The Leading Edge

Events

April 21

Travis Good, a contributing editor to Make Magazine: Good’s talk, “What’s the Big Deal with ‘Making,'” will focus on inventing, hacking and fabricating. 5 p.m., LaSells Stewart Center. A hands-on micro maker fair starts at 6, with participants from the Corvallis community as well as OSU.

April 22

Speciesism – The Movie. 7 p.m., Milam Auditorium. Most of the animals used for food in the U.S. are raised on large “factory” farms, which the film sets out to investigate. The film will be followed by an interactive discussion with philosophy professor Stephanie Jenkins, Corvallis animal activist Nettie Schwager, and Amy Whitfield, president of Vegans and Vegetarians at OSU. Everyone who attends gets a free raffle ticket and the chance to win prizes.

April 23

“We Power Orange: Advocating with OSU-AAUP”:  We invite everyone to participate in the next community conversation about ways that OSU-AAUP can be a more effective advocate for all faculty. Noon, Milam Hall 319. We will discuss ‘what is AAUP?’ and have a dialogue about advocacy goals at OSU. For more information: http://osuaaup.org/, Joseph Orosco, joseph.orosco@oregonstate.edu.

Poor People Power: The State, Social Provisions, and American Experiments in Democratic Engagement. 4 p.m., MU206: Asian/Pacific Room. The segmented U.S. welfare state has shaped citizenship status, bolstering recipients of social insurance while demeaning low-income recipients of means-tested assistance as “anti-citizens,” denigrated for their visible dependence on the state. But welfare state programs have offered the most vulnerable a site for democratic engagement and the opportunity to articulate alternative visions of citizenship. Associate professor of history Marisa Chappell will explore the history of such efforts  and suggests some lessons they may offer in an era of welfare restructuring.

OSU Art: Lecture by Oliver Herring, Visiting Artists & Scholars Lecture Series, 6 p.m., LaSells Stewart Center. Oliver Herring, a German experimental artist based in Brooklyn, New York, will speak about his artwork. A reception for the artist will be held following the lecture. Herring’s works include knitting Mylar, participatory performances, Styrofoam photo sculptures and video. OSU Art and the Visiting Artists & Scholars Lecture Series sponsor this lecture.

April 24

Two mid-twentieth century events critical to the history and identity of English studies at OSU occurred within a decade of one another—the publication of Bernard Malamud’s “A New Life” in 1961, and the establishment of the English major at OSU, with its first graduates in 1964-65. In recognition of Malamud’s centenary and these converging timelines, it is appropriate that the English Student Association has arranged a gathering of students, faculty, community members, and alumni for an informal Malamud birthday celebration from 2-3 p.m. (Malamud’s birthday is April 26). Among planned activities:  Associate Professor of English Neil Davison will give a talk, “Malamud in Corvallis,” at the site of the Malamud archives in OSU’s Special Collections. Members of the English Student Association will read selected passages from Malamud’s work.  In recognition of the Malamud Centenary and 50  years of Excellence in English Studies at OSU, we will preview a few of the Malamud-related activities projected over the next year or two. Please join us.

OSU Wind Ensemble tribute to James Douglass: Douglass directed bands at OSU for 31 years. LaSells Stewart Center, 7:30 p.m., with reception following the concert. Tickets are $10 in advance and $13 at the door, free for OSU students and K-12.

April 25

Oregon State University has been selected as an official university affiliate of the Los Angeles-based GRAMMY Museum, providing the university access to the rich musical history and archives of the museum. We’ll be celebrating this partnership at 3:00, MU Lounge. In attendance will be President Ed Ray; executive director of the GRAMMY Museum Bob Santelli; and alum Roosevelt Credit, who has appeared on Broadway as well as on the soundtrack of the Oscar-winning film, “Twelve Years a Slave.” Credit will be performing at the celebration.

The Philosophy of Rowing. 12 pm, Milam 301. Philosophers have been enamored with water from the 5th century pre-socratic Heraclitus who told us that ‘we cannot step into the same river twice,’ to virtually every religion wherein water plays a major part. Similarly, the rowing stroke is a metaphor for many of life’s great issues such as courage, steadfastness and community. John Frohnmayer, former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, will explore what the two disciplines have to teach us–and each other.

Upcoming Events

Tom Segev, an Israeli historian and journalist, and Laureen Nussbaum, a childhood friend of Anne Frank, will appear at Oregon State University as part of Holocaust Memorial Week April 28 through May 2. The 28th annual observance is presented by the School of History, Philosophy and Religion in OSU’s College of Liberal Arts in association with the City of Corvallis and School District 509-J. All events are free and open to the public.

In Quest of Conscience- Staged Reading– Part of the Holocaust Memorial Week at OSU, Charlotte Headrick directs Robert David Macdonald’s adaption of Gitta Sereny’s Into That Darkness which is based on her seventy hours of interviews with Franz Stangl, the commandant of Treblinka. Performers include Rick Wallace, Elizabeth Helman, Leonora Rianda, and Michael Beaton. Engineering Hall @ LaSells Stewart Center May 2, 7:30 p.m.; Majestic Theatre, April 30, 7:30 pm. Free.

News

Faculty and students across the School of History, Philosophy and Religion had an unprecedented winter quarter, from media coverage to international honors, new museum exhibits, new books and publications, and more. Read the latest news in the SHPR Digest.

Awards and Honors

“The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Military and Diplomatic History” (Oxford, 2013) for which assistant professor of history Christopher Nichols was Senior Editor, and on which Nichols based an international conference held on campus, was just named “best reference” of 2013 in “law and politics” by the Library Journal.

At the 2014 Organization of American Historians Annual Meeting, Stacey L. Smith was presented with the inaugural 2014 David Montgomery Award for the best book on a topic in American labor and working-class history. Freedom’s Frontier: California and the Struggle over Unfree Labor, Emancipation, and Reconstruction (UNC Press), reveals the various forms of exploitation of bound workers—African Americans, Chinese, Latino, Native American, and Hawai‘ian and child laborers—in the “free” state of California before, during, and after the Civil War.

Loren Davis, associate professor of anthropology at Oregon State University, has been selected for the 2014 Esto Perpetua Award from the Idaho State Historical Society. This award honors individuals and organizations that have made significant contributions to the preservation of Idaho history through professional accomplishments, public service, volunteerism or philanthropy. The award will be presented June 12 in Boise at the state’s premier territorial site, the Old Idaho Penitentiary.

SHRP public information representative Robert Peckyno was awarded the 2014 Vice Provost Award for Excellence in Program Support. His nominators said that Peckyno has “worked to transform the way the university and the entire world view the School of History, Philosophy and Religion and the College of Liberal Arts.” The SHPR YouTube outreach lecture channel that he created now has over 171,000 minutes viewed.

Current Research, Publications and Creative Activity

School of Psychological Science, Associate Professor of psychology Frank Bernieri will be delivering a “Distinguished Speaker” talk entitled, “Body Language: Learning to Read it Like a Pro”, at this year’s Annual Meeting of the Western Psychological Association in Portland this Friday.

Psychology instructor Kristen Yax (Petty) coauthored Chapter 9 in the Oxford Handbook of Close Relationships under Attraction in Relationships:  http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195398694.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780195398694.

Associate professor of psychology Patti Watkins recently presented the following: Watkins, P. L. (2014, April). “Inclusion of Fat Studies in a difference, power, and discrimination curriculum. In C. Russell (Chair). Towards a Fat Pedagogy: Addressing Weight-Based Oppression in Higher Education”. Panel presented at the American Educational Research Association annual meeting, Philadelphia, PA.

Associate professor of art history Kirsi Peltomaki’s book, “Situation Aesthetics: The Work of Michael Asher,” was recently released by The MIT Press in paperback. The hardcover edition came out in 2010.