Summer 2013
Video: The Primal Power of Play
Play and depression may be opposite sides of a coin, says Dr. Jaak Panksepp, a neuroscientist and the Baily Endowed Chair of Animal Well-Being at Washington State University
» More ...Social Sciences
Summer 2013
Video: On the edge of turmoil
Peter Chilson, a Washington State University professor of English, estimates he has spent six years of his life in Mali and the Sahel region of Africa. He discusses his journey there at the time of last spring’s coup.
» More ...Summer 2013
Waiting for the Rain
In the impenetrable Dogon highlands of Mali, the storm of war is coming.
An excerpt from We Never Knew Exactly Where: Dispatches from the Lost Country of Mali
Washington State University English Professor Peter Chilson happened to be in Mali in March 2012 when a military coup ended the country’s two decades as a model democracy. Within days, the Malian army in the troublesome northern part of the country collapsed. As a result, Tuareg and Islamist fighters claimed 60 percent of the country, creating a safe haven for al Qaeda and other Islamist forces and threatening West African stability and European security.
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Summer 2013
Training the island police
When he learned about a job training police in the Pacific islands of Micronesia in 1978, former Los Angeles police officer Bryan Vila seized the opportunity to work in paradise. Little did he know that the hard lessons of teaching police officers from 2,000 different islands over six years would make him an expert on training in other cultures.
Vila, now a Washington State University professor of criminal justice and criminology at the Spokane campus, had been a Marine in Vietnam as well as a member of the sheriff’s department in Los Angeles, when he landed with a bang on an unpaved runway in Saipan.
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Summer 2013
Chicha in the landscape
Terraced hillsides in the Andes are amongst the most beautiful examples of what archaeologists refer to as “domesticating the landscape.” Generally constructed during the Incan Empire, the terraces, many of which are still farmed, are framed by often-elaborate stonework. Perhaps too elaborate for its assumed use, says archaeologist Melissa Goodman-Elgar.
Using techniques such as microscopic soil analysis and geochemistry, Goodman-Elgar explores how humans have transformed natural landscapes and the cultural implications. Much of her work is focused in the Andean highlands of Peru and Bolivia.
In the case of the terraced hillsides, however, she started from her perception as an archaeological soil scientist and explored … » More …
Spring 2013
Montana Before History: 11,000 Years of Hunter-Gatherers in the Rockies and Plains
Douglas H. MacDonald ’94
Mountain Press, 2012
The oldest archaeological site in Montana, the Anzick Site near Wilsall, has been carbon-dated to 11,040 years ago. It is, writes Douglas MacDonald in this fine survey of Montana archaeology, the only Clovis site excavated in Montana. Apparently a ceremonial burial site, it contained the oldest human remains found in North America.
Whether or not they were a coherent “culture,” the Clovis people are … » More …
Winter 2012
Gallery: Archaeology on Galiano Island
For the past 15 years, Washington State University archaeologist Colin Grier has explored the past of Galiano Island, one of the Gulf Islands between Vancouver Island and the British Columbia mainland. Take a tour of the dig and the methods of archaeologists examining a long-abandoned Native village.
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Winter 2012
No Room of Her Own: Women’s Stories of Homelessness, Life, Death, and Resistance
Desiree Hellegers
Palgrave Macmillan
2011
“As a form of social punishment, homelessness is far sterner in many respects than sentences handed out in court for most criminal offenses,” writes Desiree Hellegers, an associate professor of English and founding co-director of the Center for Social and Environmental Justice at WSU Vancouver, in her introduction. In presenting the individual stories of 15 women in Seattle collected over two decades, Hellegers offers a view … » More …
Winter 2012
Alpha Phi Alpha: A Legacy of Greatness, the Demands of Transcendence
Gregory S. Parks and Stefan M. Bradley (’98 MA History)
University Press of Kentucky
2012
Alpha Phi Alpha is the only black fraternity to be founded at an Ivy League school. Starting at Cornell in 1906, its founders were just a generation away from slavery and intent on creating an organization to foster academic scholarship, build lifelong friendships, and promote social progress. The organization soon opened chapters at Harvard, Howard, and Virginia Union … » More …
Winter 2012
The 1710 Senex map of North America
There were still plenty of blank spots on maps when cartographer and engraver John Senex (circa 1678-1740) created this 1710 map of North America. It is one of 33 early eighteenth-century maps from a Senex atlas in Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections, acquired by the WSU Libraries in the mid-1950s. The atlas lacks a title page, but it is almost certainly Senex’s Universal Geographer, published circa 1725. It includes the bookplate of Sir Archibald Grant of Monymoske, Baronet (1696-1778), and was formerly part of his library.
Courtesy WSU Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections
