Creative Activities

Student, faculty serve on artist jury

Mikayla Makle, an English major and president of the WSU Black Student Union—and a College of Arts and Sciences student ambassador—served alongside three CAS faculty to help select recipients of the recent Black Lives Matter Artist Grant program offered by the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art WSU and the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation.

Maestro of many voicings

A hush falls over the crowd as symphony orchestra conductor Danh Pham takes the podium and slowly lifts his baton. With the down stroke, he leads the performers through a seemingly effortless musical journey that enchants the audience and clearly brings Pham great joy. A native of Honolulu’s “ethnic mixing pot,” Pham delights in sharing music […]

How to be a poet

Poetry is art: uniting words with “a form to hold anything you want to say.” “[We all] have a unique way of seeing the work and being in it. I’m intrigued by how different our perceptions are,” said Cameron McGill, teaching assistant professor in the Department of English and assistant editor for the online journal […]

Creating a plague journal

Intrigued by the dramatic uptick in online discussions of plague literature in spring 2020, and inspired by Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year, published in 1722, nearly 60 years after the bubonic plague swept through London, ethnic studies associate professor John Streamas decided to write a plague journal for the current coronavirus health […]

Art as language

Surrounded by piles of art in her studio, MFA student Ashley “Q” Quast wondered what else she could make as she prepared for the Palouse Performance Showcase. She typically uses different materials in her art to express varied concepts and explains concepts by implementing humor. “Q is hilarious. She is quite dynamic in how she […]

Undergraduate fellowships support research, creative work

The WSU Office of Undergraduate Research named 12 CAS students as recipients of four different fellowships for 2020-21. Each will receive funding to support of mentored research, scholarship and creative activities for the 2020-21 academic year. “In addition to the long-established Auvil and Carson undergraduate research awards and the NSF-funded Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority […]

Using photography to help combat racial, social injustice

Sharing the complete picture of humanity, especially the hard topics, so that one day she can affect positive change. That’s the reason photographer and WSU Tri-Cities alumna Madison Rosenbaum first picked up a camera. Shedding light on difficult social issues and providing a voice for the unheard is also what led her to document local […]

Flattening the curve with jazz

The WSU Jazz Big Band isn’t letting the global pandemic get in the way of delivering excellent big band entertainment. The award-winning group, directed by Regents Professor Greg Yasinitsky, put technology to the test to produce a video of the aptly titled composition, “Flatten That Curve.” In addition to the quality of the music, what […]