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Project aims to preserve voices of Hanford’s history

Bob Bauman. Photo by KING5 News.
Bob Bauman. Photo by KING5 News.

Seventy years ago, the U.S. military evacuated two small communities in southeast Washington and created a place called Hanford. The historic moments that happened there since can get lost in all the news the nuclear cleanup is creating today. Now, a major effort is underway to preserve the voices of Hanford’s past.

Bob Bauman, professor of history at WSU Tri-Cities, is recording memories of the area through the Hanford Oral History Project.

Watch the video at KING5 News

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CAS Connect Preserving the voices of Hanford’s unique past

JFK assassination: Gen Y students weigh in during new class

Scott Stratton
Scott Stratton

From the grassy knoll in Dallas to the wheat-covered hills of the Palouse, President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 remains a whodunit that stumps the old and young alike.

Or maybe not.

Though Kennedy’s shooting is one of the “greatest mysteries of all times,” according to students in history instructor Scott Stratton’s course “50th Anniversary of the JFK Assassination,” it’s not such a mystery after all.

Read the article at WSU News

High tech ‘hearts’ humanities: Market values creativity, communication, critical thinking

In this time of intense focus on technology, what good is a degree in the humanities?

Plenty, say not only Washington State University professors but leading high-tech companies too. And WSU humanities alumni are proving it.

Only weeks before collecting her bachelor of arts degree through the WSU Department of English last December, Allison Hartinger walked right past a job-fair booth seeking software engineers: “I just didn’t see myself with that title,” she said.

Read more about graduating into gainful employment

Historian: Cross-dressing was common in the “Old” West

Peter Boag
Peter Boag

The American West was a man’s world in the 19th century, so it wasn’t unusual for some women to dress like men, says Peter Boag, professor of history, and author of Re-Dressing America’s Frontier Past. (University of California Press, 2011)

“(W)hen I started uncovering all these female-to-male cross dressers, I also started to uncover hundreds of stories of men who dressed as women.”

Read more about Dr. Boag’s research

New insights into intelligence role in start of Pacific war

Recently uncovered documents about prewar Japanese intelligence that offer new insights to the World War II Pacific theater will be discussed in a free, public presentation on Wednesday, Sept. 25, at WSU Pullman. Tosh Minohara, professor in the Graduate School of Law at Kobe University, Japan, will present “Reconsidering the Road to Pearl Harbor: The Role of Intelligence in Decision Making,” noon-1:30 p.m., Sept. 25, in Bryan Hall 324.

His approach will be two-fold: first, to briefly overview the obscure history of the Japanese Black Chamber, a code breaking operation; and second, to examine the intelligence dimension of policy formulation in Tokyo. This will include the impact of signals intelligence on decision making, most notably at the critical juncture of November 1941 during U.S.-Japan negotiations. The talk is sponsored by the WSU Department of History, the George and Bernadine Converse Historical Endowment, and the WSU Asia Program.

Read more about the presentation