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Music professor to perform with Pulitzer Prize-winning composer

Jacqueline Wilson.
Wilson

When Jacqueline Wilson takes the stage Saturday night at New York City’s Whitney Museum of American Art, she will be one of 13 Indigenous women musicians performing original scores written specifically for each of them by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Raven Chacon.

“This is so unique that I will be standing up there with 12 other Native women representing the first Indigenous Pulitzer Prize winner in music in the history of the award,” said Wilson, a bassoonist and assistant professor of music at Washington State University. “It is by far the most special thing I’ve ever been a part of. I’m really proud of it.”

Wilson and her fellow musicians will be performing a series of 13 lithographs collectively known as “For Zitkála-Šá.” A Yankton Dakota composer and musician, Zitkála-Šá lived from 1876 to 1938 and wrote the libretto and songs for The Sun Dance Opera (1913), the first American Indian opera.

Chacon wrote the graphic scores that make up “For Zitkála-Šá” specifically for Wilson and the other contemporary American Indian, First Nations, and Mestiza women performers.

He envisions each piece as a portrait of the woman who is performing it and how they navigate the twenty-first century.

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WSU Insider

WSU Vancouver historian explores Oregon pioneers’ legacy of violence

Peter Boag.
Boag

Washington State University Vancouver historian Peter Boag’s new scholarly book, “Pioneering Death: The Violence of Boyhood in Turn-of-the-Century Oregon,” is a kaleidoscopic study of the whole societal context surrounding a triple murder in Oregon in 1895. It expands outward from standard criminology turf – the murderer’s troubled psychology, health problems, history of bad behavior and possible domestic abuse by his father – to explore the grinding economic depression of the late 1800s and the complex financial and social pressures felt by Willamette Valley farm families.

“So many things are happening at that particular moment. When the murder happens, it seems to tug on all these strands that are connected outward into society and the nation – and the world,” Boag said.

Violence was an essential part of the pioneer and post-pioneer landscape, Boag writes. At the time, the original Oregon Trail pioneers who were starting to die off both celebrated and whitewashed their own long history of violence.

Boag’s scholarship about the American West often focuses on gender, sexuality and culture. A museum exhibit that he developed in partnership with the staff of the Washington State Historical Society, called “Crossing Boundaries: Portraits of a Transgender West,” won an Award of Excellence from the American Association for State and Local History. The exhibit recently closed after a run at the Washington State History Museum in Tacoma.

Boag’s book “Re-Dressing America’s Frontier Past” provided much of the research for the exhibit, which highlighted the stories of specific transgender people in the American West from 1860 to 1940.

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Spokesman-Review

Is America divided beyond the hope of democracy? How we got here and where we might be headed

As more details of the Jan. 6 insurrection come to light – and Americans seem more split on issues such as abortion, gun control and the economy – many worry about the state of our democracy.

Americans have become increasingly pessimistic about the direction of the country and the economy. An AP-NORC poll of 1,053 adults nationwide found that 85% of Americans think the country is headed in the wrong direction.

Political scientists and researchers agree that America is in an “extraordinary” time, but most think democracy can prevail.

Cornell Clayton.
Clayton

“There are some very troubling trends taking place right now,” said Cornell Clayton, director of the Foley Institute for Public Policy and Public Service at Washington State University. “But you have to think about democracy in the long term as a progression. There are ebbs and flows, and we’re definitely in an ebb period.”

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Spokesman-Review

PSU, WSU researchers to study atmospheric ridges, a factor in Pacific Northwest’s extreme weather events

Last year’s record-breaking heatwave, recent droughts and the 2020 Labor Day megafires that swept across Oregon and Washington all share a contributing factor: atmospheric ridges, or elongated regions of high pressure relative to their surroundings that are typically associated with warm and dry conditions at the surface.

More still needs to be known about the key drivers of ridges and how they will be affected by a warming climate. That’s why researchers from Washington State University Vancouver (WSUV) and Portland State University (PSU) are teaming up to study atmospheric ridging in current and future climates, thanks to a grant from the National Science Foundation.

Deepti Singh.
Singh

While ridges are a normal part of the mid-latitude atmospheric circulation, their occurrence and impacts over western North America is influenced by multiple unique factors including proximity to the Pacific Ocean, interactions between the Pacific Ocean and the atmosphere and the complex topography of western North America, said Deepti Singh, an assistant professor at WSUV and director of WSUV’s Climate Extremes and Societal Impacts Lab, and her PSU collaborator.

The project aims to advance the basic understanding of the components of the Earth system that influence atmospheric ridges over western North America and investigate how and why ridges will respond to continued global warming. The project will seek to answer three key questions using a combination of observations and climate model simulations.

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Portland Sate University News
AZO Cleantech
Honest Columnist
The Observer

Rural Poverty “Less Visible,” Says Washington Sociologist

The CARES Act approved by Congress in 2020 established a $150 billion dollar Coronavirus Relief Fund. It provided payments to state, local, and tribal governments, but relief expired at the end of 2021.

Jennifer Sherman.
Sherman

Sociologist Jennifer Sherman, a professor at Washington State University, says this is affecting rural communities of the Northwest.

“Very often, rural housing insecurity looks different. It might mean, doubling up or couch surfing or things like that,” she says.

“You’re less likely to have any kinds of services for the rural poor as well. So I think I think they’re less visible and easier to ignore.”

Sherman, who studies rural poverty and income inequality, suggests policymakers look into subsidizing things like housing, healthcare, childcare and food. Expanding access to life’s necessities could especially help vulnerable populations, she says.

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Northwest Public Broadcasting