregation of football and what that has meant to the Oregon State athletic program. 6:00 p.m.– 8:00 p.m., The Loge, Reser Stadium, Free admission open to the public.

Carren Moham, a professor of music at Illinois Wesleyan University, will come to OSU to lecture on African-American spirituals and perform a concert of songs by African-American composers. The lecture, “The Importance of Negro Spirituals to the Underground Railroad,” will begin at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 18, in the Construction and Engineering Hall at the LaSells Stewart Center. Moham, a soprano, will perform at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 19, in the Memorial Union lounge. Both events are free and open to the public.

February 19

The Geopolitics of Sexual Rights as Human Rights.  12:00 p.m., MU206 (Asian/Pacific Room). The Western sexual revolutions of the 1960s-1970s brought advances in conceptualizing sexual and women’s rights as human rights, but it took until the 1990s for transnational organizations to take up these causes – only to find them blocked and undermined once again. Paradoxically, even as these rights remain contested, they are also increasingly instrumentalized for larger geopolitical, military, and economic purposes. Dagmar Herzog (CUNY) will trace this double history.

Sexuality in Europe: A 20th-Century History of the Present. 4:00 p.m., MU208 (La Raza). The 2014 George and Dorothy Carson Memorial Lecture will be given by Dagmar Herzog (CUNY). Although the 20th century is often called the “century of sex” and seen as an era of increasing liberalization, Herzog’s lecture will explore the contradictions in sexual politics and behaviors, the apparent ambivalences surrounding sexual freedom, and the enormous difficulties encountered in securing sexual rights.

February 20

Wild Strawberries. 6:00 p.m., Milam Hall, 301. The Religious Studies Club invites you to a screening of the 1957 Bergman masterpiece, “Wild Strawberries.” Admission and refreshments are free!

February 21

Music à la Carte: The OSU Percussion Ensemble, directed by Robert Brudvig, and the student-led OSU Handbell Choir will perform at 12:00 p.m. in the Memorial Union Lounge. Admission is free.

School of Psychological Science Winter 2014 Colloquium Series. 4:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m., Reed 111. Alyssa Raymond, MAIS Student will discuss her research “Semantic communication in a troop of semi-free ranging chimpanzees.”

How I Learned to Drive– University Theatre presents Paula Vogel’s Pulitzer Prize winning play following the story of L’il Bit, a young girl growing up in rural Maryland. This powerful story of abuse, misogyny, and control is a chilling contemporary masterpiece. Withycombe Hall Main Stage. Feb. 21-22 @7:30pm; Feb. 23 @ 2pm. Box office located in Withycombe 143, open M-F 12-5 the weeks of performance or buy tickets online at http://oregonstate.edu/dept/theatre/tickets.  $10G/$8SenStuYou/$5OSUstu.

Upcoming Events

Climate Club-Sandwich Lunch: Environmental philosopher Allen Thompson and wildlife biologist and author Cristina Eisenberg will present a “braided lecture” addressing ethics, land-use, and wildlife in the context of a changing climate. The lecture will take place in MU 206 on Feb. 25, from 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. The lecture series, a collaboration between EAHI and OCCRI, is designed to spur conversations about climate change among people of different academic backgrounds.

Anarchism and the Occupy Movement. Feb 24, 4:00 p.m., MU Journey. Nathan Schneider – author of Thank You, Anarchy: Notes from the Occupy Apocalypse – will discuss the origins and development of Occupy Wall Street, a social movement that remains as significant as it is misunderstood. He will explore the movement’s strategy and spirit, including its little-recognized religious dimensions, both explicit and implicit.

Why the World Needs Religious Studies. Feb 24, 7:00 p.m., MU Journey. What can you do with a religion degree, anyway? Nathan Schneider , a former religious studies major who now works as a journalist in New York City, will talk about why the kinds of thinking practiced in religious studies are vitally important outside academia and how religion majors can use their skills to make a living—and change the world for the better.

Center for the Humanities Guest Lecture: Drawing on a range of recent biographies in science including her own studies of scientists Jean Perrin, P.M.S. Blackett, and Michael Polanyi, Mary Jo Nye, Professor Emerita of History at OSU, will speak on “Biography and the History of Science,” at 4:00 p.m. in the Autzen House, 811 S.W. Jefferson Avenue.

Feb. 28: Music à la Carte: Pianist Sunghee Kim will perform in recital at 12:00 p.m. in the Memorial Union Lounge. Admission is free.

Feb. 28: I Have Had Singing: The 2014 Orange & Black Vocal Scholarship Concert will take place at 7:30 p.m. in the First United Methodist Church, 1165 N Monroe St. This annual concert will feature performances by the Bella Voce, Chamber Choir, Glee, and the OSU Meistersingers, with pre-concert entertainment by the a cappella groups Outspoken, Divine, and Powerchord. Professor Emeritus Ron Jeffers will be honored for his contributions to music education in Oregon. Tickets are $10 in advance, $12 at the door. Advance tickets are available at www.tickettomato.com/event.php?event_id=2240. One-hundred percent of the proceeds from this concert benefit music scholarships for singers.

March 2: Corvallis-OSU Symphony Concert: The 3:00 p.m. program at LaSells Stewart Center includes Strauss’ “Sinfonia Domestica” and Vaughan Williams’ Tuba Concerto, featuring OSU tuba instructor JáTtik Clark. Tickets are $18-$30 in advance, $20-$32 at the door. For ticket locations or to purchase advance tickets online go to: http://www.cosusymphony.org/.

News

Professor Amy Koehlinger’s ‘Religion in America’ class was aired three separate times on C-SPAN3 recently as part of the ‘Lectures in History’ show. C-SPAN indicated that they have heard nothing but good comment about the class from its previous single airing. You can watch in online:  http://series.c-span.org/History/Events/Lectures-in-History-Father-Divine-Jim-Jones-amp-Modern-Religious-Utopias/10737443185/.

Chris Chapman, music, recently served as the 21st annual Kansas State University Concert Band Clinic honor band conductor. Over 700 high school students from throughout the state of Kansas participated in the event. Chapman was conductor of the highest-level honor band with over 130 students in the ensemble. While there, he also served as guest clinician for the high school band directors in the state and was guest instructor of the instrumental conducting class.

Dana Reason, music, has been appointed director of the Agosto Foundation’s Center for Improvised Arts, Performance and Research (CIAPR) in Prague. The center will serve as a research hub for collaborative projects between artistic communities in the Czech Republic and international artists, performers and scholars. CIAPR will host its first event, Improvising Across Borders Festival and Symposium, July 17-19 in Prague, where the keynote speaker will be George E. Lewis, a professor of American music at Columbia University.

The Oregon State University Chamber Choir directed by Steven Zielke and the OSU Meistersingers directed by Russ Christensen have been selected by audition to perform at the American Choral Directors Association Northwest Division Conference in Seattle, March 13 – 16.  It is an honor and a rarity to have two choirs from one university selected to perform at this conference.

Awards and Honors

Ron Mize, Associate Professor of Language, Culture and Society received a Presidential Authority Award from the Russell Sage Foundation to complete his research project, “Toiling in the Shadows of Affluence: High-Amenity Destinations, Immiseration, and the New Gilded Age.”  The project examines ski-resort towns in the Rocky Mountains as both emerging Mexican immigrant destinations and economic zones of inequality that are the epitome of the widening gap between rich and poor.

Professors Stephanie Jenkins, Nicole Von Germeten, and Christopher McKnight Nichols each received Center for the Humanities grants for AY 2014-15.

Current Research, Publications and Creative Activity

The Center for Latino/a Studies and Engagement (CL@SE) was awarded $25,000 from the Oregon Community Foundation to expand its ADELANTE Student Leadership Program.  Adelante is CL@SE’s main program for student engagement, which has been designed as a way to promote and recognize Latin@ student leaders and their contributions to economic, social, cultural, and environmental progress in Oregon, the nation, and the world.

Philosophy professor Jonathan Michael Kaplan’s paper “Race, IQ, and the search for statistical signals associated with so-called ‘X’-factors: environments, racism, and the hereditarian hypothesis?”  was just published in the February 2014 issue of the journal Biology & Philosophy: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10539-014-9428-0

School of Psychological Science faculty and students will present the following at the 12th annual Northwest Positive Behavioral Interventions and Support Conference, Feb. 26-28, Portland, Ore.
•    Angus Kittelman, Amy Beyer & Teri Lewis – Using Student and Teacher Guided Information in the FBA-BIP Process
•    Pam Lundeberg & Aurora Sherman – Dolls s Role Models– Effects in Academics
•    Keiko Bostwick & Shana Needham – How Uncertainty about Student Financial Aid Relates to Academic Success
•    Jamy Lee & Teri Lewis – How Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation Impact both Academic and Social Student Success
•    Mason Love & Teri Lewis – Planning for Sustained Implementation: How to Keep Good Things Happening
•    Victoria Braun – “Using Loving-kindness Meditation to Alleviate Interpersonal Conflict”