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Nov. 8: Leading U.S. ethnographer to speak about race, civility

One of the nation’s leading urban ethnographers will talk about race and civility in everyday life in a free, public address, 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 8, in the Elson Floyd Cultural Center at Washington State University.

The speaker, Elijah Anderson, will be honored by WSU with the 2017 William Julius Wilson Award for the Advancement of Social Justice in recognition his scholarly and applied work to promote racial integration and social harmony.

Anderson, who is the William K. Lanman Jr. professor of sociology at Yale University, will discuss the resilience of the “cosmopolitan canopy” — a metaphor for civil society — and how the canopy can help teach, reinforce and spread social tolerance and mutual understanding.

“A college campus can be thought of as a cosmopolitan canopy — an island of civility in a sea of segregated living, where diverse people come together and typically get along — unlike urban ghettos, suburbs and ethnic enclaves where segregation is more often the norm,” Anderson said.

He will discuss what happens under the canopy when the two predominant types of people there encounter each other, how each feels and functions, and what challenges they face and adapt to or hide from.

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WSU News

Augmented Reality Experience at Providence Academy

The Historic Trust, formerly titled the Fort Vancouver National Trust, is partnering with the Creative Media and Digital Culture program at Washington State University Vancouver in the development of a new engagement tool that will allow visitors to experience the history of Providence Academy through mobile devices.

Once the project is launched, after December 6, 2017, visitors to the site will be able to access a free app and point their smart phone or tablet toward areas outside and inside the Providence Academy. This will activate visual and auditory episodes created through augmented reality applications. “The app will bring history to life and showcase the Academy’s stories, people, and cultural significance in inventive and imaginative ways,” said Richard Burrows, Director of Community Outreach and Programs at The Historic Trust.

The WSU Vancouver class of 21 students will create ten episodes, starting with Mother Joseph, the architect and founder of Providence Academy, welcoming visitors to the building. Other virtual experiences will include ringing the bell in the tower, lighting a candle in the Shrine to the Blessed Mother, viewing buildings no longer standing on the grounds, and retracing the Sisters of Providence fundraising excursions throughout the West.

Dene Grigar
Grigar

“This collaboration is representative of The Historic Trust’s commitment to new, innovative, and interactive programming that is at the forefront of technologies,” said Burrows. “Access to the visionary leadership of Dr. Dene Grigar, Director and Professor of WSU Vancouver’s Creative Media and Digital Culture, in combination with the extraordinary abilities of the students, will result in groundbreaking opportunities for the public and visitors to gain deeper understanding about our roots and history.”

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Vancouver Family Magazine

When Big Money Lands In A Small Vancouver Election

The closely watched Vancouver Port Commission race is unlike any other. The future of a multi-million dollar oil terminal at the port hangs in the balance. And that’s made things personal in this close-knit community.

Mark Stephan
Stephan

“This is truly a very local race,” said Mark Stephan, a political science professor at Washington State University’s Vancouver campus.

He called the amount of cash going into this port race unprecedented.

“To have so much money pouring from interests outside the area,” Stephan said, “it just doesn’t usually happen that way.” » More …

WSUV professor authors book on slavery

Woman, children were enslaved on Indian Ocean island

France probably isn’t the first country to pop into your mind when you think of nations with a convoluted and ugly history of slavery, but a new book by WSU Vancouver history professor Sue Peabody may change that.

Sue Peabody
Sue Peabody

Peabody, an international expert in French colonial slavery in the Indian Ocean, released her book, “Madeleine’s Children,” through Oxford University Press on Oct. 3. The book tells the tale of Madeleine, a slave brought to France as a teenager in 1772, and her children, Furcy, Constance and Maurice, who were illegally enslaved on Reunion Island, a French Indian Ocean colony at the time. The story traces her son Furcy’s struggles to gain his freedom through a corrupt and convoluted system of colonial rule.

“It’s really a remarkable piece of work,” said Brett Rushforth, an assistant professor at the University of Oregon who read Peabody’s manuscript for Oxford University Press. “It’s amazing how those worlds interconnected. In India, you have complicated colonial rules, legal statuses and servitude. You have France’s sugar islands, and then you have France itself. These three things are very different from each other and yet end up intertwined.”

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The Columbian

Researchers gain grant to study fire aftermath, regrowth

Kevan Moffett

As wildfires dominate headlines in the Pacific Northwest and the rest of the American West, a Washington State University Vancouver researcher is seeking answers to unknown questions about a fire’s aftermath.

Kevan Moffett, an assistant professor of environmental hydrology at the Salmon Creek campus, and Andres Holz, an assistant professor of geography at Portland State University, recently received about $500,000 in grants from the National Science Foundation grant to research how the soil and landscape changes after multiple wildfires in one area.

It’s a relatively untapped area of research, Moffett said. There’s no data on the hydrology — the movement and quality of water — of soil that’s been burned over and over again in the kinds of forests that cover Washington state, nor is there any information on how repeated burns could affect landslides, downstream flooding, vegetation regrowth or the risk of even more fire.

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The Columbian