The Leading Edge

Events

Monday, May 9

Critical Questions Series — Licia Fiol-Matta, Professor of Latin American and Latino literary and cultural studies at the City University of New York, will discuss Chavela Vargas at 5 p.m. in MU 104 (Journey Room). Chavela Vargas, identifying with the presumptively universal Mexican sound of the bolero ranchera, came to embody Mexico’s “queer singer for the nation,” and became everyone’s darling during the 1960s.  The lecture is free and open to the public. http://liberalarts.oregonstate.edu/wlf/critical-questions-lecture-series.

Tuesday, May 10

CANCELLED: The David Barsamian lecture will no longer be held this evening.

Wednesday, May 11

Islamophobia: Politics and Prejudice in Contemporary America: Hundere Lecture – What does it mean to “love your neighbor” in a time of divisive political rhetoric and religious polarization? Dr. Larycia Hawkins believes that embodied solidarity with the oppressed and marginalized will pave the way to peace and understanding. Dr. Hawkins is an American scholar, author, and speaker. Her decision as a Christian to wear a hijab during the Advent season 2015 at Wheaton College sparked a national and international controversy, as did her assertion that Christians and Muslims worship the same God. 7:00 p.m., Memorial Union, Asian/Pacific-American, Room 206.

Friday, May 13

Music à la Carte — Jessica Lambert, violin; Anne Ridlington, cello; Sunghee Kim, piano. Noon, Memorial Union Lounge, Free.

Anthropology Tan Sack Series — Recent MA grad student, Sarah Walker, will give a lecture on possible causes of the collapse of the Zapotec state after surviving for a thousand years. The talk, entitled “Pottery, Politics, and Trade Routes: Evaluating Independence in Late Classic Jalieza, Oaxaca,” will be in 201 Waldo Hall at noon.

Money, Masculinity, and Men’s Health: Experimental Evidence on Demand for a Preventive Health Input — Dr. Nicholas Wilson will discuss an experiment testing advertising devices designed to increase demand for a life-saving health technology characterized by low uptake. The results reveal highly elastic demand with respect to factors that lie outside of standard consumer demand models of health behavior.  Off ering compensation of US$10 conditional on completing a counseling session for the technology tripled uptake.  Framing the basic advertisement using the statement, “Are you tough enough?”, doubled uptake of the technology. 12 – 1:15 p.m, Cordley 3121.

Pulitzer Prize winner Fredrik Logevall — A specialist on U.S. foreign relations, Logevall teaches a range of courses covering the history of U.S. diplomacy and foreign policy, as well as the international history of the Cold War and the Vietnam Wars. His most recent book, Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam (Random House, 2012), received the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for History. 7:00 p.m. in the MU Horizon Room.

Recurring Events

2016 Rethinking Grand Strategy Conference — The participants in the Conference aim to intervene in and to help to construct an historically rich account of how Grand Strategy has developed and operated in American history. It is a project that we believe will help to establish the state of the field, make a significant scholarly intervention, and promote vigorous discussion and debate. Friday, May 13 and Saturday, May 14, 9:00 a.m.- 5:00 p.m. in the MU Journey Room.

OSU Opera Workshop: The Blue Forest —Ogres with an appetite for children, witches casting evil spells, a sleeping princess in need of a kiss and a blue fairy who protects children from danger. Follow Red Riding Hood and Hop o’ My Thumb as they confront these treacherous woods in this multimedia Opera Workshop presentation, sung in English. Friday, May 13 and Saturday, May 14, 7:30 p.m., LlnC 100. Tickets: $10 in advance, $12 at the door. Advance tickets available online only at tickettomato.com.

Yuji Hiratsuka exhibit “Conversation Pieces,” The Little Gallery, 210 Kidder Hall.  The artist, Yuji Hiratsuka is a professor of  printmaking at Oregon State University. The reception will take place from 3-5 p.m.  The show will run April 25-June 10.  Gallery hours:  M-F, 8-5 (closed during the lunch hour).

Oregon State University Theatre will present Tom Stoppard’s existential comedy, “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” May 12-14 and May 20-22 in the Withycombe Hall Main Stage Theatre.Shows are at 7:30 p.m. May 12-14 and May 20-21 and at 2 p.m. May 22. Tickets are $12 General Admission, $10 Senior, $8 Youth/Student, and $5 OSU Student. Tickets are available through the OSU Theatre Box Office by calling 541-737-2784. Online ticket sales begin at 9 a.m. May 2 and can be purchased at http://bit.ly/1wgmTkJ.

Fairbanks Gallery is featuring the work of OSU alumnus Ben Buswell May 2-25. Buswell is a sculptor whose work spans a variety of media, from ceramics to incised photographs, using processes such as doubling and repetitive mark-making to highlight the temporal nature of the work. His work appears in numerous public and private collections and has been supported by grants from the Regional Arts and Culture Council, The Oregon Arts Commission and the Ford Family Foundation.Buswell holds an MFA from the University of Wisconsin at Madison and a BFA from Oregon State University.

News

Assistant Professor of Psychology Dr. Joshua Weller has been officially invited to sit on the Oregon Department of Transportation’s Distracted Driving Task Force, a state initiative aimed to reduce distracted driving behaviors  (http://www.ktvz.com/news/odot-partners-form-task-force-target-distracted-driving-epidemic/38889140). He will bring his background in decision making and risk perceptions to help develop solutions that promote safer driving.

Current Research, Publications and Creative Activity

Assistant Professor of Sociology Brett Burkhardt recently published the following: Burkhardt, Brett C. 2016 (advance online). “Who Punishes Whom? Bifurcation of Private and Public Responsibilities in Criminal Punishment.”  Journal of Crime and Justice. doi: 10.1080/0735648X.2016.1174619.

Nana Osei-Kofi (Associate Professor, Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies) delivered a keynote address, #Fightracism: Educating for Social Justice at the University of New Mexico on April 21, 2016. She also presented a paper titled, White Normativity, Social Media, and Afroswedish Counter-Discourses at the annual meeting of the Association for the Advancement of Scandinavian Studies in New Orleans on April 30. Additionally, she discussed strategies for increasing faculty diversity (with Ernesto Martinez, University of Oregon) at a meeting of United Academics of the University of Oregon, in Eugene on April 18.

Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies Natchee Barnd recently published  “Constructing a Social Justice Tour: Pedagogy, Race, and Student Learning through Geography, in the Journal of Geography. http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/ntRagDuCfAfTtnatsIDx/full

Karim Hamdy (WLC) and Laura Rice (Emerita, SWLF) published an article entitled “Folk Poetry, Local Knowledge, and Resistance in Tunisia,” in the Journal of North African Studies, Volume 21, Number 2, March 2016, pp. 283-300.

Instructor of jazz Ryan Biesack and the OSU Jazz Ensemble performed at the invitation-only Grants Pass Jazz Festival on Saturday, May 7. The 20-member ensemble features the most outstanding jazz saxophones, trumpets, trombones and rhythm section musicians on campus and regularly performs professional level repertoire on campus and around the state of Oregon.

The OSU Wind Ensemble performed at the Taiwan Band and Orchestra Clinic/All-Chinese Band Contest in Taipei, Taiwan last weekend. The ensemble was selected as the representative band from the United States and performed a 90-minute long concert at the conclusion of the music education conference. The ensemble also performed at the National Hsinchu University of Education in a joint concert with their college wind ensemble and The Jungli Arts Hall with the Kawasaki Municipal Tachibana Senior High School Wind Orchestra from Japan. OSU director of bands Christopher Chapman and Robert Brudvig, director of percussion studies, presented clinic sessions at the Taiwan Band and Orchestra Clinic. Associate director of bands Dana Biggs and Jason Gossett, instructor of instrumental music education, served as guest conductors with the OSU Wind Ensemble.

Several members of OSU music faculty and instructors recently adjudicated at the OSAA Solo State Championship:  Nathan Boal (saxophone), Ann Kosanovic-Brown (bassoon), Marc Callahan (voice), Nick Larson (voice), Sandra Babb (voice), and Megan Sand (voice). The Solo State Championship is a contest provided by OSAA for select students who are eligible and wish to compete for a state level championship on their respective instrument or voice.