Humanities

Winter 2011

Bringing history and historian together

Historian Douglas Brinkley recently visited Seattle to interview William D. Ruckelshaus, the founding head of the Environmental Protection Agency and advisor to a variety of Northwest clean water and community groups.

Ruckelshaus first made the connection between the environment and public health shortly after graduating from Harvard Law School when he returned to Indiana as a young lawyer. In the office of the Indiana attorney general, Ruckelshaus was assigned to the Indiana Board of Health, where he noticed that many of the state’s health issues were tied to air and water pollution, he says. It was a foundation for his work a decade later defining … » More …

Winter 2011

Tolerance in an intolerant time

In 1530, a group of Lutheran princes composed a statement of faith, requesting legal recognition, and presented it to Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor. Although the Emperor rejected it, the Augsburg Confession would become the statement of belief that defined Lutheranism. Toward the middle of the century, the Catholics followed with their version, the Council of Trent. Indeed, a succession of churches that emerged from the breakup of the monolithic medieval church during the Reformation distinguished themselves through statements of faith that became known as confessions.

Not coincidentally, the Age of Confessionalism is also known as the Age of Religious Wars.

Gradually, says … » More …

Winter 2011

Building New Pathways to Peace

Noriko Kawamura , Yoichiro Murakami, and Shin Chiba, editors

University of Washington Press, 2011

The idea of “peace” in our complex and conflicted world sometimes seems out of reach or even antiquated. The authors in this collection recognize these realities and make a concerted effort to build a new theory of peace studies.

Noriko Kawamura, a WSU assistant professor of history, co-edited the volume, which includes contributions from a number of Washington State faculty along … » More …

Winter 2011

The Man Who Dammed the Yangtze: A Mathematical Novel

Alex Kuo

Haven Books, 2011

Ge and G, mathematicians in northern China and Oshkosh, Wisconsin, respectively, navigate parallel academic paths at the beginning of this unique and challenging novel by WSU English professor Alex Kuo. The two characters don’t know each other, but their lives reflect a common experience over the course of 30 years.

The Chinese woman Ge and Chinese-American man G share a disgust for the emptiness of their teaching and the revolutions … » More …

Fall 2011

To the lighthouse

For more than a century one of Washington’s earliest man-made landmarks has perched 120 feet above the sea on the bluff at Admiralty Head on Whidbey Island. In its early years, the lighthouse beacon guided the sailing ships that helped settle Puget Sound. Today the white stucco structure with its 30-foot tower charms visitors exploring the island.

The first lighthouse was built on Admiralty Head (also called Red Bluff) in 1861. At the time, the building was made of wood and the lamp was fueled by whale oil. It had to go, though, to make room for Fort Casey, a U.S.military post. In 1903, a … » More …

Fall 2011

Wendell Berry comes to Washington

Staff photo

Poet and author Wendell Berry visited Skagit Valley in May at the invitation of Washington State University students and faculty. He spent the day touring the WSU research and extension center and exploring a farm. He also visited with area farmers including Tom and Cheryl Thornton, left, and Anne Schwartz ’78, right. (Staff photo)

Fall 2011

The Docks

docks

Bill Sharpsteen ’80
University of California Press, 2011

In my sailing days on Puget Sound, I got used to watching for the fast-moving container ships that could overtake my little boat in a matter of minutes. One day, I found their schedules on the Internet and saw the outline of a huge, economically powerful engine tying together goods from around the world.

In The Docks, Bill Sharpsteen ’80 shows us this world by peering … » More …

Summer 2011

Letters in the Summer 2011 issue

Moral capital

Kudos to Jennifer Sherman for her good article summarizing her research and book about real-life experiences in Golden Valley. It describes the price of economic disaster in a rural atmosphere in a revealing and provocative way.

Moreover, we were struck by the completely unnecessary cause of this disaster in the first place. It seems that the collapse of the timber industry in the Pacific Northwest was “due in large part” to placing the protection of the spotted owl over the welfare and economic well being of the entire human population of not only Golden Valley, but also other communities in the logging … » More …

Summer 2011

After a fashion

Fall fashion week in Pullman featured a stovepipe silhouette and shorter hemline. Black and rhinestones were in, as were gold shoes and feathered cloches.

These weren’t new designs. They were elegant Jazz Age outfits hand-picked by students in a “Costume and Museum Management” class and on display last November in the Terrell Library atrium.

Sophomore Amanda Harris is one of five students who culled through the University’s historic costume collection to decide on a theme and create the 20s in Vogue display. She is one of dozens each year who have the opportunity to dig through an extensive collection of clothing and accessories housed … » More …

Summer 2011

Buddy Levy: Historical investigator

In a fabulously snide review of the first episode of Brad Meltzer’s Decoded on the History Channel, a reviewer for The New York Times refers to investigator Buddy Levy, “who could be a bus driver but who is in fact an English professor at Washington State University and a freelance writer of magazine articles about adventure sports.”

Levy himself thinks that’s pretty funny.

“I’m cool with that,” he says. “I’m a bus driver who can write a narrative history of the Amazon.”

That narrative history, which our charming reviewer neglected to mention, is Levy’s latest book, River of Darkness: Francisco Orellana’s Legendary Voyage of … » More …