S. R. Martin's (Ph.D. '74, American studies) book On the Move: A Black Family's Western Saga has been published by Texas A&M University Press. In On the Move, Martin traces his family's movement west, beginning with his great-grandparents' marriage and settlement in east Texas not long after emancipation.
Feather Sams-Huesties
Feather Sams-Huesties (M.A. '04, anthropology) has been hired as the new executive director at Crow's Shadow Institute of the Arts on the Umatilla Indian Reservation. The organization's first permanent director since 2002, Sams-Huesties previously worked as the guest services coordinator at Tamastslikt Cultural Institute, the Confederated Tribes' museum, and has been a member of the CSIA board of directors since 2006.
Rosemary Briseño's (Ph.D. '08, English) paper "Facing the Medusa: Toward Possession of a Pragmatic Assimilationist's Positionality" was accepted by the Society for the Study of Gloria Anzaldúa at "El Mundo Zurdo: The First International Conference on the Life and Work of the Gloria E. Anzaldúa," held in San Antonio, Texas, May 15–17.
Kurt Hemmer's (Ph.D. '00, English) film Rebel Roar: The Sound of Michael McClure won the 2008 Disc Maker's Award at the Berkeley Video Film Festival. Hemmer continued his tradition of photographing the audience when accepting the award, as he did when introducing Beat poet McClure and musician Ray Manzarek on stage in Kimbrough Hall in 1999. The film also received the 2004 Gold Award for Documentary at the Aurora Awards in Salt Lake City, Utah.
After working as assistant professor of English at North South University in his home country, Bangladesh, Azfar Hussain (Ph.D. '03, English) has recently joined the Department of English at Oklahoma State University as a visiting professor of English and multi-ethnic world literatures. His new book, The Wor(l)d in Question: Essays in Political Economy and Cultural Politics, has recently come out from Samhati Publications, Dhaka, while his next book, called The Politics of Subjects, Sites, and Scenes and a companion volume to The Wor(l)d in Question, is in press and expected to be out this summer. Over the last two years in Bangladesh, Hussain gave numerous public lectures and keynote speeches, including conference papers, on topics ranging from Bengali and "third-world" literary productions to the political economies of capitalism and imperialism to strategies and tactics of decolonization.
Andrew Peterson (M.F.A. '08) received two grants, an Artist Trust GAP (Grants for Artist Projects) grant and a 4Culture IAP (Individual Artist Projects) grant, to help fund his continuing work on his thesis. He volunteers for an organization that provides art making space and materials to street involved youth. They will have a show in February 2010 at the Seattle Pacific Gallery. Peterson will be teaching art classes for the next two academic years at Seattle Pacific University, where he taught a painting class last fall, and coordinating a Tent Show in Redmond, Washington, on July 25. Several WSU art students will be involved with this show.
Jason Blazevic (M.A. '06, history), now a doctoral candidate in political science at Idaho State University, is the only student who has been invited to participate in an intensive, multinational “East Asia Security Symposium” workshop scheduled June 22–26 in Beijing, China. The workshop, on the theme "Energy Security as a Tenet of National Security," is hosted by China Foreign Affairs University's Center for Strategic and Conflict Management in Beijing and sponsored by the University of New Haven. It features a variety of military, foreign affairs, and academic experts from throughout China and 20 similar foreign experts from throughout the world visiting the country.
Sara Dant (M.A. '91, American studies; Ph.D. '00, history) has been promoted to full professor at Weber State University. Her article "Making Wilderness Work: Frank Church and the American Wilderness Movement," published in Pacific Historical Review 77(2), won the Forest History Society's 2009 Theodore C. Blegen Award for best article in forest and conservation history during 2008. Articles are submitted by editors of scholarly journals, and a panel of judges selects the winner based on contribution to knowledge, strength of scholarship, and clarity and grace of presentation. Dant also served on the local arrangements committee for the Western History Association meeting in Salt Lake in October and led a conference field trip to the Bingham Canyon Mine and Kennecott's environmentally-planned community Daybreak.
Michael Egan (Ph.D. '04, history) and
Jeff Crane (M.A. '98, Ph.D. '04,
history) coedited a volume of essays on the history of
American environmentalism, Natural Protest: Essays on
the History of American Environmentalism (Routledge,
2008). The collection includes contributions from Egan
and Crane, as well as essays by Kevin
Marsh (M.A. '95, Ph.D. '02, history) and
John Hausdoerffer (Ph.D. '04, American
studies).
Egan was granted tenure and promoted to
associate professor at McMaster University, effective
July 1, 2009.
Justin Esch (B.A. '04, history), cofounder of J&D's Foods, was featured with two of his inventions, Bacon Salt and Baconnaise, on "ABC World News with Charles Gibson" April 21. View clip >
Jeffrey A. Johnson's (M.A. '00, Ph.D. '04, history) first book, They Are All Red Out Here: Socialist Politics in the Pacific Northwest, 1895–1925, has been published by the University of Oklahoma Press. Johnson holds a tenure-track position at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. He is Augustana's modern Americanist. He has also taught at Gonzaga University and the University of Idaho and has held fellowships at the United States Military Academy at West Point, the Montana Historical Society, and Harvard University. His research focuses on Gilded Age and Progressive Era politics and culture in the West, and his recent articles have appeared in Journal of the West and Idaho Yesterdays. At Augustana, Johnson teaches courses on recent U.S. history, historical methods/historiography, western civilization, and American radicalism. As a public historian, he has worked for the National Park Service, Renewable Technologies Inc., and the National Parks Conservation Association.
John Sterling
A composition by John Sterling (M.M. '08), performed by Sterling with the WSU Jazz Big Band, was included on a limited edition CD from Jazziz magazine titled "Jazziz on Disc: Ed. 8." The CD accompanied the October 2008 issue of the magazine, which said Sterling "...lives up to his name on his song 'Lorelei's Rose.' ... His studies in jazz composition [at WSU], with Greg Yasinitsky and Charles Argersinger, shine through." The issue included the 2008 Jazziz Education Guide, which named Washington State University in its list of "America's finest jazz conservatories."
Special agent Norm Brown (B.A. '79, criminal justice) retired from the FBI last fall. You can read a retrospective of his career in the Seattle Times.
Nancy Rodriguez (Ph.D. '98, political science) has been awarded the 2009 Outstanding Alumnus Award by the College of Criminal Justice at Sam Houston State University in Texas. She is an associate professor of criminology and criminal justice at Arizona State University.
Jutta Tobias (Ph.D. '08, psychology) presented a paper on "The Role of Entrepreneurship on Conflict Reduction in the Post-genocide Rwandan Coffee Industry" at the UNU-WIDER project workshop "Entrepreneurship and Conflict" in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, in March. UNU-WIDER is the United Nations University's World Institute for Development Economics Research. Tobias returned from a capacity-building assignment to Ethiopia in February, supporting WSU's International Programs' research and development associate director Tom Byers and project associate Colleen Taugher in a workshop series for Ethiopian government officials in the telecommunications sector.
James Aho (Ph.D. '71, sociology) was honored as Idaho State University's 2008–2009 Distinguished Teacher during commencement ceremonies May 9. Aho has taught at Idaho State since 1982, primarily in the areas of religion, violence, social phenomenology, and the body. He was recognized as the ISU Distinguished Researcher in 1993 and as a Master Teacher in 2006.
Maxine P. Atkinson (Ph.D. '80, sociology), professor of sociology and head of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at North Carolina State University, has been honored with NCSU's 2009 Board of Governors Award for Excellence in Teaching. It is the most prestigious award given to faculty at NCSU for teaching excellence.
The Chronicle, College of Liberal Arts, Washington State University