The latest album from Washington State University School of Music Regent’s Professor Dr. Greg Yasinitsky is receiving international attention. “YAZZ Band” was recorded at WSU and also features faculty members Sarah Miller, Brian Ward, David Jarvis along with alumni Patrick Sheng and PJ Kelley and Professor Emerita Ann Marie Yasinitsky. The CD has been featured on Public Radio International and has appeared on jazz radio playlists around the country for several weeks. “YAZZ Band” is available for download and purchase on ITunes, Amazon, CDBaby and streaming on Apple Music and Spotify.
Today, a renewed spirit of indigenous activism coincides with the homecoming of some Passamaquoddy cultural artifacts. Audio engineers at the Library of Congress are using new technologies to convert rare, historical recordings into a much cleaner digital format, and, in a Native-first approach to archival work, the library is giving the tribe curatorial control.
Christen
The return of the Passamaquoddy archive involves the work of a large interdisciplinary team. There are, in addition to the librarians and engineers at the American Folklife Center, two academics who specialize in digital repatriation: Kim Christen, professor of English and director of the Center for Digital Scholarship and Curation at Washington State University; and Jane Anderson, at New York University.
Christen manages an open-source content-management program called Mukurtu. Since its launch, several years ago, the software has been used by more than six hundred groups, including the Passamaquoddy, to curate their own Web sites and regulate access in accordance with custom. On the Plateau Peoples’ Web Portal, for example, members of eight participating tribes can log in to view materials specific to their community; the Web site of the Warumungu tribe restricts access to certain items according to gender.
The tool is not only for First Nations; Terry Baxter, an archivist in Oregon, is helping Don’t Shoot Portland, a civil-rights group that opposes police violence, use Mukurtu to organize everything from children’s drawings to protest announcements.
Charles Bangley, an international expert in shark ecology and conservation, will present the 2019 Robert Jonas Lecture in Biological Sciences on Tuesday, Feb. 5, at WSU Pullman.
Bangley is a postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, where his research focuses on the movement ecology of coastal sharks and rays as part of the Smithsonian Movement of Life Initiative.
His free, public address, “Where sharks want to be: Using tracking technology to define important habitat,” begins 6 p.m. in the CUB Auditorium. It is sponsored by the WSU Zoology Club, School of Biological Sciences and College of Arts & Sciences.
He will discuss efforts to conserve and manage sharks and rays, which is difficult because of their wide‑ranging habitats. Many sharks and rays undergo long‑distance seasonal migrations across entire coastlines and even across oceans, but they also show fidelity to specific areas of particular importance such as nurseries, refuges and foraging grounds that are disproportionately important to their survival and population health.
Duke University has apologized after a professor cautioned international students against speaking Chinese on campus and urged them to speak English instead.
Yung-Hwa Anna Chow, who advises students in Washington State University’s college of arts and sciences, said international students must already have English proficiency to study in the United States. While students may need to speak English in classrooms and research labs, they should be able to choose which language to speak in social settings, she said.
“To attack these students and say they have to speak English because it’s good for them and that they need to practice more, it speaks to these professors’ privilege and entitlement,” she said.
Ms. Chow, who was raised in Taiwan and began learning English at 12 when she moved to the United States, said speaking a native language allows people to connect with one another, establish a feeling of home and combat homesickness.
“That’s a really important piece for these students,” she said. “If you were traveling to China and you didn’t speak Chinese, would you want to be speaking Chinese all the time or would you feel more comfortable speaking English with your friends?”
WSU English professor Donna Potts was selected to serve as chair of the English department in the College of Arts and Sciences.
Potts said she was encouraged to run for the open position because of her commitment to the department.
She said she wants the faculty in the department to have a voice and be able to design their course the way they want to. However, some courses, like English 101, already have a structured curriculum.
“I consider myself an advocate for the faculty. I represent the faculty,” Potts said. “What I’m trying to do is to have a committee of faculty that is advisory, so that it’s not me from top down, reviewing people.”
The latest album from Washington State University School of Music Regent’s Professor Dr. Greg Yasinitsky is receiving international attention. “YAZZ Band” was recorded at WSU and also features faculty members Sarah Miller, Brian Ward, David Jarvis along with alumni Patrick Sheng and PJ Kelley and Professor Emerita Ann Marie Yasinitsky. The CD has been featured on Public Radio International and has appeared on jazz radio playlists around the country for several weeks. “YAZZ Band” is available for download and purchase on ITunes, Amazon, CDBaby and streaming on Apple Music and Spotify.
