The Leading Edge

Events

Monday, Feb. 8

Graduate School Conversation — The OSU History Students Association is sponsoring a discussion about graduate school for students who are interested in pursuing history, law, political science and philosophy. Professors Christopher Nichols and Rena Lauer will attend, as well as graduate students Elizabeth Nielsen and Ambika Natarajan. Coffee and cookies will be served. 4:10-5:10 p.m., Milam 319.

Tuesday, Feb. 9

Our Stories: Faculty Who Were First in Their Families to Attend College Share Their Stories — A panel of faculty who were the first in their families to attend college will speak about their experiences in higher education. 5-7 p.m., at the Native American Longhouse Eena Haws. Discussion with audience member will follow, and light refreshments will be provided. Please contact Allison Hurst (allison.hurst@oregonstate.edu) or Rebecca Olson (rebecca.olson@oregonstate.edu) with any questions. All faculty, staff, and students are warmly invited. 

Wednesday, Feb. 10

From Waldport to Revolution: Anarchists Confront Post-War America — Beginning with a group of anarchist draft resisters stationed at a Civilian Public Service camp in Waldport, Oregon during the Second World War, this talk by Andrew Cornell will explore the ways West Coast cultural dissidents reworked the radical tradition. Poets such as Kenneth Rexroth and Gary Snyder challenged post-war triumphalism and laid the groundwork for the Beat Generation, the 1960s counterculture, and punk rock. 4 p.m., MU 208, La Raza Room.

Collections at the Center — Associate Professor of English Rebecca Olson will present the first talk in a new series at the OSU Special Collections & Archives Research Center, “Hands-on Reading: What Manicules Tell Us About the Social Network of Early Printed Books” at 4 p.m. in Special Collections at the Valley Library. The event is free and open to the public; refreshments will follow the talk. For full details, see: http://wpmu.library.oregonstate.edu/osu_archives/2016/02/05/collections-at-the-center-a-new-series-for-scarc/.

Artist and photographer Nigel Poor will speak and exhibit work as part of the School of Arts & Communication’s Visiting Artists and Scholars Lecture Series. Poor will speak about her experience teaching history of photography classes for the Prison University Project at California’s San Quentin State Prison at 7 p.m. in The LaSells Stewart Center. A reception will be held prior to the lecture at 6 p.m. The events are free and open to the public. Poor’s work from the San Quentin Prison Report Archive Project will be on display in OSU’s Fairbanks Gallery from Feb. 8 through March 1. The exhibit consists of inkjet prints with handwritten text reflecting prisoners’ reactions to a variety of historical prison photographs.

Thursday, Feb. 11

Actress, speaker, and director Amanda Bearse will speak to members of Charlotte Headrick’s Theatre Arts 360 class at 12:30 p.m. in the Lab Theatre of Withycombe Hall. The public is welcome. Bearse gained her prestige as an actress and has maintained it as a television director. Her achievements include roles such as Marcy D’Arcy in the television sitcom “Married… With Children,” where she began her directorial career. ” She since has directed many television comedies, such as “The Big Gay Sketch Show,” “MADtv,” “George Lopez,” and “Reba.” Bearse is also credited with launching the Human Rights Campaign’s National Coming Out Day, which takes place every year on October 11, and strives to help members of the LGBTQI community come out to their loved ones.

Great Tide Rising: Finding Clarity and Moral Courage in a Time of Planetary Change — Fierce, heartbroken, funny, and/or lethally logical – please come join in the ruckus as Kathleen Dean Moore launches her new book of essays, Great Tide Rising. Even as tides rise against the shores, another great tide is beginning to rise, she believes – a tide of outrage against the pillage of the planet, a tide of commitment to human rights, and a swelling affirmation of moral responsibility to the future of the world. 7:00 p.m., Corvallis Arts Center, 700 SW Madison, Corvallis.

The Untapped Potential of Muslim Women — M. Hasna Maznavi made history by starting the first all-female mosque in the United States in 2015. The Women’s Mosque is hosted in a modest, multifaith worship center, where Muslim women and women of other faiths joined together for a Jumu’ah, a congregational prayer Muslims hold every Friday, and a Khutbah, a public sermon. In her talk at OSU, she will discuss her inspiration, challenges, and ultimate goals for the future. 7:00 p.m., MU Journey Room.

Friday, Feb. 12

School of Public Policy Brownbag Seminar Series — Current SPP Ph.D. student Misty Freeman presents “Complicating the Rural in Oregon’s Water Policymaking.” The brownbag will be held in Fairbanks 304 from noon-1 p.m. The event is free and open to the OSU community.

Anthropology Tan Sack Series —Anthropologist and Senior Research Scientist with Intel Labs, Dr. Kathi Kitner, will present highlights from her work spanning ten years at Intel Corporation. Drawing examples from her wide-ranging ethnographic work, she will discuss how and why people use computers, how class, status and gender influence choice of technologies as well as who is allowed to use them, and how digital devices can both bring people together or serve to intensify difference and conflict. The talk, entitled “A View from the Cube: Some Observations on Practicing Anthropology in a High Tech Corporation,” will be in 201 Waldo Hall at noon.

Music a la Carte — Sarah Kwak, violin and concertmaster of the Oregon Symphony Orchestra and Cary Lewis, piano, will present selections from Schubert’s Sonatina in g minter and B loch’s Concerto for Violin. Noon – 12:45 p.m., MU Lounge. Free and open to the public.

Ali Taghdarreh: Translating Walden into Persian — Alireza “Ali” Taghdarreh is an Iranian scholar who has recently completed a translation of Henry David Thoreau’s classic Walden into Persian. Taghdarreh will talk about issues of translation and about how he sees the connections between the Persian mystics and transcendentalists. 4:00 p.m., Autzen House, Center for Humanities, 811 SW Jefferson. Co-sponsored by Spring Creek Project for Ideas, Nature, and the Written Word and the OSU Center for Humanities.

Upcoming Events

The Power of Cohorts, Mentors & Cross-Institutional Collaborations in HIgher Education — Feb. 15, 1:30 – 3:30 p.m., CH2M Hill Alumni Center, Willamette Room. Faculty engagement and innovative strategies for cross-functional collaborations in higher education will be the focus of this session for advancing student success and equalizing academic success across all demographics. Dr. Shirley Collado of Rutgers University will be leading this discussion.

A Wisdom Workshop is being offered by the Contemplative Studies Initiative with Dr.  John Edwards of Psychology.  The workshop will be held Tuesday evenings February 16, through March 1, from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. in the Learning Innovations Center Room 302. Registration is not required.  Each session includes meditation. Session topics are Emptiness, Karma, and Embodiment. Contact Teri.Morris@oregonstate.edu. for more information.

February 19 — Essayist, poet, and critic Maggie Nelson will read at the Valley Library Rotunda at 7:30 p.m., followed by a Q&A and book signing. Maggie Nelson is the author of five books of nonfiction and four books of poetry. Her poetry has been widely anthologized, including in the Best American Poetry series. Nelson has received numerous awards across genres including a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship in Nonfiction, a 2011 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry. This event is part of the 2015-2016 Visiting Writers Series, sponsored by the MFA Program in Creative Writing in the School of Writing, Literature, and Film.

News

Assistant Professor of History Christopher Nichols was recently approved as a new Member of the Board of Trustees of the Oregon Historical Society, the first Oregon State University historian to be on the board of OHS.

Awards and Honors

U.S. Senator Ron Wyden has honored two Oregon State University faculty members for their involvement in saving numerous priceless pieces of art pilfered by Nazis during World War II.  Late faculty members Gordon Gilkey and Mark Sponenburgh were part of the group known as “Monuments Men,” who were commissioned by the U.S. government during WWII to hunt down and retrieve countless pieces of artwork stolen and hidden by Nazis during the Occupation. Wyden presented the Congressional Gold Medal to OSU President Ed Ray and CLA Dean Larry Rodgers to posthumously honor the contributions of Gilkey and Sponenburgh. The Congressional Gold Medal is Congress’ highest recognition granted to civilians for distinguished achievements and contributions.

The College of Liberal Arts had an impressive showing among the award recipients at the first annual Black Excellence Celebration on Tuesday, February 2. Marilyn Keys Stewart, (Student Services, Academic Advisor), Robert Thompson, (Ethnic Studies faculty), Dwaine Plaza, (Associate Dean and Sociology faculty), and Larry Roper, (Ethnic Studies faculty), were all recognized for showing a commitment to helping the black community through either scholarship or service. This event, hosted at the Lonnie B. Harris Black Cultural Center, was the kick off of a month of activities on campus celebrating Black History Month.

Current Research, Publications and Creative Activity

Bryan Tilt and Drew Gerkey, anthropology, recently published the following: Bryan Tilt and Drew Gerkey. 2016. “Dams and Population Displacement on China’s Upper Mekong River: Implications for Social Capital and Social-ecological Resilience.”Global Environmental Change 36: 153-162. In the study, Tilt and Gerkey examine how rural people in southwest China are affected by resettlement for hydropower dams on the Upper Mekong River. Their goal is to better understand the social effects of such projects and to suggest ways to improve the sustainability of hydropower as a form of renewable energy.

The latest edition of the Division of Outreach and Engagement’s blog contains a summary of the Community Arts Studio course (Art 406) taught by Andrew Myers (Art) and Charles Robinson in partnership with Tillamook High School and the Pioneer Museum in Spring 2015. A merger of arts engagement methods and studio art skill development, this course is being offered again in Spring 2016. To learn more: http://blogs.oregonstate.edu/engage/2016/01/25/arts-engagement-inspires-innovative-partnerships/.

Kenneth Maes (Assistant Professor of Anthropology in the School of Language, Culture, and Society) co-authored a paper on “The Global Context of Vaccine Refusal: Insights from a Systematic Comparative Ethnography of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative,” which will soon be published by Medical Anthropology Quarterly (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26084915). 

Marc Callahan, Visiting Professor in Opera and Voice, will be performing the title role in Destouche’s opera Le Carnaval et la Folie at the Opera de Montpellier with premier baroque ensemble Les Ombres on February 14.

George Caldwell, Ph.D., faculty member of the OSU Theatres Arts Program has just completed his service as Scenic Designer for the George Fox University theatrical production of The Spitfire Grill, a Musical in Newberg.  The play has been in performance for two weeks and closed following the Sunday matinee on February 7.  The play was directed by the chair of the Theatre Department at George Fox, Rhett Luedtke.

The 22nd Volume of The Western States Theatre Review, which is edited by George Caldwell (Theater), will be published in late February. TWSTR is a regional journal intended to publish a wide range of works by and about theatre scholars and artists throughout the west and is sponsored by the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival Region VII.  Past contributors have included Tony Kushner, John Doyle, Christopher Durang and Libby Appel.

Art professor Yuji Hiratsuka gave a talk on his work along with Maribeth Graybill, curator of Asian Art, Portland art Museum at the Portland Fine Print Fair on Jan. 30. http://portlandartmuseum.org/collections/printfair2016/.