PORTLAND STATE UNIVERSITY
DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY ·   Fall 2001
 
 

2001 FALL Event:
Panel Discussion
       
“History, Spirituality, and the Environment”

November 1, 2001
7:30 p.m.
327 Smith Center  PSU

MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT OF FRIENDS OF HISTORY

Greetings,

I would like to share with you my deepest concern and sorrow regarding the tragic events of September 11, 2001.  This sentiment has been repeated numerous times but I need to express it again to you.  This event has had a dramatic impact upon individuals, the nation, and the world.  I hope and pray that the world’s leaders will guide their respective nations wisely and with well thought out actions.  I would encourage each person to make every effort to preserve the civil rights and dignity of all those who may be innocent victims of anger and aggression, particularly, at this time, those who are Arab and/or Muslim. 

The Friends board has been busy planning events for this upcoming year. Our theme for the year is “Spirituality in History.”  Please make a note on your calendar for November 1, 2001, 7:30 PM, 327 Smith Center.  FOH will host its traditional panel discussion as a beginning to PSU Weekend.  This year PSU’s keynote speaker will be Robert Kennedy, Jr., of River Keepers. With our theme in mind, the panel discussion will be “History, Spirituality, and The Environment.” Roberta Ulrich, past president of FOH and author of Empty Nets:  Indians, Dams, and the Columbia River, will be the moderator.  Panel members will include Dr. William L. Lang,  PSU History Department and Center for Columbia River History, Dr. Frank Fromherz, University of Portland, participant in the Bishop’s letter regarding the environment and the Columbia River, Reverend Eko Noble, Buddhist priest who has extensive knowledge of the environment and environmental activism from a Buddhist perspective, and Oregon Representative Chris Beck who also works for The Public Land Trust.  This topic and the group of distinguished speakers should provide a very stimulating and thought provoking evening. In February you can look forward to our Endowed Speaker, Dr. David Cressy, Ohio State University. Professor Cressy’s topic is “Reformation and Revolution” which focuses on religion and culture on the eve of the English Revolution. 

Additionally we have some other speakers and events “in the works.” Please check our web site,  www.histroy.pdx.edu/foh,   for current information.

The History Book Group, which began last  year is continuing on this year. The group is growing and the attendance has been quite consistent but they certainly would welcome new members. The group meets at PSU the last Monday of the month.  Please check out our web site for details and the book list.

I would like to thank each one of you for your support of Friends of History.  I look forward to seeing you at our events this year.

Cathy Croghan Alzner
President
 
 

LETTER FROM THE CHAIR:

The last few weeks have been difficult ones for all in our nation.  The History Department has been fortunate to have our own Professor Jon Mandaville serve as a spokesperson for scholarship on the Modern Arab world in a number of public venues.

In contrast to this time of national mourning and uncertainty, affairs at  the History Department are particularly bright.  We welcome two new members to the faculty: Katy Barber and Corey Olds.  Professor Barber comes to us from the American Studies Doctoral Program at Washington State University and from the Center for Columbia River History. Professor Barber is an expert on the history of the West, especially of the Pacific Northwest.  She is an experienced public historian whose web site for the CCRH is a model of web education and interaction, and whose numerous projects in oral history have strengthened community and sense of history in this region.  Professor Barber taught in the department last year and her reputation as a teacher  has grown enormously.  She currently has 91 students registered  in her course on Oregon History!  Professor Barber, together with Professor Bill Lang, are the core instructors for our new M.A. track in Public History in which we are working closely with the Oregon Historical Society and Washington State University-Vancouver.

Professor Olds comes to us from Stanford University where he earned a joint Ph.D. in History and Humanities.  He is a specialist in the history and historiography of the representations of blacks or Africans / African-Americans within Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment empirical (pseudo-)scientific, intellectual, and cultural discourses.  His study "Buffon's Bell Curve and the Anthropologization of God's Creature," will be published in the book The Color of Liberty: A History of Race in France, forthcoming from Duke University Press.  The Department is pleased that Professor Olds can offer classes that examine race from a historical perspective, a topic our students clamor for.

While PSU has experienced expanding enrollments for the last decade, the History Department has kept pace and even exceeded it.  Our fall term 2001 "numbers" are up considerably beyond those of the university.  While the causes of this are difficult to gauge definitively, I might cite the following revelation from Scott Burns, the director of the Faculty Teaching Awards.  There was no department in the university whose students were more eager to participate in the interviews and surveys that determine the departmental teacher of the year.  And, of all the departments of the university, students nominated a broader array of professors in the History Department than in any other department.  With only 15 full-time faculty in the department, students nominated 18 different faculty for the award.  Out of this stiff competition, Professor Tim Garrison won the History Teacher of the Year for 2000-01.  Clearly, our students are voting for our teaching excellence in these awards and with their feet.

Finally, I would like to mention one of the many publications produced by departmental scholars for it is fresh on our minds.  Professor Patricia Schechter's book Ida B. Wells-Barnett and American Reform, 1880-1930 came out just this month from the University of North Carolina Press.  Allow me to quote one of her reviewers: "The depth of insight and sensitivity of her analyses of black leadership and gender politics are unsurpassed."

Lois Becker
 
 

TREASURER REPORT:
The Friends of History would like to acknowledge a generous gift by Kevin Fox and Jennifer Tanner, who donated $100 to the FOH Operating Account in March of 2001.  They also donated an additional $100 to the Bernard V. Burke Fund of the PSU Foundation.  What's more, matching grants by their employers boosted this to a total donation of $400. We are greatly appreciative of Kevin and Jennifer's continuing support of the Friends of History."

Additional Gifts:

Endowment Fund:
$100 Cecille Beyl
$25 Anastasia Buchanan
$25 Barbara Bodin
$25 Anne Myers
$25 Nannette Edwards
$25 Dean Wilson
$25 Erica Goodwin
$10 Jane Morrow
$5   Stephen Stetson

Operating Fund:
$15 Robert A. Larson

Generous gifts such as these have greatly assisted the Friends of History in accomplishing its mission of bringing the study of history to the community at large and in furthering historical scholarship by PSU faculty and students.  
 
 

Upcoming Events:

PUBLIC LECTURE:
On October 25, Professor Carol Gluck will give a lecture entitled "Past Obsessions:  War and Memory in the Twentieth Century" at 5:30 p.m. in the Vanport Room (RM 338) Smith Center.  Carol Gluck, George Sansom Professor of Japanese History at Columbia University, is a world-renowned authority on Asian history.  Her numerous publications include Japan's Modern Myths, Showa: The Japan of Hirohito, and Asia in Western and World History.  The lecture, which is followed  by a reception, is to inaugurate PSU's Center for Japanese Studies.  It is free and open to the public.

LECTURE AND BOOK SIGNING:
On November 29 in the Smith Center Ballroom FOH is co-sponsoring a reception, lecture, and book-signing event in honor of  Assistant Professor Ken Ruoff's new book,  The People's Emperor: Democracy and the Japanese Monarchy.  Professor Ezra Vogel of Harvard has this to say about the author and the book:  "Kenneth Ruoff is an outstanding scholar who has examined in great detail the role of the Japanese emperor from 1945 to 1995.  Given the controversy of the emperor's role, this is a highly timely and informative book."  The event is free and open to the public.  The reception is at 6:30 and the lecture begins at 7.

FOH FALL LECTURE:
Professor Michiko Nakahara of the Center for International Education, Waseda University, will give a public lecture sponsored by the Friends of History on  November 20.  He subject is "The Comfort Women," the Chinese, Korean and other Asian women forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army in the Second World War.  Professor Nakahara is not only a student of this subject, but an activist in the cause of obtaining redress for these women.  Professor Nakahara has published ten books and twenty-five articles on various aspects of Asian history.  In October she will go to The Hague, as a member of the International Organizing Committee, to attend the final judgment of the Women's International War Crimes Tribunal.  The lecture, free and open to the public, is in the Vanport Room (Room 338) in Smith Center at 7:30.  There is free parking in the Portland State parking buildings after 7.
 
 

 IMPORTANT DATES:

Carol Gluck Lecture:
Oct. 25, 2001, 338 Smith Center, 5:30 p.m.

Panel Discussion:
Nov. 1, 2001, 327 Smith Center, 7:30 p.m.

Fall Lecture:
Prof. Nakakara
November 20, 2001, 338 Smith Center, 7:30 p.m.

Book Signing/Lecture:
Ken Ruoff
Nov. 29, 2001, Smith Center Ballroom, 6:30 p.m.

Next Board Meeting:
November 8, 4:00 p.m.
         History Dept.
FOH Always Welcome
 
 

Friends of History Board of Directors:

Officers
Cathy Alzner, President
Jan Oeltjen, Vice-President
Julie Lay, Secretary
Dave Bogdon, Treasurer

Board Members
Lois Becker
      History Department Chair
Cecille Beyl
Beryl Dahl
Gordon Dodds
Andy Fisher
Erica Goodwin
Cyndie Landrum
Thomas Luckett
Tiffany Shumaker
Roberta Ulrich
Richard Winningstad
Honorary Board Member
Elizabeth Furse

Honorary Directors
Bernard V. Burke
Daniel Bernstine

The Friends of History newsletter is published quarterly by the Friends of History at Portland State University.  The Friends of History is a group of individuals interested in history who believe that the Department of History at PSU offers a strong program worthy of community attention and support.  In an age increasingly dependent on technology, the Friends of History shares a conviction that the disciplines inherent in historical analysis are vital not only to the preservation of the humanities, but to all sound thinking.  The Friends of History promotes excellence in the teaching and study of history within the University and strives to increase awareness of this resource in the Portland metropolitan area.

Editor:  Jan Oeltjen

Friends of History
Department of History
PO Box 751
Portland, OR  97207
503/725-3917