If we traveled around the world, we would see all kinds of dancers. We might see classical ballerinas in Russia. We might see break dancers performing on the streets of New York. We might even see tango dancers in Argentina.
While the exact reasons we dance remain a mystery, there are a few theories about it.
That’s what I found out from my friend Ed Hagen, an anthropologist at WSU who has researched the roots of dance. » More …
Twelve College of Arts and Sciences graduate students in five different disciplines received scholarship awards at the WSU Graduate School at the fifth annual Evening of Excellence.
“I am grateful for the support that the award and the Graduate School have provided for graduate students to continue to serve their communities through research, scholarship, and public engagement,” said Tabitha Velasco, doctoral student in » More …
WSU Vancouver cultural anthropology student Emma R. Johnson will spend the summer in the office of U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, serving as the university’s first Udall Native American Congressional intern.
“On May 29, I’m scheduled to board a plane headed to Washington, D.C., and soon I’ll be at work in the senator’s office learning first-hand how government operates and how federal issues involving Native Americans like me are addressed,” she said. Johnson is a member of the Cowlitz Tribe of western Washington State. She has worked as a Rangeland Management » More …
From creating voice-responsive materials, to enabling regrowth of lost fingers and limbs, to reducing stress on caregivers of autistic children, to unearthing cultural history in Puget Sound, a wide range of high-impact research topics were expeditiously explained in the recent CAS Three Minute Thesis contest.
Eleven Pullman-based doctoral students competed for valuable fellowship prizes by presenting their years of dissertation work in three minutes or less, using just one visual slide, and in language anyone could understand. » More …
With a handle of skunkbush and a cactus‑spine business end, the tool was made around 2,000 years ago by the Ancestral Pueblo people of the Basketmaker II period in what is now southeastern Utah.
Andrew Gillreath‑Brown, an anthropology PhD candidate, chanced upon the pen‑sized instrument while taking an inventory of archaeological materials that had been sitting in storage for more than 40 years. » More …
WSU senior Sidney Murphy, curator of a special six-week exhibit at WSU’s Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, sees art as a path to a more honest, open, and liberating future.
Standing in front of the four panels of Myriads, Only by Dark by Julie Mehretu, Murphy says of the Ethiopian-American artist, “Mehretu focuses a lot on topology, maps, the connections we have between places—that’s my interpretation. This idea of place is messy, of where we come from, really messy.” She tosses off a small laugh. “You can’t really follow one line.” » More …
Anthropology senior Sidney Murphy thinks it’s important that people of all ethnicities connect with art and that art can help us celebrate culture.
Murphy, who is also earning a minor in exhibition studies, selected works of four prominent black artists from the collections of Jordan Schnitzer and his family foundation for a special six-week “Social Space” exhibit at WSU’s Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art.
“Black artists and ethnic artists are the lowest-represented at art museums — and especially black women,” Murphy said. The four featured artists–– » More …
AnnMarie McCracken, a student at WSU Pullman, has been awarded one of only 17 undergraduate research grants from the international scientific research honor society Sigma Xi and its Grants‑in‑Aid of Research program.
McCracken is pursuing a double degree and plans to graduate with bachelor’s degrees in anthropology and French. She will receive financial support from the program’s ecology category for » More …
The University’s Historic Preservation Committee recently launched a new website that provides the first comprehensive online history of WSU Pullman’s buildings and landscapes.
Developed as a teaching tool and an eventual community history repository, the WSU Building and Landscapes website features photographs, maps and plans from the WSU Manuscripts, Archives and Special Collections (MASC). Currently, the website includes entries for 161 buildings on the Pullman campus, including 39 buildings » More …
Rapid global cooling 13,000 years ago challenged early occupants of Alaska to adapt. People used to hunting mammoths and other megafauna with big stone tools suddenly found their weapons shattering in the cold. Access to the stone they used to make them got buried under snow.
As with any climactic change, the cold resulted in a shift in fauna, requiring new tools. Early Alaskans turned to microblade technology, a technique they’d kept alive for » More …