An exhibition featuring historic photos of Yakima Valley farmworkers and their lives and struggles will formally open with a reception and other events Oct. 7.

“Our Stories, Our Lives: Irwin Nash Photographs of Yakima Valley Migrant Labor” debuted with a soft opening in late May at Washington State University in Pullman.

The formal opening is from 3 to 4:30 p.m. Oct. 7 at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, 1535 NE Wilson Road across from Martin Stadium and the CUB. A reception will follow from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Events will include a conversation with WSU history instructor and guest curator Lipi Turner-Rahman, which will be livestreamed via YouTube.

The exhibition of 45 photographs from the Irwin Nash Yakima Valley Migrant Labor Collection will remain on display through March 11. It’s in collaboration with WSU Libraries’ Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections and the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art WSU.

There are more than 9,400 images in the collection. Most came to the university on more than 300 individual sets of film strip negatives and corresponding contact print proof sheets, according to a collection description.

The entire collection has been digitized. Members of the public have helped identify relatives — and themselves — in multiple photos, but many more need to be identified.

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Yakima Herald

As the new director of Washington State University’s ADVANCE program, Jennifer Thigpen wants to help provide female and other under-represented faculty members the guidance and mentorship she felt she missed early on in her career.

“There is a certain value to learning by doing, but I also think it shaved years off my life as I moved towards tenure,” said Thigpen, an associate professor in the WSU Department of History who began her new role at the start of the semester. “A little more formal mentoring with someone who could have foreseen the obstacles I would face down the road would have made my path less stressful and anxiety provoking. The opportunity to make the process smoother for others is one of the reasons why I am passionate about the work of the ADVANCE program.”

ADVANCE at WSU was originally founded in 2008 to remove obstacles to recruiting, hiring, retaining, and advancing female faculty members in STEM fields. According to the National Science Foundation, women comprise only 21% of full professors in science fields and 5% of full professors in engineering despite earning about half the doctorates in science and engineering in the nation.

Over the last decade, the ADVANCE program has received more than $1.2 million in NSF-funding and expanded its scope significantly to support both female and under-represented faculty members (regardless of gender) in all fields of study. The program currently provides WSU faculty with support for work/life balance and leadership training opportunities, such as the external mentor program which connects early career professors with off-campus academic leaders.

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WSU Insider

It’s fashionable in some circles today to quote America’s founders to justify a modern viewpoint, lend credence to a personal view, or simply trash someone you disagree with.

Ben Franklin’s remark “A republic – if you can keep it” is commonly deployed to criticize political views on the left and the right. Another quote, attributed to Thomas Jefferson, says one reason for people to own personal weapons is to protect themselves from the government. (For the record, Jefferson never said that.) A handful attributed to James Madison warn readers not to trust the federal system he helped create.

The images – typically following a predictable template of a quote superimposed on an oil painting of a colonial leader – seem to imply that the founders’ generation has a final-word opinion or dark warning that fits every issue modern society faces.

But that’s the catch, says Washington State University’s Dr. Lawrence Hatter. The quotes you see on social media to justify everything from banning abortions, to anti-government views, to total freedom for firearms, are often taken out of context, and sometimes – as in the Jefferson example — apocryphal.

“If you had a question about what the founders thought about something, which I think is a perfectly legitimate thing,” Hatter said. “Then begin with a question. Don’t begin with a conclusion.”

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Spokane Public Radio

Today’s question: When did the Great Depression start?

Although the stock market crash of 1929 is commonly blamed for starting the Great Depression – and would count as the correct answer on the Naturalization Test – the worst economic downturn of the 20th century actually began earlier and had more causes than the crash.

“There was no start date,” said Matthew Sutton, Berry Family Distinguished Professor in the Liberal Arts and History Department chairman at Washington State University.

The crash revealed other problems in the national and international economy that had been developing during the 1920s, said Sutton, who teaches the Great Depression as part of 20th century history. But while the market would lose almost 90% of its value over the next three years – hitting its lowest point 90 years ago last Friday – tying the depression to the crash is a bit of a myth.

For American farmers, the Depression started well before 1929. Prices for farm commodities had increased dramatically during World War I, a result of heavy demand and poor supply of products from Europe during four years of war.

Profits from the war years encouraged farmers to invest in more land and new machinery to work it. They took on more debt, but when the prices went down because of greatly increased supply and lower demand, they had trouble paying off those loans and many lost farms to foreclosure.

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Spokesman-Review

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