Kingfisher 2007 by College of Humanities

the K I N G F I S H E R 2007

p u b l i c a t i o n

c o l l e g e t h e

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t h e

h u m a n i t i e s

u n i v e r s i t y

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The

K ing fish er

2 0 07

table of contents

2 3 4 5 6

COLLEGE OF HUMANITIES PARTNERSHIP BOARD

THE KINGFISHER SYMBOL

UNIVERSITY WRITING PROGRAM & CENTER Teaching (and Learning) Englishes

THE COLLEGE OF HUMANITIES AT A GLANCE

DEPARTMENT OF COMMUNICATION Our Grand Deception

ASIA Center Research Notes: Popular Literature and Local Culture

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH From Secularization and Cultural Criticism: Religion, Nation, and Modernity From Beautiful Bottom, Beautiful Shame: Where “Black” meets “Queer”

ENVIRONMENTAL HUMANITIES GRADUATE PROGRAM From Smeared Soot and Black Blood: Reintroducing the Brown Bear to the Pyrenees and its Festivals

LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES PROGRAM Brazil!

31 32 34 36 42 46 48 56 62 64 66

International STUDIES PROGRAM

DEPARTMENTS, CENTERS AND INTERDISCIPLINARY PROGRAMS & INITIATIVES

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY Imagining the West

DEPARTMENT OF LANGUAGES AND LITERATURE “Hell” Comes to Utah!

DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS Theoretical Research Informs Currents Concerns

DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY What are Human “Kinds?”

American West Center Pass the Spaghetti - and the Tamales, Borscht, Curry, Mousaka, and Noodles!

MIDDLE EAST CENTER Overheard...

TANNER HUMANITIES CENTER The Tanner Humanities Center Welcomes Bill Viola

FOCUS ON: THE CENTER FOR AMERICAN INDIAN LANGUAGES (CAIL) HUMANITIES HAPPY HOUR & Renaissance Guild Patronizing Speech, Associate Dean Mark Bergstrom Annual Lectures within the college Carolyn Tanner Irish Humanities Building WHAT’S SO LIBERAL ABOUT A LIBERAL ARTS EDUCATION?, Dean Robert Newman POETRY STUDENT SCHOLARSHIPS CONVOCATION Major Gift Highlights

college of humanities partnership board Gladys Gonzalez

Kent H. Murdock

Mayor, Salt Lake City Salt Lake City, UT

President, Hispanic Marketing and Consulting Salt Lake City, UT

CEO, O.C. Tanner Company Salt Lake City, UT

Grant Bennett

Richard H. Keller, M.D.

President, Neeleman International Consulting, Inc. Salt Lake City, UT

Ross “Rocky” C. Anderson

President, Ceramics Process Systems Norton, MA

Cynthia Buckingham Executive Director, Utah Humanities Council Salt Lake City, UT

Keith Cannon Business Consultant Oceanside, CA

Robert E. Clark Attorney and Senior Partner, Clark Greene & Associates Las Vegas, NV

Reverend France A. Davis Pastor, Calvary Baptist Church Salt Lake City, UT

George L. Denton, Jr. Former Executive Vice President, First Security Corporation Salt Lake City, UT

Yvette Diaz Attorney, Jones, Waldo, Holdbrook & McDonough Salt Lake City, UT

Martin Frey CEO, Power Code Salt Lake City, UT

Former Chief of Radiology, Cottonwood and Alta View Hospitals Salt Lake City, UT

Bruce Larson Managing Director, Goldman, Sachs & Co. New York, NY

Gary J. Neeleman

Gerald Nichols President, NJRA Architects Salt Lake City, UT

To poets, the kingfisher magically embodies all of these—a joining of opposites,

Virginia Hinckley Pearce Author and Lecturer Salt Lake City, UT

Amy Reese Lewis CEO, Medi Connect Global, Inc. South Jordan, UT

Kathryn Lindquist Trustee, Weber State University Salt Lake City, UT

Jane Marquardt Attorney at Law Salt Lake City, UT

Lorna H. Matheson Former President, Alumni Association Board of Directors University of Utah Salt Lake City, UT

Leslie Miller President, PrintWorks Park City, UT

Judy Burton Moyle Trustee, R. Harold Burton Foundation Salt Lake City, UT

Transformation, calm, multiplicity, unity, felicity, disturbance, revelation...

Rhoda Ramsey Founder, The Ramsey Group Salt Lake City, UT

a preservation of variety, an embrace of challenge and change. “What does not change is the will to change,” begins Charles Olson’s poem “The Kingfisher.” In Greek mythology, the kingfisher paradoxically is associated both with transformation—the story of Alcyon and Ceyx whom, in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Zeus turned into a pair of birds—and with the idea of “halcyon days”—a period of calm seas and of general peace and serenity. In Gerald Manley

Klaus Rathke

Hopkins sonnet, “As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame,” the iridescent

Former General Manager, Standard Optical Salt Lake City, UT

plumage of this spectacular bird is celebrated as an image of both the multiplicity

Cate Randak Human Resources Director, Gastronomy, Inc. Salt Lake City, UT

and unity of God’s creation. And in Amy Clampitt’s poem, which bears the same title as Charles Olson’s, “a kingfisher’s burnished plunge, the color/of felicity afire, came glancing like an arrow/through landscapes of untended memory.” The College of Humanities extends this poetic tradition by adopting the kingfisher as a symbol of these fundamental concepts that we in the Humanities practice and teach. We believe in their profound and lasting importance.

David Simmons President and CEO, Simmons Media Group Salt Lake City, UT

We are pleased to offer you this 2007 issue of The Kingfisher, and thank you for the role you play in promoting our mission of lifelong learning.

Joan Smith Former Executive Director, The National Conference for Community and Justice Salt Lake City, UT

…human

DEPARTMENTS Communication English

beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.” -Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera.

History Languages & Literature Linguistics Philosophy

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CENTERS American West Center Asia Center Center for American Indian Languages Middle East Center

THE COLLEGE OF HUMANITIES AT A GLANCE The College of Humanities is the second-largest college on campus and is at the core of the University of Utah’s mission and the experience of higher education. The Humanities offer of an approach to a conscience

in a

complex world. Professors study and teach essential skills and tools for thinking and communicating that apply readily to everyday practical situations, emphasizing a commitment to community, and awareness of our integral function in a multifaceted global culture. Through research and pedagogy that illustrate healthy questioning and shifting frontiers,

Tanner Humanities Center

and attempts at inclusion and connection, we offer approaches that are

University Writing Program & Center

fundamentally democratic. We thereby help to produce better-informed,



INTERDISCIPLINARY PROGRAMS & INITIATIVES Applied Ethics Animation Studies

thoughtful world citizens with a foundation for nuance and flexibility. All undergraduates enroll in Humanities courses at some point in their academic pursuits. Each year, about 2500 of these students choose to focus their studies on Humanities, choosing from the College’s 21 majors. The College confers one-fifth of the University’s diplomas annually. Graduate students number about 400 and have matriculated into one of 14 Master’s

Documentary Studies

and 13 Ph.D. programs. The College’s 170 tenured and tenure-track faculty

Environmental Humanities

have published 60 books and more than 300 articles in the past three years;

International Studies Latin American Studies Peace and Conflict Studies

possess international

distinction as scholars; are the most frequent

winners of University teaching and research awards; and are the most diverse in terms of ethnicity and gender in the University.

DEPARTMENT OF COMMUNICATION Cool Happenings in the Department of Communication in 06-07 Marouf Hasian won a book of the year award and Karen Ashcraft won an article of the year award both from the National Communication Association.

George Cheney was named the Director of the Barbara L. and Norman C. Tanner Center for Nonviolent Human Rights Advocacy at The University of Utah.

new faculty Suhi Choi, originally from Seoul, Korea, completed a Master of Fine Arts in Television Production at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York and earned her Ph.D. from Temple University in Philadelphia. Her dissertation was entitled, The Korean War Caught in History and Memory. Examining the U.S. Media Coverage of the No Gun Ri Incident with Comparison of Survivors’ Testimonies.

Suzanne Horsley earned her Master of Science at Virginia Commonwealth University and completed her Ph.D. work at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. Her dissertation was entitled, Crisis Communication in State Government: An Analysis of Public Relations Routines in CrisisMandated Agencies. Suzanne’s work with governmental agencies and with non-profit public relations work allows us to expand the horizons of students while providing new and meaningful connections with the local community.

Kimberly Mangun joined us from the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Oregon. She completed her Ph.D. work there in 2005 and her dissertation entitled, Beatrice Morrow Cannady and The Advocate: Building and Defending Oregon’s African American Community, 1912-1933, was recently recognized with an Honorable Mention Award for the Margaret A. Blanchard Doctoral Dissertation Prize, from the American Journalism Historians Association. Prior to her Ph.D. work, Kim took a Graduate Certificate in Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Oregon.

Hector Postigo earned both his BS and his MS at the University of Connecticut, not in Communication but in Biology. His Ph.D. work was completed in Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. His dissertation was entitled, The Age of the Crime-Fighting Machine: Technological Enforcement and Subversion of Digital Copyright Law on the Internet.

Our grand deception

Human beings have been fooling themselves for years, at least from the time we’ve been able to think about thinking. Since then, we’ve been living a life of perceptual hubris, and peril lurks in our flaw. We’ve convinced ourselves that we are different from the rest of creation since we can reflect on the nature of our thinking. Aware of our thought process, we’ve inflated our superiority over other animals, claiming we are driven by rationalism rather than instinct. Increasingly, though, research by neurobiologists is puncturing that balloon. There are two systems of sensory processing in the brain: the conscious one that leads to cognitive thought, and the reptilian or limbic system, the pathway of emotional response. Until recently, we’ve believed that human beings first consciously process a visual stimulus, and once we “know” what it means, our brains then send the percept to emotional centers, where it’s marked for action or memory storage. Big mistake. It now appears that our brains first route visual information to the amygdala, which prepares us for a possible fight-or-flight response, for instance, when we automatically “read” the emotional cues on a person’s face, looking for signs of anger or seduction. Coincidentally, the same percept gets routed to the conscious mind, but only after we’ve “thought about it” does our conscious mind send a message to the amygdala to mediate its reaction. By that time, though, the amygdala has acted in unconscious ways. The conscious response is a Johnny-come-lately. This grand deception is a potential threat to our community’s well-being because skilled visual communicators understand our emotional responses to information only too well. They can craft persuasive visual appeals — retail, institutional or political — that subtly tap our emotions in ways that no amount of rationalizing can erase. Students today are consciously hip. They have an understanding of visual media that is more sophisticated than that of any other generation. Still, we teachers of visual communication worry that understanding is more viral than thoughtful and reacts too much to emotional veneer. With the Internet the stimulus for so much visual perception, we’re troubled about the possibility that anonymous visual communicators on the web can exploit our evolutionary vulnerability. So we discuss our grand deception and warn our students about the perils of self-delusion. Craig Denton, Professor of Communication

From

Secularization and Cultural Criticism: Religion, Nation, and Modernity

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH DISTINGUISHED ALUMNI

PROGRAMS

Distinguished Alumni of the Department

American Studies British and American Literature Creative Writing English Education Rhetoric and Composition

of English include: LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley, authors Terry Tempest Williams and Wallace Stegner, and former Congresswoman Karen Shepherd.

AWARD-WINNING FACULTY Katharine Coles was named Utah’s new Poet Laureate by Governor Jon Huntsman in 2006. Don Revell and Melanie Rae Thon have each been awarded a Pushcart Prize for Poetry.

FORTHCOMING BOOKS BY FACULTY Fault. Poems (Red Hen Press), by Katharine Coles Parse (Atelos), Against Expression: An Anthology of Uncreative Writing (Make Now), The Perverse Library (Information As Material), Equations of Architecture: The Artist’s Writings of Vito Acconci (MIT), by Craig Dworkin Twenty-First Century Poetics (Roof Books), Trust in Texts: A Different History of Rhetoric (Southern Illinois University Press), by Susan Miller The Art of Attention: A Poet’s Eye (Greywolf Publishers), by Don Revell Singing in a Strange Land: A Jewish American Poetics (Stanford University Press), by Maeera Schreiber The Queer Child, or Growing Sideways in the Twentieth Century (Duke University Press), by Kathryn Stockton Encyclopedia of African-American Literature (Facts on File), by Wilfred Samuels (ed.)

From The Golden Years of the Fourth Dimension The Moth For Virginia Woolf First, I am falling out of love, falling giddy out of the gown I put on to take it off, out of lace and satin underthings, hooked and eyed as if they were the object. I am falling out of the lamplight where those nothings lie, beautifully

empty puddles after rain – falling out of that wave ticking constant time against my heart. Out of mind. There is my last room, which I am falling out of: only a lamp,

a clean desk, floor scrubbed bare, one door to latch and lock, bed sheets pulled tight enough to hold me falling into sleep like a stone. - Katharine Coles

The deeper psychological dilemma [Virginia] Woolf faced, whatever its ultimate etiology, may have been how to be free of one’s body while neither denying it nor abandoning the pleasure of sociality it provided, and her solution became a form of psychic “rapture” that periodically surfaces throughout her work. But this rapture, this ecstatic association with others, has a long heritage in English Evangelical thought, at least in the sort of Evangelical sociality embraced by Clapham village, where the emphasis on the powerful emotional response kindled by“inner light” is intimately joined to the wider pleasures of associated minds. Whatever else it may be, Woolf’s modernism was in many ways a textual reenactment – a phenomenological dramatization – of all those reflected looks and echoed voices on Clapham Common…and in a multitude of extended households and reform associations, from a Fabian Society meeting to an imaginary society of “outsiders.” None of these liturgies of associated minds managed, for anything more than a few precious moments, to approach the “beautiful idea” fluttering over Rachel Vinrace in The Voyage Out, or to assuage the doubt and despair that troubled most of Woolf’s protagonists and finally destroyed Woolf herself. But this is why, perhaps, Woolf was at various points in her life so determined to find a way of netting her own beautiful idea of quasi-religious ex-stasis – the chance to stand outside or beside herself, to allow herself to be both permeated and absorbed by others – in the disembodied and slightly more permanent medium of her prose. Vincent P. Pecora, Gordon B. Hinckley Professor of British Literature and Culture, Chair, Department of English

From

Beautiful Bottom, Beautiful Shame: Where “Black” meets “Queer” As it happens, Emmett Till was on Morrison’s mind, at least at some point, during the process of writing Beloved. Either because she was frightened by her novel and thus had reached an impasse (so some say) or because she needed a break from this project, Morrison took time out to write a play while finishing Beloved. She called it Dreaming Emmett (1985)…. Dreaming Emmett, I suggest was the perfect intermission in Morrison’s five-year writing of Beloved. It allowed the author to rehearse a historical fiction that was also avowedly contemporary. It made attraction – uncontrollable attraction (allegedly that of a young black man for a white Southern woman; later, in Beloved, a mother’s for her daughter) – tangle with shame and violent revenge. But it did something more, something that opened the door to Beloved’s peculiar depictions of shared collective memories as a shameful virus. Morrison’s play made one of the black community’s most beloved dead, the dead Emmett Till, more troubling and dangerous than the rotting dead. No longer just the image of a decomposing face from Jet magazine, this Till ghost, in Morrison’s play, looks and breathes, walks and talks. In Beloved, the ghost (of slave-ship dead: “Sixty Million and more”) penetrates bodies and minds – and spreads. Kathryn Bond Stockton, Professor of English, Director of Gender Studies Program

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY Outstanding and innovative faculty

In the past five years, members of the History faculty have published eighteen books and nearly a hundred articles and essays. They have won three national and international book prizes, 16 external research fellowships and grants, and 10 College and University teaching awards. They have been awarded five distinguished visiting professorships. Members of the History faculty are at the forefront of the internationalization efforts of the University of Utah. The directors of International Studies, Asian Studies, and Latin American Studies are all members of the History faculty, and History plays a strong role in the Middle East Center.

Well-prepared undergraduate students Three History students, Travis Currit (History and Honors, 2007), Heath Madsen (History and Honors, 2007), and Corey Richardson (History, 2007), presented the results of their research at the University’s Undergraduate Research Symposium this spring.

Travis Currit (History and Honors, 2007) will begin graduate school in the fall at the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington.

Valerie Pozo, a History major, won a prestigious Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Scholarship to prepare her for doctoral study. Kevin Watts (History, 2006) has just completed his first year of graduate study at the University of Leeds.

Accomplished graduate students

Matt Malczycki (Ph.D. 2006) has a tenure-track appointment at American University in Cairo. Hale Yilmaz (Ph.D. 2006) has a tenure-track appointment at the University of Illinois-Carbondale. Roger Deal (Ph.D. 2006) is teaching this year at the University of Montana. Liza Nicholas (Ph.D. 2001) published her first book: Becoming Western: Stories of Culture and Identity in the Cowboy State (Nebraska, 2006).

Imagining the west My dad was a cowboy. He sold insurance and worked in a bank to make a living, but he raised Herefords on the Arizona Strip because it was just what he did. My dad was no John Wayne, however, and his life little resembled any Hollywood portrayal of the Wild West. Americans have long imbued the West with deep cultural meaning, so much so that one historian has described the West as “America, only more so,” especially as its most recognizable representation, the cowboy, frequently serves as national symbol. Yet, like my dad, the way that we tend to imagine the West is rarely close to the way that we live in the West. One role of historians is to challenge popular images. For many people the West represents open space, breathtaking landscapes, and a sense of freedom and rugged independence, this despite the West’s long history of federal dependence. For others the West is rural, despite being overwhelmingly urban; it is optimistically wet despite being bone dry; it is individualistic despite a heavy reliance upon community; it is a place where justice prevails despite a history of vigilante injustice; and it is the ultimate repository and preserver of American democracy despite its Indian reservations and Japanese internment camps. History does more than debunk myths, however. It studies the stories that we tell about ourselves, examines the sources of their power, and looks for meaning at the points were they intersect with reality. In an increasingly global community, America’s western myths take on added weight, especially as the boundary between order and disorder blurs and cowboy diplomacy rides off into an uncertain sunset. We will never escape our cultural myths, but with a critical eye on the past we can understand how they function and better guard against their abuses. W. Paul Reeve, Assistant Professor of History

DEPARTMENT OF LANGUAGES & LITERATURE The Department of Languages & Literature

CURRICULUM

is committed to fostering a critical and

comprehensive understanding of diverse

cultures, through the study of literature, language, art, film, and history within their cultural contexts.

STELLAR FACULTY n

Four books published, four books in press; 11 teaching and research awards granted. Gene Fitzgerald (Russian) was awarded the 2007 Calvin S. and JeNeal N. Hatch Prize in Teaching. Margaret Toscano (Classics) was named Distinguished Honors Professor for 2006-2007. Esther Rashkin (French), in partnership with faculty from the College of Engineering,

Department of Psychiatry, and the Veterans Administration, received a $100,000 “Synergy Grant” for a pilot study to analyze brain functioning in people suffering from panic disorder, to measure brain changes after therapy, and create a new Center for Neuro-Psychoanalytic Studies.

Of Interest

A new major and minor in Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies that allows students to combine their study of one or more languages with world cultures and literature in a single degree. The fourth annual Confutati presented eight panels of graduate student research on the theme Fragments of Vision and the Mosaic of Meaning. Keynote speaker Vincent Cheng inspired the audience with his presentation “James Joyce, Human Rights, and the Postcolonial Nation.” A pilot project on language proficiency assessment across the four skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing) for students completing the department’s lower division language programs and those participating in the department’s study abroad programs. Study abroad in coastal Gijon, Spain (Summer 2007), provides upper division courses in Business Spanish, Iberian art history, and peninsular literature and adds one more program to the department’s array of study abroad programs in Chile, Egypt, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia and Spain (Oviedo) that provide unique opportunities for students to live the languages and cultures of the host country. The Persian Hour, a weekly informal gathering for anyone interested in Persian, the Persianspeaking world, or Iranian studies. Topics included women’s healthcare in rural Iran, a “daf” musical performance, Iranian cinema, comparative political analysis, and the Iranian-American experience. n

“Hell” Comes to Utah! “Hell” came to the University of Utah last fall when twenty-seven scholars convened on October 23-25 to share their work on historical and contemporary discourses on afterlife punishment. The conference, organized by Margaret Toscano of the Department of Languages and Literature and Isabel Moreira of the History Department, spanned a variety of topics, perspectives, and cultures. Papers dealt not only with the creation of Hell in major religious traditions (including Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism) but also with images of Hell in literary and visual culture, East and West, in both high art and pop culture. One panel focused on family and gender dynamics in Hell, reflecting an old debate about whether the dead can be rescued from eternal damnation, either by their own deeds or with the help of family members. Alan Cole, from Lewis and Clark College, piqued the audience’s interest by asserting that in medieval Chinese Buddhism the person most likely to go to Hell was your mother. Fernando Cervantes, a keynote speaker from the University of Bristol, discussed damnation as a tool of colonialism and cultural export in his “Devils Conquering and Conquered: Changing Visions of Hell in Spanish America.” Vince Cheng, from our own English Department, linked the hellfire sermons in James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man with his Irish Catholicism and modernist style that attempts “to narrow the gap between . . . language and text on the one hand, and material, corporeal reality and experience on the other.” The conference began with Rachel Falconer, from the University of Sheffield, exploring why we need the language of Hell to narrate contemporary traumatic events, such as the July 2005 bombings in the London Underground. And the conference ended with a lively Q&A response to a panel describing contemporary American views on Hell. The success of “Hell and Its Afterlife” shows what a “hot topic” religion can be. High attendance and dynamic audience interaction, from both the University community and the general public, certainly confirmed the belief of the conference organizers that there is a place for the academic study of religion here on campus. It is not just that Americans are committed to their diverse religious communities, as research indicates, but that the language and metaphors of religion have permeated every aspect of culture, from advertising and movies to politics and psychology. As those with the skills to analyze the significance and impact of such cultural signifiers, we in the Humanities should not fail to be at the heart of the discussion. Certainly we can make capital on this growing interest; but more importantly, making meaning through discourse is central to the place of the Humanities in public life. Margaret Toscano, Assistant Professor of Classics

Theoretical Research Informs Currents Concerns (and is lots of fun, too)

DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS The Department has had an unprecedented string of student achievements recently. They are listed here, in chronological order: n

Naomi Fox’s (Ph.D.) paper from the 2005 conference of the Linguistic Association of the

Southwest, “Documenting Variation: Change in the Person Reference System on Walpole Island”, won the association’s annual Helmut Esau award. Naomi was also invited to be part of an organized session at the Linguistic Society of America’s 2007 annual conference (a rare event for a graduate student),“A Field Linguist’s Guide to Making Long-Lasting Texts and Databases”. n

Ellen Knell (Ph.D.), has had a paper, “Early English Immersion and Literacy in Xi’an China”,

accepted to the prestigious Modern Language Journal. The MLJ has an 11% acceptance rate. n

Wilson Silva (Ph.D.) and Joshua Bowles (MA) had a paper accepted for presentation at the

prestigious Berkeley Linguistics Society, “A Typology of Nominal Classifiers in the Eastern Tukanoan Languages”, and presented it in February. The BLS has a 25% acceptance rate. n

Hossam Ahmed (MA), had a paper accepted for presentation at the Twenty-First Annual

Symposium on Arabic Linguistics in March. The title of the paper is “Same Mode, Different Representation: Standard/colloquial code switching in Arabic”.

Zac Rasmussen (Undergraduate), has been accepted to present his paper, “The interlanguage speech intelligibility benefit: Arabic-accented English”, at the 2007 National Conference on Undergraduate Research.

Wilson Silva will present another paper at the Workshop on American Indigenous Languages

at UC Santa Barbara in May. That paper is entitled “Towards a Typology of Evidentiality in the Eastern Tukanoan Languages”. n

Wilson Silva and Joshua Bowles have been accepted to present at the Association of

Linguistic Typology in Paris, in September 2007. This paper will be an extension of their work on nominal classifiers in Eastern Tukanoan languages. We are very proud of these students and their remarkable achievements!

Language plays a pervasive role in human interactions and activities, and can even be said to be diagnostic of human nature. The field of Linguistics, because it concerns itself directly with the nature, acquisition, and use of language, thus has the potential to contribute both to a better understanding of various human phenomena and to providing solutions for human needs. At its core, Linguistics investigates knowledge of language: Phonology (sound systems), Morphology (word construction), Syntax (sentence formation), and Semantics (meaning composition). Some linguists primarily work on basic issues of these areas, while many others also turn the results of this work into a wide range of useful applications. The relations between them are like, for example, those between anatomists and surgeons. As technology increases, this analogy increasingly becomes a transparent reality. Some linguists now investigate the location of knowledge of language in the brain. Others attempt to simulate language knowledge in computers for purposes such as bettering speech recognition,improving speech-to-text processes,and accessing, storing, managing, or locating information. As understanding of the nature and acquisition of language improves, still others contribute improvements to the world-wide industry of language learning/ instruction. Many additional objectives are pursued. The Department of Linguistics in the College of Humanities at the University of Utah is an exemplary merger of these two sorts of interdependent concerns, basic research and practical application. We are especially proud of our two primary outputs: a deeper understanding of a fundamental, universal aspect of human nature, and our alumni, who contribute to that understanding and/or disseminate it, in so many ways, to society at large. We are also proud of the community that we have built and that we continue to build, and invite those of you who, like us, simply love language (and languages), to join us in our explorations Edward Rubin, Chair, Department of Linguistics

DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY Message from the Chair This year, I want to spotlight wonderful programs organized by our students, for the University and for the community. In the fall, “What We Give Back” was a town/gown forum on our obligations to the community. Organized by our undergraduate major Brin Bon and other members of the Philosophy Club and moderated by Professor Steven Ott (Dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences), the forum featured the Honorable Judith S. H. Atherton (Utah Third District Court Judge), Rev. Trace Browning (Episcopal Chaplain at Rowland Hall-Saint Mark’s), Ruby Chacon (Local Artist), Ron Yengich (Criminal Defense Attorney), and Ted Wilson (Former Salt Lake City Mayor). It was a richly varied and thoughtful set of reflections on the multiple roles of citizens in the community. We plan to make this forum an annual fall event, harking back to what some of our alums have told us were the great old days of the “Great Issues” forums. This spring, our students put on the fourth Intermountain West Student Philosophy Conference. The conference provided an opportunity for philosophy students from all over the country to meet, read papers, respond to commentators, and socialize non-stop. Students came to the conference from as far away as the University of South Florida, the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, and the State University of New York at Albany and as close as the University of Utah, Brigham Young University, and Westminster College. The grand prize was won by Scott Scheall (Arizona State University), who argued against a four dimensional metaphysical view that the physical world has temporal parts. The prize for the best undergraduate paper went to Asia Ferrin (Westminster College), who argued from a virtue ethics position that affluent individuals are morally wrong to engage in practices of wasteful consumption. Ferrin’s paper fit right in with the keynote theme of the conference, Thomas Pogge’s talk on obligations to ensure that citizens of poorer nations of the world have access to low cost pharmaceuticals. Pogge, a political philosopher from Columbia University at the Australian National University, has been developing an alternative to the contemporary structure of patent rights that would permit pharmaceutical companies to elect compensation based on a product’s contribution to reducing the overall global burden of disease. I hope these two events convey a sense of the involvement of Philosophy in contemporary political events. Leslie Francis, Department of Philosophy

What are Human “Kinds?” In recent years, numerous articles and books in the Humanities and the Social Sciences have been devoted to understanding the ascription of race, gender ethnicity, sexual orientation, mental illness, and other “human kind” concepts to persons. Categories such as race or gender are socially salient, pre-theoretically recognized categories that are often used in explanations of purportedly natural differences. Much contemporary research in the social sciences shares a commitment to understanding the categories picked out by these concepts in a non-essentialist way – that is, as holding that members of the category do not share any common characteristic that makes them category members. Some non-essentialists are especially concerned to deny that there are necessary and sufficient conditions for being a category member – for example, for being a woman – with the goal of undermining categorizations that demean or marginalize. Other non-essentialists are concerned to attack arguments that differences are“natural” rather than socially constructed. Essentialists claim in response that their view has substantial support in our common sense theorizing about the world. In my recent work, I consider whether non-essentialism as it is currently understood contributes to accomplishing its theoretical aims. If the goal of non-essentialism is to undermine stereotypes, marginalization, and claims to the effect that some features – say, of women – ineluctable, non-essentialism is too weak. This focus on non-essentialism stems in part from a mistaken assumption regarding the connection between categories with necessary and sufficient conditions and generalizations, and this mistake also animates and distorts the project of attempting to frame more plausible and theoretically fruitful non-essentialist accounts. Abandoning this mistake suggests a reorientation of social theory towards the a posteriori investigation of human categories. I argue that we should understand kinds as property clusters that may be imperfectly shared by instances of the kind. Ronald Mallon Associate Professor of Philosophy

AMERICAN WEST CENTER In 1964 two University of Utah history professors, A. R. Mortensen and Gregory Crampton, conceived the idea of starting a center on campus devoted exclusively to research on the American West. In 1966 the American West Center received a generous grant from the Doris Duke Foundation to record oral histories of American Indians. This began a long tradition of serving American Indians and other communities of color, focusing on oral history, that continues today. Along with the more than 5,000 oral histories the AWC has produced, we have developed a vast textual, cartographic, and photographic western history archive used by researchers from around the state, the region, and the world. We have also produced curriculum support materials – most notably seventeen community history textbooks – for under-served communities across the region. The Center also has a long tradition of working on environmental policy issues ranging from water rights, to public lands management, to modern (GIS) studies. Together, this work has placed the Center at the forefront of scholarship on the American West and suggested the importance of interdisciplinarity and bottom-up methodologies to a new narrative of the region. In 2007, we continue our leadership in the field by inaugurating an ambitious program to document and study the Transnational West. Besides our major initiative on “Pacific Worlds and the American West,” our International Westerns Film Festival– run in collaboration with the Salt Lake Film Society– provides a second example of what a transnational approach to the study of the West entails. To date, AWC has trained over 350 students Funded by a $127,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the AWC just completed digitizing the 1,814 tapes of the American Indian Oral History project so that they can be preserved on hard drives and CDs for posterity. One reviewer recently wrote that this collection “is of the highest importance to the Humanities.” Another described the project as “seek[ing] to literally preserve Native voice.”

Pass the Spaghetti - and the Tamales, Borscht, Curr y, Mousaka, and Noodles! Academics and general audiences alike consider Westerns the most American of film genres. And, of course, Utah and its landscape are inextricably tied to notions of the Western film aesthetic. John Ford, the genre’s most influential director, famously used Monument Valley as the backdrop for his most acclaimed Western films. However, while much can be learned by studying and discussing U.S. Westerns, it is interesting to examine a far less well-known cinema corpus: International Westerns. Whether buffs or not, very few film-goers realize that over 1,000 “Spaghetti Westerns” have been made by at least 20 nations over the last fifty years. Exploring these films allows us to discuss the history and culture of these nations and their relationship with the United States but, of course, it also gives us an opportunity to discuss one of our nation’s most significant genres from a dramatically different perspective. In a time when foreign nations often point to America’s perceived “cowboy” approach to foreign policy, conversations between experts and audience members about other nations’ infatuation with – and alteration of – the Western are sure to be enlightening.

The most recent oral history program at the American West Center is called “Saving the Legacy: An Oral History of World War II.” The Center has interviewed 500 local veterans from all branches of service, in both theaters of the war. The Center supported KUED in the development of its Emmy Award Winning Utah’s World War II Stories and is assisting in the creation of curriculum materials for this fall’s premier of Ken Burn’s documentary on World War II, The War. n

Recently the American West Center hosted an International Westerns Film Festival at the Broadway Cinema in downtown Salt Lake City. Audience members loved Sergio Leone’s classic C’era Una Volta il West (“Once Upon a Time in the West,”1968), enjoyed seeing an academy award nominated Greek Western, To homa vaftike kokkino (“Blood on the Land,” 1966) considered by Greek film scholars as one of the best Greek films ever made, and Sholay (1975) the highest grossing film in Bollywood history named by BBC India as the “Film of the Millennium” in 2005, as well as Westerns from Mexico, Japan, and New Zealand. It was a wonderful opportunity to witness and discuss the World Wide West. Matthew Basso Director, American West Center Professor of History

MIDDLE EAST CENTER The Middle East Center was established almost half a century ago and became one of the top National Resource Centers on the Middle East in the United States. It continues to pursue its key tasks in educating students to become experts in Middle Eastern studies, to generate and to spread knowledge in that field, and to deepen the perceptions of the general public about Middle Eastern history, politics, culture, languages, and literature. Its interdisciplinary degrees and its programs are designed to enhance the breadth and depth studies in these fields. Over the last six years, the Middle Ease Lecture Series organized by the Center between November and April has gained considerable national and international visibility. It has been designed to address key issues of the region by inviting prominent experts in different fields with diverse perspectives. This year’s focus was “The Middle East After the War in Lebanon.” The first speaker in this series was Gary Sick, of Columbia University who spoke on “Iran and the United States: Is a Military Clash Inevitable?” n

The second talk was (in collaboration with the Hinckley Institute of Politics) on U.S.-Saudi relations presented by Prince Saud a-Faisal, former Saudi Ambassador in Washington DC.

The third lecture was presented by Dr. Yezid Sayigh, Professor at King’s College in the University of London and was entitled “The Anatomy of Palestinian Conflicts.” n

The fourth lecture was delivered by Itamar Rabinovich, President of Tel Aviv University and former Israeli Ambassador to the United States, and it was entitled “Israel’s Challenges and Choices after the War in Lebanon.”

The fifth lecture was by Steve Simon, Senior Fellow for The Middle East at the Council on Foreign Relations with the title “Assessing U.S. Policy in the Middle East.” n

The final lecture in the series was delivered by the prominent analyst Patrick Seale on April 19 about“Syria’s Place in the New Regional and International Environment.” All the lectures and discussions were webcast live and they can be downloaded from the Center’s page: www.hum.edu/mec

OVERHEARD... The following excerpts are from the remarks of two of this year’s Middle East Lecture Series distinguished lecturers:

“Iran is emerging as a pivotal actor in the Middle East. Many countries are trying to figure out what to do with the emergence of Iran’s regional power. Why has the role of Iran increased? Ironically, the U.S. played a major role. Its invasion of Afghanistan removed a threat to Iran from that border. Then the U.S. invaded Iraq, which was the worst enemy of Iran. Iran benefited greatly from that. Then the U.S. brought about a Shiite government in Iraq, which proved to be convenient for Iran. The performance of Hezbollah in the conflict in Lebanon in 2006 enhanced Iran’s position in the region. This is disturbing to many Sunni governments in the Arab Middle East; and they are becoming more nervous. A perception of an Iran pursuing a nuclear program contributes to that nervousness.” Gary Sick – Executive Director of the Gulf 2000 at Columbia University

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“In Palestine, we have a case of enticed state-failure after an attempt was initially made for state-building. Fatah and Hamas have in fact contributed significantly to that failure, which is one of the few cases in which a non-state has become a failed state! The ultimate result is that the hoped for peace dividends and the statehood had materialized for both rival parties. Various Israeli coalition governments did not deliver either, and their actions contributed political paralysis and economic breakdown. All parties since then selected options that made matters even worse. It is not clear if there is a way out.” Yezid Sayigh – Professor of the Middle East at the University of London

TANNER HUMANITIES CENTER PLEASE jOIN US October | 2007 McMurrin Lecture of Religion and Culture welcomes Eboo Patel, Founder and Executive director of Interfaith Youth Core which brings together youth from diverse faith traditions for service projects. February | 2008

World Leaders Lecture Forum

The Center will bring to campus and community a world leader of international stature and global impact to address the vital issues of our day. March | 2008

Tanner Lecture on Human Values

April | 2008

David P. Gardner Keynote

Lecture in Humanities and Fine Arts in conjunction with a conference on Body Image June- 20th 2008

Anniversary Celebration

of the Tanner Humanities Center

November | 2008 McMurrin Lecture on Religion and Culture welcomes Akbar Ahmed, Ibn Khaldun, Chair of Islamic Studies and professor of International Relations at American University in Washington D.C. For more detailed information about these and other upcoming events, visit our website at www.thc.utah.edu.

This has been an exciting year at the Tanner Humanities Center. The Center has sponsored conferences on “Hell and Its Afterlife” and “Hurricane Katrina: Race and Class in Modern America.” For both conferences, scholars from Utah, the United States, and the world broached their ideas to a diverse audience drawn from campus and community. The Center also brought to campus Yale University Professor of History Carlos Eire who delivered the McMurrin Lecture and internationally renowned video artists Bill Viola who presented the Tanner Lecture on Human Values. Recently, the Center received $375,000 to endow a new graduate student fellowship. The Center will now be able to support the research of three graduate fellows each year. The Center also funds six faculty fellowships annually. This year, the Tanner Humanities Center inaugurated its World Leaders Lecture Forum by hosting former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Prime Minister Barak spoke to a packed Kingsbury Hall audience and also to more than 350 people at a dinner in his honor.

Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Internal Fellows Matt Haber, Dept. of Philosophy, “The Centrality of Phylogenetic Thinking” Christine Jones, Dept. of Languages and Literature, “Size Matters: Proportion and the Arts in France (1680-1725)

“The most lasting impression I am left with after all of these years of working around and being in museums is the power and affirmation and significance of the human presence that lies within all the things we make.” - Excerpt from Bill Viola’s lecture

On March 7 and 8, 2007 the Tanner Humanities Center welcomed internationally respected video artist Bill Viola as the distinguished 2007 Tanner Lecturer on Human Values. In his keynote address titled “Presence and Absence: Vision and the Invisible in the Media Age,” Mr. Viola discussed the profound effect that absence has on our present-tense experience of the world and ultimately our humanity; and how the new technologies of electronic image are well suited to illuminate the invisible world that surrounds us. Bill Viola is considered a pioneer in the medium of video art and is internationally recognized as one of today’s leading artists. He has been instrumental in the establishment of video as a vital form of contemporary art, and in so doing has helped to expand greatly its scope in terms of technology, content, and historical research. His works focus on universal human experiences—birth, death, the unfolding of consciousness—and have roots in both Eastern and Western art as well as spiritual traditions, including Zen Buddhism, Islamic Sufism, and Christian mysticism. The Center welcomed hundreds of students and community members to this informative and thought provoking lecture. As one individual described it, “Bill Viola’s genuine love and passion for his work is contagious; his art uniquely explores the human experience, brings significance to single moments in time, and brings true meaning to the smallest of human emotions.”

W. Paul Reeve, Dept. of History, “Nineteenth-Century Mormon Bodies: Power, Polygamy, and the Creation of a ‘New Race’”

Visiting Fellows Laura Briggs, University of Arizona, “The Politics of Transnational and Transracial Adoption”

Paisley Rekdal, Dept. of English, “Intimate: An American Photo Album”

Kristine Harper, New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, “Weather by Design: State Control of the Atmosphere in Twentieth Century America” Ryan Dearinger, Dept. of History, “Frontiers of Progress and Paradox: Building Canals. Railroads, and Manhood in the American West” Cara Diaconoff, Dept. of English, “Marian Hall, A Novel”

UNIVERSITY WRITING PROGRAM & CENTER The University Writing Program was created in 1984 to ensure that students understand the forms and processes used by successful college-level writers, and that they continue to mature as writers in undergraduate and post-college settings. The mission of the University Writing Center is to improve student writing in all colleges and at all levels through one-on-one tutoring, innovative programming, and ongoing faculty development.

Teaching (and Learning) Englishes

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I teach English-language writing, and I’m a native speaker of the English language. Being a native speaker might seem to be an excellent basic qualification for my job: at the very least, it should necessarily make me the model of English usage. However, it actually makes me very unusual.

The UWP graduated its first major this year, Glenn Newman. Glenn created a major in Rhetoric and Writing Studies though BUS (Bachelor of University Studies). He will continue with his education, having been accepted into a Master’s Program in Rhetoric and Composition.

Professor Daniel Emery served as the national President of the American Society for the History of Rhetoric this past year.

The University Writing Program hosted the Western States Rhetoric and Literacy Conference. The conference, now in its tenth year, was the brainchild of the

UWP and colleagues at Arizona State University, who believed it was important for writing scholars in the West to have a forum in which we could come together to discuss pertinent academic issues. Today we have a national reputation and draw attendees from all over the United States.

According to The British Council, approximately 1.5 billion people around the world use English. Roughly 375 million of them are like me: they have learned English since birth, and most of them live in countries like the U.S., Canada, Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand that are traditional Englishlanguage centers. That still leaves over one billion English users. 375 million of those people live in countries that were British colonies until the middle of the last century, such as Ghana, India, Kenya, and Nigeria. But the largest number of English speakers—50% of the global total—are in countries that were not British colonies and that don’t have much of a history with English. Count China, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, and South Korea among them. So, most English speakers are not where we might expect them to be. In addition, they’re not using English in ways we might expect, which helps explain why I’m referring to them as “users” and not “writers” or “speakers.” Most people who use English around the world do so in specific circumstances in order to get very specific things done. Many Indians, for instance, might use English in publications and to transact business over the phone, Hindi in a government office, Gujarati at the store, and maybe one of several other languages at home. What does this mean for my teaching and research? People and information move around globally more so now than ever, and that movement makes diverse uses of English feed back into the U.S. As students at the U (and the U is not alone) become more culturally and linguistically diverse, I often have as much to learn from them as I have to teach them. Jay Jordan, Assistant Professor University Writing Program

A sia C enter During the 2006-07 academic year, the Asian Studies Program graduated a record 43 majors and minors. We established a new interdisciplinary Masters program in Asian Studies to prepare student for Ph.D. work on Asia for careers in diplomacy, business, education, or NGO work. We also founded a new Asia Center to foster the growth of our intellectual community of faculty and student with research and teaching interests in Asia by sponsoring lectures, workshops, conferences, and research support for faculty and students. Christine Yano, an anthropologist from the University of Hawaii, presented our most popular lecture of the year, “Japan’s Pink Globalization: From Fluff to Flat and Things In-Between,” drawing an audience of over seventyfive faculty and students. The lecture suggested ways by which we may address the far-reaching impact and potential of something as superficially benign as commodity cuteness. Asian Studies faculty published books on Chinese poetry, the speech patterns of Japanese prime ministers, and the work of a Japanese design firm called Super Potato Design. They won several awards recognizing the excellence of their work this year: Mimi Locher, a specialist in Japanese architecture won the prestigious University of Utah University Professorship and international design competition to re-design a mixed-use, low-income neighborhood in Santa Fe. n

Wesley Sasaki-Uemura of the Department of History won a Fulbright Fellowship and an Association for Asian Studies Grant for research in Japan on cultural politics, the avant-garde and folk music and theater in the 1960s and 70s. n

Benjamin Cohen received both a Faculty Fellow and a University Research Committee Grant to conduct research in India on the historical development of clubs and their political, social, and cultural significance in South Asia.

Minqi economy. n

Li received a merit award from York University for his work on the contemporary Chinese

Kim Korinek, a specialist in labor and migration issues in China and Southeast Asia from the Sociology Department was awarded a grant from the Florsheim Family Foundation for a project on adolescent parents.

Research Notes: Popular Literature and Local Culture Popular culture shapes people’s perceptions, perspectives, and even can serve as a model for behavior. Popular fiction like the martial arts novel provides a key to understanding the culture of traditional China. It was some of the most widely read fiction, then as now; through performance it reached everyone from the highly educated to illiterates. Traditional martial arts fiction drew on and inspired storytelling traditions and spectacular dramas; martial arts films descend directly from those performances. My research traces the origins of the Chinese martial arts novel. I show that the martial arts novel plays on both the most popular fiction of its day and the respected masterworks of the novel, commenting on the values they present. By playing with genre (much like Ang Lee’s film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), these novels expose the conventions and their limitations. Such self-conscious art in a popular novel challenges the traditional division between popular and elite literature. Popular culture often allows multiple interpretations. My latest project, on “Popular Literature and Local Culture,” centers on regional ballads in nineteenth century China. Rooted in local storytelling forms, these ballads often tell the best-known stories of their age, but each region tells them in its own distinctive way. Thus the same story may have a different ending, and meaning, in Beijing than in Guangdong. I use these narratives to explore the relationship between a unified national Chinese culture and multiple regional cultures in this period. In this and future work, I hope to paint a fuller picture of the kinds of fiction circulating in traditional China and their relationships to each other, their audiences, and the broader culture. Margaret Wan, Assistant Professor Asian Studies (& Languages and Literature)

ENVIRONMENTAL HUMANITIES GRADUATE PROGRAM Smeared Soot and Black Blood: Reintroducing the Brown Bear to the Pyrenees and its Festivals Masters Defense Thesis Abstract, Patrick Mabey, first graduate of the Environmental Humanities Graduate Program 2007 Using his experience at the Prats-de-Mollo-la-Preste Bear Festival in 2004 as a narrative frame, Patrick Mabey’s thesis explores the human-bear interface throughout Pyrenean history, and the current 20062009 reintroduction plan between France, Spain, and Andorra. In part, his work focuses on the need for a reconstruction of ecocentric Bear Ceremonial practices, especially in the context of performance art and festivals, in order to welcome bear repopulation. Interdisciplinary lenses, including ethnography, anthropology, biology, history, economy, and politics have been used to bring about a multifaceted perspective on the Pyrenees in which themes relating to ursine veneration, mass hunting, bear exhibitors, and transhumance (or seasonal vertical sheep herding) are all interwoven. Mabey’s work seeks to encompass the charged Pyrenean topocosm, while negotiating a present and future co-evolution of bears and humans. Because little has been written in English for a non-academic audience on the bear’s ecological and cultural Pyrenean niche, because the subject matter is of importance to both international species initiatives and bioregional festivals, and because of its relevance to human-animal relations, the hope inherent in this creative explication is both discovery and application. The following is a short excerpt from his thesis, revealing Mabey’s initial impressions of the festival; impressions that radically transform by the end of the thesis. The full abstract can be found on the Environmental Humanities web site at www.hum.utah.edu/eh.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS Firecrackers wake the bears from their annual siesta. The lethargic creatures debouch from their dens into February sunshine, and gorge themselves on sausages and wine, coarsely staining their t-shirts. Old and young women shake their heads noting it. A man enters into Fort Lagarde’s open feeding and initiatory corral amongst the bears, and drops a bundle of skins. Armed Hunters sporting hats with red crests cocked forward over a black border, coonskins, and straw hats, further rouse and bedevil the beasts. Everybody, including the spectators (though there is no such thing really since everyone present becomes an actor in this rural drama), is dressed in either black or shabby clothes. Finally, the bears finish eating, though they don’t stop drinking. I gather with others near a drop-off, anchor my feet, and peer over the edge. Fort Lagarde is a 17th century stronghold strategically perched on a hill to withstand sudden attack on the village below. Prats-de-Mollo-la-Preste, the village proper, is situated on the banks of the Tech River just under 2,500 feet beneath Canigou Peak in the Catalonian borderlands between France and Spain in the Pyrenees. In my position, up over the top of a bulwark, I see a thin dirt road leading out of the corral, running parallel to the valley and on through the fort’s gate. I can’t see it from here, but I know that the road then goes underground. Formerly, guards would safely traverse the distance between the 28

village and the fort when under siege. Today, however, being La Diada de l’Os, or ‘The Bear’s Day,’ makes safe places and keeps vulnerable… Below, in the middle of the fort’s path, a bald beefy man is becoming a bear. The process begins with an off-white sheepskin being wrapped around his upper body and stitched into place. Afterward, a tall woolly hat, rectangular in shape, is placed on the top of his head, and then fastened to the back of his new skin. A throng of people stand by, and join together in chanting the ceremonial Bal de l’Ours. There is something so very old in the song, something incantatious. Immediately upon the final stitches of his barbaric garb the Man-Bear goes berserk, and finding another of his kind, though much skinnier, tackles him to the ground. Several people in the way are shoved against a wooden railing, over which they climb, thinking the bar will protect them. In clouds of dust the wresting continues. Soon afterward, a Hunter has at it with the bald bear, tossing a pole back and forth all the while. The final phase of transformation ensues. Anointed with soot and oil, the Man- Bear’s arms and face are varnished in pitch-black. Later we would learn that this particular bear, massive and merciless as he appeared, was the local school bus driver. All together there are three who undergo the same transformation. And then it begins. These bears enact a shameless black comedy as they lumber and give chase from the fort to the labyrinth-like streets of Prats-de-Mollo-la-Preste. All souls are fair game in the Man-Bears’ mean eyes. Mâchurér, or the ‘blackening,’ is unleashed. Young women, children, men, invalids with crutches, older folk – none are exempt from the glistening hands of lawlessness. If a woman attempts to flee, she is violently thrown down and rolled over. With each voluntary, and coerced, submission, the Man-Bear’s skin becomes darker as the soot spreads and penetrates his fur. The Hunters seem accomplices to the marauders as they scour together side by side, but they periodically fire blanks, symbolically killing the predators. Yet each death inevitably leads to another insurrection. This brutal exhilaration reigns throughout the narrow and disorienting streets (and any tidy house or balcony a bear decides to ransack) from mid-afternoon through early evening. A vigilant bravado overcomes the crowd; some half-heartedly offer themselves up, while others are deeply unnerved by the thought that at any instant from any one, or three, of the village’s winding alleyways shadows could swipe fierce paws down upon their fragile bodies… Finally, at the Place des Foiral, the village square, the bears’ only day comes to an end. Nearly everyone has been blackened. There are, however, about a dozen who’ve been whitened in flour and now enter the act: Barbers armed with axes, shaving brushes, and chains. The two creatures collide, and white and black entangle. The bears are panting, filthy, and desperate to escape. At last enchained, shaved, and castrated, savage nature has yet again been dominated and the death of winter ensures spring’s rebirth. I look over at a Barber who smiles sickly, all the while waggling a moldy sausage in the air to bid me adieu.

LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES PROGRAM Latin American immigration to the United States, and especially to Utah, provided a focus for many of the research and teaching activities of the Latin American Studies faculty in the past year. Ken Jameson, Professor of Economics, taught a course on the subject in the Honors Program. A yearlong seminar on the subject featured presentations by U of U faculty and students, as well as visiting scholars and members of the local community. The Latin American Studies program also helped sponsor a photographic exhibit entitled Invisible No More: Latinos’ Civil and Political Participatin in Utah. organized by Family and Consumer Studies Professor

Armando Solorzano.

Brazil! “There is a pressing student demand for Brazilian Studies and Portuguese at the University of Utah. Many, if not most, of these students have served full-time missions in Brazil for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. These students have been immersed in Brazilian culture and maintain an enthusiasm for continued engagement with that country. Because of their near-fluency in Portuguese and their cultural competency, they demand a sophisticated scholarly framework of instruction through which they can continue to learn about Brazil, the ninth-largest economy in the world. In order to fulfill our responsibility to these students, it is necessary for us to hire a full-time faculty member who can build a strong Brazilian Studies program at the University of Utah. We need to look outside of the University to locate half of the resources needed to extend an offer to this distinguished scholar. In determining how to do this, we met with Gary and Rose Neeleman and their son David. Gary has spent his life and career devoted to the Brazilian people and their remarkable country – its history, language, culture, and natural wonders. In Salt Lake City, Gary serves as Brazil’s honorary consul and is beloved by the Brazilian community. His son David is the founder and chairman of JetBlue Airways and also has a deep affection for Brazil. At this meeting, the idea of establishing “The Gary J. Neeleman Chair in Brazilian Studies” was born. Our goal is to raise a $1.5 million endowment to support this chaired position in perpetuity. Of this amount, David has very graciously offered a pledge of $1 million as a matching gift. We are touched by his generosity. Once established Gary J. Neeleman Chair in Brazilian Studies will bring to the University of Utah a scholar whose research and teaching focuses on interdisciplinary connections that are present in this rich field. Brazilian Studies is an appealing field to scholars, and attracts innovative scholarship in the areas of culture, language, race, religion, economic development, health, politics, anthropology, art, technology, and the environment. The scholar we recruit for the prestigious Neeleman Chair will be generally conversant in many of these areas, and expert in a few.“ Tim McInnis, Assistant Dean for Development 30

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES PROGRAM In 1988 the French director Marcel Ophuls released a film entitled Hotel Terminus, a record of the attempts to try Klaus Barbie for crimes he committed while Nazi military chief in Lyon during the second World War. In the course of following the different events related to Barbie’s extradition from South America to France, and his subsequent trial, Ophuls met a woman who, like him, was closely following Barbie’s case, a Simone Lagrange, born Simone Kaddouche. She herself was a survivor of Barbie’s efforts to exterminate Lyon’s Jews, the only member of her family to survive. At the end of the film, Ophuls and Mme. Lagrange return to Lyon, to the street on which she had lived at the time of her arrest. As they are standing in front of her house, an elderly occupant, a Mme. Serres, appears at the window on the second floor and begins talking to them. She had, of course, been a neighbor of Simone’s family at the time of their arrest. In the course of the conversation, Ophuls asks her if she had been there when the Kaddouche family was arrested; she responds that of course she had been. Ophuls asks her what she did; her only response was that she would never forget it. Some time later, Ophuls and Mme. Lagrange are seen climbing the staircase of the house towards the third floor apartment in which her family had lived. When they get to the second floor, she points to the door opposite the one to the old woman’s apartment, and tells Ophuls that as the Nazis had been bringing her down the steps, the door opened slightly, the hand of its occupant, Mme. Bontout, reached out, and tried to pull her into the apartment. The Nazi soldier at the last minute saw this, roughly pulled the girl back, and slapped Mme. Bontout so hard she had to give up her efforts to save Simone. To understand the Holocaust, we must understand the experiences of those who were its victims, the Simone Lagranges for whom the unfolding horror of the event meant not only the inability and unwillingness of a European culture to protect them from the hatred of those whose vision of a better world meant one without Jews, but also their inability to find refuge anywhere in the so-called civilized world. We must understand the Mme Serres of 1930s Europe, for whom it was all very sad but not really any of their business; we must also understand the Mme Bontouts of the time, the good neighbors whose efforts were frustrated by the others. But we must also recognize that these individuals all operated within a system made up of states that often saw no good reason to provide refuge for Jews desperately attempting to find safety. The intersection of the neighborliness or lack of neighborliness of individuals finds its complement with that of the states in which those people lived. Jim Lehning, Director of International Studies, introducing the 2007 Anne and Sandy Dolowitz Lecture on Human Rights.

Focus On

The Center for American Indian Languages The work of the Center for American Indian Languages (CAIL) is critical because it directly works to stem a loss of knowledge. Of 155 Native American languages in North America, only 20 have children learning them. Worldwide, 90 percent of human languages are threatened with rapid extinction, taking with them a wealth of cultural and linguistic knowledge. This rate of extinction is stunning when compared to the natural world, where 2.7 percent of birds and 7.4 percent of mammals are endangered. CAIL rescues valuable knowledge before it is irretrievably lost.

OUR WORK In general, CAIL researchers document endangered languages and help communities with revitalization. Documentation means the preparation of dictionaries, grammars, and the recording of countless stories, tales, and conversations. Currently, CAIL is documenting eleven different American Indian languages. Through research grants provided by the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities, CAIL supports researchers and students who work with Native American communities. Specific activities include preparing dictionaries, grammars, and educational materials; supporting tribal revitalization programs; digitization and archival work; and academic outreach. Certain projects include: n

Preserving and Enhancing the Accessibility of Gosiute/Shoshoni Materials Xinkan, Pipil and Mocho: Bringing Three Endangered Language Documentation Projects to Completion Description of Chorote, Nivaclé and Kadiweu: Three of the Least-known and Most Endangered Languages of the Chaco Wichí (Argentina): Documentation, Description, and Training

How valuable is this knowledge? Medically speaking, it’s worth observing that through the work of linguists, 75 percent of plant-derived pharmaceutical products have been discovered by examining the use of plants in traditional medicine through the native language of curers. CAIL has discovered that in Shoshone, sokoteheyampeth “Oregon grape” is used as an eyewash, kwitaweyampeh “snakeweed” is used for intestinal bleeding, and tootsa, “desert parsley” is a derivative comparable to penicillin. Through Pipil (in El Salvador, related to the language of the Aztecs and Toltecs) CAIL learned of i:xkwat “night Jessamine” [Cestrum nocturnum] – its leaves are toasted and made into a dough to alleviate the itch of athlete’s foot; iyakmiku “guaco” [Makania cordifolia], which cures diarrhea and stomach ache; kuki:xtilu:ni “twoleaf nightshade” [Solanum diphyllum], which is used to cure skin diseases; and siwa:pah “ciguapate” [Eriocoma tomentosa], which is used to induce menstruation. Through the Seri language in Mexico we learn of “eelgrass” – the only known grain from the sea used as a human food source whose cultivation does not require fresh water, pesticides, or artificial fertilizer. Perhaps most importantly, the life-enriching oral literatures of indigenous peoples will disappear when their language vanishes. They, too, have grappled with the complexities of the world and problems of life. The insights represented in their oral literatures are of tremendous value. A culture speaks through its tongues, which must be preserved.

The Future Although established just three years ago, CAIL has already garnered an international reputation. CAIL is the only endangered language center in the world dedicated to the documentation and revitalization of endangered languages of both North and South America. There are four other centers in the United States – at Berkeley, University of Texas, University of Alaska, and Indiana University – but their missions are quite limited in comparison with CAIL’s. It is noteworthy that CAIL stands alone as a partner of the Smithsonian Institution. With the Smithsonian, CAIL sponsors the annual Conference on Endangered Languages and Cultures of Native America, which draws participants from around the world. CAIL is directed by one of the world’s most highly regarded endangered languages expert, Professor Lyle Campbell. The crisis involving endangered languages is the biggest issue in Linguistics, and arguably it is the most pressing issue in the Humanities and Social Sciences. This crisis receives daily attention in the academy and in the general public; however, there are limited resources with which to confront it. Essentially, CAIL can become as big and important a center as resources will allow. Already, there are numerous tribes in the American West and elsewhere that are requesting CAIL’s help, and CAIL has more research projects than it has scholars and graduate students to cover. Lyle Campbell’s vision is for CAIL to grow to be a center having four full-time linguists, four part-time linguists, two post-doctoral fellows, sixteen graduate student fellows, a language technology expert, a grant writer, and two full-time administrative assistants. (Currently, CAIL is staffed by Lyle and a colleague, Mauricio Mixco, and eight graduate students.) In addressing the crisis of endangered languages, CAIL will put the University of Utah on the international map like no other center on campus can.

C AIL – The Organiz ation The University of Utah’s Center for American Indian Languages is dedicated to working with members of communities – where languages and cultures are endangered – towards linguistic and cultural revitalization. CAIL focuses on research with the endangered languages of Native America, and on training students to address scholarly and practical needs involving these languages and their communities of speakers. CAIL is housed in a historic red sandstone building in Fort Douglas. It has a reference library and reading room, a small computer laboratory, an archives and collections room, classrooms, and ample office space to accommodate on-going projects, visiting scholars, postdoctoral fellows, and students. CAIL is closely affiliated with the Linguistics Department in the College of Humanities. CAIL’s most notable partner is the Smithsonian Institution, which approached CAIL two years ago to establish the current relationship. CAIL is now exploring a similar relationship with National Geographic.

Lyle Campbell, Director Center for American Indian Languages

Since November 2003, the Humanities Happy Hour has met every month during the academic year at Squatters Brew Pub (147 W. 300 S.) from 5-7 p.m. for conversation, food and drink, and a short, informal talk by a faculty member from the college – an “intellectual hors d’oeuvre.” While food and drink may be typical parts of a happy hour, the chance to talk“humanities” informally provides a new twist. The professors have risen to the occasion, offering 10-minute ruminations on such topics as: Dr. Jay Jacobson, University of Utah School of Medicine,“A Grace Note on Gratitude” Stacey Margolis, University of Utah Department of English,“A Celebrity Thought Experiment” Kirk Jowers, University of Utah Hinckley Institute of Politics,“2008: An Insiders Prognosis” Janet Theiss, University of Utah Asia Center,“Sex, Lies and the Significance of Chinese History” Ben Cohen, University of Utah Department of History,“How to be Scandalous in the Raj” Ann Darling, University of Utah Department of Communication,“Voices of Students: Hearing the Struggle for Hope and Engagement Mark Bergstrom, University of Utah Department of Communication, “Patronizing Speech and Older Adult Relationships: Implications for Older Health Care Interactions.” Members of the Humanities Happy Hour pay a $100 annual membership fee for the monthly get-togethers ($185 for couples), and the funds go to student programs in the College. Members are alumni of the College, students, friends, interested city residents, even University administrators – basically, anyone interested in winding down after a hard day and making the Humanities more than a book stuck on a shelf. For more information on the Humanities Happy Hour or the College of Humanities please visit www.hum.utah.edu for podcasts and more or call (801) 585-3988.

Now entering its sixth season, the Renaissance Guild –“The Mother of All Book Clubs” – continues to meet four times during the academic year at the charming Vienna Bistro in downtown Salt Lake City. Distinguished faculty members from within the College lead discussions revolving around a Series of texts handpicked by the presenters and graciously provided by Sam Weller’s Zion Bookstore, while Guild members enjoy hors d’oeuvres and beverages prepared by the Bistro. Membership dues to the Guild support important programs and projects within the College of Humanities. For More information, please call (801) 585-3988. 35

Patronizing Speech and Older Adult Relationships: Implications for Older Health Care Interactions Mark Bergstrom, Associate Professor, Department of Communication Originally presented at the College of Humanities Happy Hour, Squatters Brew Pub, Salt Lake City, Utah - Spring 2007 My talk tonight grows out of a long line of research investigating how people accommodate their communicative behaviors as they interact in relationships with others. Speech Accommodation Theory aims to specify the conversational strategies of convergence, divergence and maintenance by examining how speakers modify their communication to increase or decrease the difference between themselves and their conversational partners. Have you ever noticed yourself or others talking with a Brit and catch yourself adding a little bit of a British accent to your talk? Or hanging out with southerners, and catch a little hint of a lazy drawl entering your speech? I’ve been known to slip in a little ‘ya’ll’ and ‘fix’n” after my time in Oklahoma. This is speech accommodation in action. When a speaker has particular relational goals for an interaction, she will select communication strategies attending to, or anticipating, the recipient’s own communication characteristics. This process is called Communicative Attuning. This theory found strong support in numerous studies where one partner had an upper class British accent and the other partner had a lower class accent. People would move together if they identified with the other; for example, the upper class partner would lose some of his accent if he liked the other partner. If he didn’t identify with the other, he would increase the intensity of his own accent, thus diverging from his partner. Speakers do this all the time in a variety of contexts, and most of the time we aren’t even aware of our own behavior. Social gerontologists and communication researchers who are interested in older adult’s relationships, successful aging, and health interactions, have applied this theory to older adult/younger adult interactions. Speech accommodation theory assumes that, as people come together in conversations and relationships, they accommodate their speech in a variety of ways to the other. The theory implicitly assumes that there is a “correct or appropriate” accommodation style. The theory identifies two types of accommodation that are viewed as detrimental to relationships: overaccommodation and under-accommodation. 36

Under-accommodation is defined as a miscommunicative process where at least one participant perceives the speaker as communicating in a manner, style, or quality of talk that is underplayed regarding the needs or wishes of the other. Let me give you an example: Suppose an older adult doesn’t want to interact with a younger person. He may use an age selfhandicapping strategy as an excuse not to perform a future task: “I can’t remember as well as I used to.” “I can’t get around like I used to.” What would make this an under-accommodation would be if the older adult really could do these things, but just didn’t want to. Tonight I want to focus on the second type of accommodation (and this has been shown to be very detrimental to relationships): over-accommodation. Over-accommodation is defined as a miscommunicative process where at least one participant perceives a speaker to go beyond a communication style necessary for attuning talk in a particular occasion. I want to explore what happens when younger adults interact with older adults, and because of old age cues and ageist stereotypes, identify the older adult as someone in the ‘old age group’ and then go beyond normal or appropriate accommodation. When a younger person enters into conversation with the older adult, and assumes that the older adult has the stereotypical traits of the elderly; difficulty hearing, poor memory, and/or slow processing, the young person may modify her speech, maybe even with good intentions, and speak loudly, more slowly, use simpler sentences, and limit topics of conversation. She may even change their vocal register to sound more like baby talk, and include terms like ‘Deary’ or ‘Sweetheart’. Most older adults view this type of communication as patronizing. The patronizing is bad enough, but add the fact that these messages also send a relational message that implicitly questions the competence of the older adult. Even if the younger person isn’t verbally saying it, the message is loud and clear: You are incompetent. If a pattern of this behavior continues, the older adult may actually begin to believe that his/her competence is impaired, and may start using more and more age self-handicapping styles and strategies, reduce interactions with younger adults, begin displaying behaviors and communicating as the younger adults would expect, that is, stereotypically. When this happens, it’s termed ‘instant aging.’ You can see how this pattern might spiral into some devastating outcomes for older adults.

Let’s turn to an application that is probably more relevant – the elderly patient/physician interaction – a healthcare interaction. Most of you have or will accompany an elderly person to the doctor. Let me lay out some empirical generalizations, or facts about younger physicians and older patients:

What about the other side? What do we know about the typical adult’s communicative competence? First we have to dispel a few myths: n

Most older adult/physician interactions are intergenerational. It is rare that an older adult sees an older physician. Research indicates that physicians are often dissatisfied with communication during patient/physician interactions. This is compounded by the documented fact that as physicians go through medical school their communication skills actually decrease.

A little known but critical rule, the Catch 23 rule, is in full operation during the younger physician/older patient interaction. The catch goes this way: Doctors typically listen to a patient’s opening statement a little more than 23 seconds before changing the subject or redirecting the topic. That means that an older adult not only must talk fast, but compellingly, and even knowledgably, to get the physician’s attention.

The communicative competence of older adults is mostly the same as younger adults. We do know the elderly are a bit more cautious in conversation. They’re not as quick to throw out their opinions. They are more likely than younger adults to say“I don’t know.’ Some might see this as a sign of weakness. I view it as a sign of wisdom. Older adults do take a little longer to react. Reaction time does decline with age, but this is a slow decline and starts at a relatively young age. Comprehension may decline, but not speed of talk.

So, keeping these empirical facts in mind, what do we expect to see in a typical intergenerational healthcare interaction? Physician enters the room, sees an older adult, attunes to physical old age cues – wrinkled skin, gray hair. Stereotypes of old age and communication incompetence might be activated. The physician offers a greeting, and asks the older patient about his/her health. Older adult pauses, considers what to disclose. Being a bit more cautious, takes a little longer to react and may even say, “I don’t know.’ (thinking: That’s why I’m here! You’re the expert!). The physician may see the older patient’s communicative behavior as incompetent, which may reinforce his own stereotypes of the elderly as being less communicatively competent, and this pattern may continue throughout the interaction. You may see this as an extreme example, but if the physician then chooses an over-accommodation strategy, for example a patronizing speech strategy, and these interactions repeat over time, we are very likely to see the older adult actually begin to question his/her own competence and, worst case scenario, start exhibiting signs of instant aging. This pattern is called the Communication Predicament Of Aging Model. So what should we do as communicators in intergenerational healthcare interactions to avoid the predicament? One increasingly popular and accepted approach is to bring another person with you if you’re an older adult. If done appropriately, this can work well. But it’s not always done well.

I’ll give you an example – this is a story that was written up in the Readers’ Digest by a journalist who was just amazed at the treatment her very competent mother received when she attended a doctor visit with her mother, and then, upon reflection of her own behavior, the treatment she gave her own mother during this same interaction. The story goes like this: she walks into the examination room with her mother; her mother is old, has gray hair, glasses, and a cane. The physician, new and young, walks into the room, and asks, “How are you?” The mother hesitates just a moment, so the younger daughter responses, “We’re doing quite well.” The doctor then asks, “Can you tell me about your condition?” Again, the mother hesitates and the daughter responds,“Yes, I can tell you all about it.” And so this pattern of conversation continues between the physician and the daughter, leaving the mother out of the conversation. After about three minutes the very competent older adult/mother looks up and asks the doctor,“Do you do crossword puzzles?” At which point you might see the physician begin to enact age-based stereotypes, i.e., lack of communication competence; looks at older adult and says,“Yes I do. I do the one in the New York Times.” He then turns back to the daughter and says, “We were talking about your mother’s healthcare problems.” This goes on a little bit longer, until finally the older mother interrupts: “Excuse me. Do you do those in pencil or in pen?” The doctor pauses, looks at the older adult and says,“Why, I do them in pencil, of course. People must, in order to finish the puzzle.” The older adult/ mother pauses a second, then states, “I fill them in out in pen because I don’t make any mistakes, so you two can start talking to me.” So what do we learn from this example? The best way to accommodate appropriately is to actually engage in a genuine dialogue with the older adult. Be aware of your own stereotypes and ageist assumptions, even if the older adult is someone you already have a relationship with. Recognize that older adults may have stereotypes of younger adults, and they might be over- or under-accommodating to you. Treat every interaction with an older adult as an interaction with a unique individual, not an interaction with a member of a less communicatively competent group. We can learn a lot from other adults if we’re willing to engage in genuine dialogue. After all, they may have something you can only get with increasing age – wisdom.

Mayor Rocky Anderson at the Humanities Happy Hour

A nnual L ectures within the C ollege Communication Department The B. Aubrey Fisher Memorial Lecture is presented every October within the Communication Department and features prestigious authorities, both influential and contemporary, in the field of speech and mass communication. Also held during the fall is The Parry D. Sorenson Lecture, which features individuals who apply public relations theory with practice. For more information regarding these lectures, please visit www.hum.utah.edu/communication.

English Department The Gordon B. Hinckley Lecture annually attracts scholars from around the world to the University whose concentration is British literature, culture, and history. Typically held during the early spring, The Gordon B. Hinckley Lecture reliably offers the highest scholarship and insight into England’s rich history in the humanities. For more information, please view the Department website at www.hum.utah.edu/english.

Languages and Literature Department In February, the Languages and Literature Department hosts the Confutati Graduate Student Symposium. Organized by both the graduate students and faculty, this annual interdisciplinary event celebrates the research of young literary and cultural critics across the Intermountain West and showcases prizewinning essays from the first annual Utah Museum of Fine Arts Graduate Essay Contest. For more information, please visit www.hum.utah.edu/languages.

Linguistics Department The Linguistics Department annually hosts The Annual Student Conference in Linguistics. Usually held in April, this conference provides a venue for the presentation of the best student research produced at the University in the field of Linguistics. The conference features eight student presentations, and culminates with a keynote lecture presented by a linguistic scholar of international renown. Please contact the Linguistics Department for more information at www.hum.utah.edu/linguistics.

Histor y Department

Middle East Center

Since 1977, The O. Meredith Wilson Lecture has presented a “Who’s Who” of distinguished scholars within the field of History. Emphasizing the method or philosophy of History, this lecture is usually held in the fall, but occasionally in spring. Other lectures of note are The David E. Miller Lecture in History of the American West and The Vern and Bonnie Bullough Lecture in the History of Gender and Sexuality, held in early and late spring respectively. Please contact the History Department for more information at www.hum.utah.edu/history.

Held throughout the academic year, The Middle East Lecture Series addresses pressing issues in the Middle East, bringing together prominent experts in the field of Middle Eastern politics, social sciences, and humanities. In addition to the Middle East Lecture Series, The Reza Ali Khazeni Memorial Lecture in Iranian Studies is devoted to understanding various facets of Persian culture and civilization by bringing leading Iranian scholars to deliver lectures to the campus and community. For more information, please contact the Middle East Center at 801-581-6181.

International Studies Program

Peace and Conflict Studies Program

Each spring the International Studies Program hosts The Anne and Sandy Dolowitz Lecture on Human Rights. The lecture triggers important questions about human rights from historical, legal, and political philosophies by attracting the finest scholars in the field. For more information regarding this lecture please visit www.hum.utah.edu/intl_studies.

This past year the Peace and Conflict Studies Program was the primary sponsor for a public lecture, held at the Salt Lake City Public Library, by Mark Danner, an international correspondent and Professor of Journalism at UC-Berkeley and Columbia University. Danner’s lecture was titled, “Torture, Human Rights, and the New State of Exception.” In addition, the program cosponsors several other lectures during the year. For more news on upcoming events, please contact the Peace and Conflict Studies program at www.hum.utah.edu/peace.

Philosophy Department The Rod Dixon Lecture in the Philosophy Department hosts distinguished scholars who lecture on philosophy and human values; the Dixon Lecture is usually held in the spring. The Aldrich Colloquium occurs annually and presents various critical topics for discussion. Please contact www. hum.utah.edu/philosophy for more information.

Tanner Humanities Center The Tanner Humanities Center hosts the finest presenters in the political, humanitarian, and spiritual pedagogies through the following signature lectures: The World Leaders Lecture Forum, held in early spring, which brings to the community a world leader of international stature and global impact to address the vital issues of our day; The Tanner Lecture on Human Values, hosted during the spring, which attracts the finest international scholars to enhance our understanding of what is beautiful, true, and just; and The Sterling M. McMurrin Lecture in Culture and Religion, presented in the fall, which annually hosts an internationally distinguished theologian to address the relationship between belief and behavior, religion and culture. For more information on these events, please visit the Tanner Humanities Center website at www.thc.utah.edu.

Center for American Indian Languages The Conference on the Endangered Languages and Cultures of Native America (CELCNA), hosted in the spring, is an annual conference that invites scholars and linguists to address any aspect of endangered Native American languages, especially regarding documentation and revitalization. For more details regarding the conference, please visit www.cail.utah.edu.

College The Evening of Conscience takes place in the fall and has two objectives: first, to inspire awareness of issues of diversity and social justice; and second, to raise scholarship funds. Each program is crafted to ensure the event is intellectually compelling, visually stunning, and that it includes world-class music to complement the narrative presentations. The Lyceum II Lecture Series focuses on environmental issues seen through the lenses of the Humanities. Each lecture illuminates the power of place and explores the integration of community, culture and landscape. For more information, please call 801581-6214.

Ehud Barak, Former Prime Minister of Israel, World Leaders Forum February 22, 2007

C arolyn T anner I rish H umanities B uilding The Right Reverend Carolyn Tanner Irish, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Utah, believes that students must learn the lessons of history, philosophy, literature, language and communication in an environment that will cultivate knowledge and help foster understanding about the human condition. Her support in excess of $7 million will help provide a beautiful space for such learning to occur at the University of Utah. The Carolyn Tanner Irish Humanities Building is designed to encourage collaboration and discussion among faculty, students, and community members and allow for quiet contemplation and study. According to College of Humanities Dean Robert Newman, “Our vision for the new building is to reflect the role of the College of Humanities as the core of student life on campus – a thriving center of disciplinary, interdisciplinary, and international programs.” The building will be home to the Departments of History and Philosophy and the College’s International, Asian, and Latin America studies program. It will also house the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center, established in 1988 and named for Irish’s parents. The Tanner Humanities Center fosters in-depth research into the humanities by supporting the work of distinguished scholars-in-residence for the university and from around the country. Located south of the Alumni House and east of the Union Building, the 55,000 square-foot facility, scheduled for completion in 2008, will include two large lecture halls, several seminar rooms, conference and group study rooms as well as reading rooms, secluded courtyards, and an outdoor labyrinth, designed to encourage reflection among students, faculty, and visitors. The total cost of the building is $16.5 million. The College is actively seeking financial gifts from its friends and alumni to complete funding for the Carolyn Tanner Irish Humanities Building. Recognition and naming opportunities exist for donors or their loved ones. If interested in making a gift, please contact Tim McInnis at (801)575-7148.

Artist rendering of the Carolyn Tanner Irish Humanities Building

Whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

Liberal About a Liberal Arts So

Education? Robert Newman

Dean of the College of Humanities & Associate Vice President for Interdisciplinary Studies

“When I started teaching, at University College in Dublin many years ago, I urged students to believe that the merit of reading a great poem, play, or novel consisted in the pleasure of gaining access to deeply

imagined lives other than our own. Over the years, that opinion, still cogent to me, seems to have lost much of its persuasive force. Students seem to be convinced that their own lives are the primary and sufficient incentive. They report that reading literature is mainly a burden. Those students who think of themselves as writers take classes in ‘creative writing’ to define themselves as poets or fiction writers evidently write more than they read, and regard reading as a gross expenditure of time and energy. They are not open to the idea that one learns to write by reading good writers.” In class, many student are ready to talk, but they want to talk either about themselves or about largescale public themes, independent of the books they are supposedly reading. They are happy to denounce imperialism and colonialism rather than read Heart of Darkness, Kim, and A Passage to India in which imperialism and colonialism are held up to complex judgment. They are voluble in giving you their opinions on race and its injustices, but tongue-tied when it is a question of submitting to the languages of The Sound of Fury, Things Fall Apart, and A Bend in the River. They find it arduous to engage with the styles of Hard Times and The Wings of the Dove, but easy to say what they think about industrialism, adultery, and greed. In a Newsweek “My Turn” article, Nicole Kristal writes of her three years as “an academic prostitute,” ostensibly as a tutor for rich LA high school and university students, but in reality “a professional paperwriter.” She writes about doing the homework assignments of a USC freshman whose parents had employed such “tutors” since he was twelve. While she composed his papers on the $3,000 Powerbook he lent to her, her client would lounge in front of the 51-inch TV in his room, smoke dope, and occasionally pass her his girlfriends leftover designer jeans. The new clients with whom he would network her included his roommate, who spent his evenings on one-night stands with hired strippers while he passed along his homework assignments to her, including one on a Toni Morrison novel about which he shrugged, “Why should I care about some little black girl?” When her string of A papers ended with a B-minus, she was summarily dismissed and replaced with a teacher working on his Ph.D. who charged $15 less per hour. Now Kristal’s story may or may not be representative, but recent statistics in The Chronicle of Higher Education tell us that more than 40 percent of students now arrive on college campuses needing remedial work and that 14 percent last year received their undergraduate degrees from for-profit institutions like University of Phoenix, teaching exclusively on-line courses, often by unqualified instructors, a number that is predicted to steadily increase. Eighty-four percent of professors surveyed last year felt their students were unprepared academically. Only six percent thought students were well prepared in writing and only four percent in basic math skills.

here’s a wonderful story of the British patriotic women’s league at the outbreak of World War One. One ardent senior woman comes upon an Oxford don, seated at a bench in the park, calmly enraptured in Thucydides. The woman draws herself and confronts the don: “And what, young man, are you doing to save western civilization,” she asks. To which the don replies,“Madam, I am western civilization.” The don’s enthusiasm for himself, absent 84 percent of professors surveyed Thucydides, may be readily perceived in contemporary students, who of course, are last year felt their students were merely products of a culture of sound bites and unprepared academically. Only six political cynicism as well as extensions of the electronic devices that regulate their lives and percent thought students were well determine their social relations, most of them prepared in writing and only four virtual. When Judge Judy’s salary exceeds that of all nine Supreme Court justices combined by percent in basic math skills. $26 million, when we recognize the imminent danger of global warming and our national leader is accompanied by fourteen vehicles in his daily motorcade to Maryland so he can ride his bike, when the percentage of U.S. voters who said in December that “America’s best days” were in the past rose to 48%, and you toss in Guantanamo, Darfur, and Haliburton, or Donald Rumsfelds’s comment when questioned about the missing weapons of mass destruction,“the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,” and life may seem out of balance to many of us. Certainly, the pervasive cynicism of our contemporary generations of students is, in may ways, well-deserved. But there is a crucial, tragic distinction. Because I also think of the generation gap when parents and grandparents ask their children what they want to do with their lives. The difference between what I want to do with the rest of my life when facing a complex and often frustrating world and what an undergraduate ponders regarding the same question is gigantic and profound. They have most of their lives ahead of them. Many of us have most of our lives behind us. What seemed like an ocean of optimism and idealism when we were young seems transformed into a morass of ennui, pessimism, and narcissism today. When Irish critic Denis Donoghue reflects on his current classroom experiences, he writes,

And then there is the student evaluation of professors which has become the primary means by which to measure teaching effectiveness in terms of merit raises, promotion and tenure. These are now generally done on-line and anonymously by students, sometimes gathering in groups in a party atmosphere to trash instructors they don’t like. Instructors who challenge students and who do not offer good grades easily often are the victims of lower evaluations which can impact their pay and professional progress, thus grade inflation and a pervasive dumbing-down in the classroom. Young female instructors and minorities teaching courses counting for diversity requirements, especially, are targeted in generally conservative environment or by male students resentful of female authority. A recent Chronicle of Higher Education article posited a student evaluation were Socrates teaching at a contemporary university: Socrates is a real drag. I don’t know how in hell he ever got tenure. He makes students feel bad by criticizing them all the time. He pretends like he’s teaching them, but he’s really ramming his ideas down student’s throats. He’s always taking over the conversation and hardly lets anyone get a word in. He always keep talking about these figures in a cave, like they really have anything to do with the real world. Give me a break! I spend serious money for my education and I need something I can use in the real world, not some b.s. about shadows in caves. He also talks a lot about things we haven’t read for class and expects us to read all the readings on the syllabus even if we don’t discuss them and that really bugs me. Students only have so much time and I didn’t pay him to torture me with all that extra crap. If you want to get anxious and depressed, take his course. Oh yeah, his grading is really subjective, he doesn’t give any formal exams so its hard to know where you stand in the class when you try to talk to him about grades he just gets all agitated and changes the topic. Educational goals have been compromised to a one-size-fits-all method of accountability propelled by No Child Left Behind. This educational initiative, another of the Bush administration’s attempts at undermining long-term and previously valued social contracts in order to promote privatization and privilege with devastating consequences to the democratize fabric of our national institutions, in essence decrees that teaching to standardized tests is the exclusive mission of our schools. The consequence has been to deprive students of foundational lessons in creativity, critical thinking, and problem solving. The Spellings Report, issued last year by the Secretary of Education, now demands that this method be

extended as well to higher education. The era of one-dimensional accountability, of imposing The consequence has been to a corporate model on education, is strongly deprive students of foundational upon us. But the idea of knowledge as an end in itself, Cardinal Newman’s idea of the university, lessons in creativity, critical can be found nowhere in this thinking. Can thinking, and problem solving. we measure knowledge, the commodity our universities are assigned to produce, the same way we measure corporate production and profit? Should our universities be assembly lines of pre-packaged units of study that combine after four years into the four or five models deemed saleable? Should we avoid risk in intellectual pursuits because it might reduce our profit margin? What role does discovery still play in the academy? How do we challenge the glazed students who increasingly wander unprepared, late and despondently into our classrooms to connect to something deeper and higher when their connections seem exclusively to their iPods and cell phones? With the mania to fund more engineers and scientists in order to stay in front in our technological age, the Humanities has taken a back seat – in funding, in focus, in public discourse about educational needs. Indeed, Humanities majors often are objects of ridicule, depicted as disconnected from the real world, a parent’s worst nightmare because of an abiding fear that they will never be financially independent, full of fuzzy idealism and therefore not good prospects as potential spouses. Sure we can tolerate a bit on dabbling in our electives as expected youthful indiscretion, a kind of playing the field in our intellectual dating lives, so long as we settle down and get serious before we cause irreparable harm. But look closely at any great specialist and discover that the difference between good and bad scholarship and practice lies in how one was trained in the area of specialty. But the difference between good and great scholarship and practice, the tools necessary for producing spectacular new knowledge that changes paradigms and offers break-thoughs in thinking, lies in the training one received prior to specialization. It is the application of imagination, critical and comparative thinking, problem solving, and puzzling thought ethical dilemmas that fosters great thoughts and great people. And the exposure to literary narrative, placing the reader in the lives of others so we learn to feel their joy and pain and extend our perspectives beyond ourselves, teaches us compassion, perhaps the most important attribute for sustaining a just and civilized society. And, here’s an economic fact – liberal arts undergraduate majors earn more over the course of their professional careers than those who major in a pre-professional track.

So how do we change our approach toward higher education to recapture the mission of liberal education, and re-engage our students in the excitement and significance of learning? I want briefly to suggest two overlapping approaches, both of which we in the College of Humanities currently are implementing. One involves the idea of interdisciplinarity, one an innovative approach to pedagogy that promotes the responsibility to tying classroom activity to application beyond the academy. Interdisciplinarity, of course, looks at intersections between previously separated disciplines to advance new ways of thinking and new methodologies. Now, despite their reputation to the contrary, universities are essentially conservative institutions. If you look at national rankings, the list of the top universities in the country essentially is identical to the same list 50 years ago. Compare this, for example, to the list of the top business corporations in the country now and 50 years ago and you see something as different as B&W TV vs. HDTV on plasma screens. The subtle shifts that have begun to occur in movement forward in national rankings by some universities, however, largely are tied to their leadership in interdisciplinary initiatives. Now, if I were the Secretary of Education, I ...liberal arts undergraduate majors would decree that every 25 years administrative structures and boundaries in our universities earn more over the course of their should be eliminated and faculty members be professional careers than those who presented with descriptors of disciplines and their interest in these areas rated to develop major in a pre-professional track. self-defined profiles and cluster analyses. Surely, this would recreate different groups. Indeed, we might get one department with 1,000 faculty or 1,000 departments with one faculty member each, but clearly the methodologies associated with someone in art conservation, for example, rest now more truly in chemistry that in art history. Just as the trivium and the quadrivium have been altered and vastly expanded, some prominent departments that might emerge would include genomics, bio-informatics, cognitive studies, environmental studies, gerontology, addiction studies, ethics, computational analysisâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;to name just a few.

how it makes a positive difference. Too often Too often students plan their careers students plan their careers and live without allowing themselves to discover their passions. and lives without allowing themselves Often their strongest interests are lifted from to discover their passions. contemporary headlines, but current curricula ask them to defer these interests for three or four years while they build the components for understanding them. Too typically we have students entering professional education knowing very little about the profession, their initial fascinations diffused or depleted, armed only with bits of information they cannot connect and cannot begin to apply. Why not invert the pyramid of undergraduate education and start with broad interests then allow students to drill down into the specifics they need for applying them usefully? Why not involve them in research since theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re part of a research university? Why not immerse them in community projects, locally and internationally, so they learn to think through nuances of the theories and methodologies they are taught in the classroom? I want you, our dear friends and alumni, to know that the College of Humanities has been and is a leader in such creative and necessary approaches.

Responsible education also entails asking our students to apply theory to practice, to translate what they learn in the classroom into thinking about how they might better their world. This is the principle of social education advocated by John Dewey who saw schools as social institutions, fundamental elements of a democratic society, the linkage of which would mutually benefit both. Such an approach also grounds our students in relevance and while exciting a passion for learning by clearly demonstrating

poetry

Contributed by alumna Nicole Walker and Professor Emeritus Edward Lueders

Live a Long Time Poetry by Nicole Walker MFA 2001 Humanities Ph.D. 2006 Humanities Literature Fellowship for Creative Writing in Poetry Grant for the National Endowment for the Arts.

1. If there’s one thing you can’t get away from, it’s birds. Try Antarctica or the Arctic Circle—little weebly birds congregate behind your legs. Even underground, in the sweet smell caves—rat birds will follow you until you become familiar. 2. Grandmothers, happily, don’t need to be convinced to reduce, reuse, or recycle. My one grandma has folded, neatly stacked only-oneside-used pieces of paper from the 60’s. My other grandma—a pantry-sized aluminum foil ball. 3. Even though there are birds all over the place, we drive for miles to see others, the really big ones. To see the many ones shake off the landscape with a nod and a fleck—when the measure of a white lake turns to white sky Well Atlantis Atlantis I’d cede the word to those shape-shifting, scapelifting birds. Both my grandmothers collect birds. The one, the one with the foil, collects the cardboardsculpted, mantle-shaped polyester kind. My other grandma—stale bread folded in her pocket—and a long walk from her house to the park. She keeps birds inside her coat. She opens the bread sack and out come symphonies of ducks.

Breaking Down A Body’s Promise Fluid weather of hot glass, melted silicone, pile of molasses, stretches thin rain, twists until tendrils pass out beyond each grain of sand, force-formed into cast iron molds or blown into mass by hot-breath propane. Fresh earth thrown to pyre, on cones of foam, settles fast. Shape foregoes the profane, turns plain drinking glass. Border of leaf, precise as glass, cuts twice into the thickness of atmosphere. One, to let light slice into shade. Two, to make cohere the rain, funnel for its veins, lets water crystallize in the microscopic fractal mirror, to essence of this tree’s remains, stacked high by splice and random fall. Every piece sheer echo of melting ice. All at once, soft flesh began to freeze. A muscle, a nerve, dicey disease, cannot rely on rote or practice, only hope that the right synapses fire. It takes conscious will and a little luck to walk, let alone to dance. Structures shake, unbalance, tip. Our voices stick. The attempt to construct assemblies of order or stance collapses on windblown, raincold knees. Nicole Walker

Nicole Walker 56

The Year of the Dog Translation An English folksong chants about the beginning of the word not hand not blood not bread but Person Personne Die Person.

Covet A single man— I could tell his singularity by his smooth tan and fitted leather coat— bought the empty lot next door for more money than I gambled on steak from Ruth’s Chris or oysters from Quilcene Bay or leg of lamb richly separated from its hock and socket with a rosemary wine sauce. I lost the most when I bet on lavendered and honeyed rabbit who I pretended not to know. I gnawed on the small bone with my largeish front teeth and swore I’d get that man for stealing the little bit of land that grew a feast of wheat.

The song assures he who names, names himself. When the child was a child he stuck his thicked up tongue in a glass of milk and it was the very reflection of the holy mountain covered in snow. When the child was a child a kinder carnival looped a harlequin and his red juggling balls into a frame against the open sky and folding hills. In between grew the pinch of a bird’s back.

My neighbors wanted a community garden on that lot but I wanted to fence off the whole raspy, dog-heavy square of suburb where the neighbors walk their mutts so they don’t have to bend or scoop. This is suburb on the brink of wild, I promise, where a screech owl and a Walton falcon a bevy of quail and a one-time red-tailed fox meet me and my daughter for breakfast our hands chop for them two memories of oats, three songs of millet, a nostalgia of sunflower seeds.

When he was a child he met an angel and she burned his umbilicus. When you had no child and knowing one day the child will not be a child but when this child was a man he pulled on the umbilicus saw the pattern of wings he saw the glow of feather. He pulled out the past from his own abdomen and thereby he strung the future. Now we count the kinks like links on a abacus. The red shadows mountains throw against one another. echoes. ravine. stream. Nicole Walker

In the pretend of my future the sunflower seeds grow and the single man, instead of building a three-car garage next door, marries sunflowers or maybe my daughter and I can live in the sack of a mole’s hole or a bobcat’s cave or the hollow of an eighteen-wheeler’s lost, sheltering, tire.

It was the dog that I remember best about that autumn day. We climbed to Grandeur Park above our house. Our final hike before the boy— All right—so he’d be off to college in just a week—a kid no more. Tell that to the eager dog, though, tearing up the trail ahead, indulging us our laggard pace by waiting while we struggled up, her eyes bright, red tongue lolling over her grinning teeth: “Come on, you people creeps! Look alive!” Doing a dance there on the trail.

New England Homes Inside their annual coats of paint New England homes mature, accept their lot, grow old. Their plaster shrinks. Studs and laths forget the woods, the saws, exhale their last, resign themselves to furnace heat.

Horses Prance. A dog can dance.

Outside, their old neglected chimneys— brick eroded, mortar blackened from the soot of smothered hearths— ignore suburban time, confirm their handselled age against the paint against a recent roof against recurrent clouds and now, as then, against the watered blue New England sky.

We lumbered up an hour or more until our legs were stubborn rubber, our breathing shallow. So we stopped by a jutting rock and sat down hard. Looking back, we studies the way we’d come. The valley world below, a scene composed of human plots, seemed still and flat as a photograph. But there was the dog, nose to the ground, dashing around this way and that, tracking her phantoms wherever they led, then romping with glee in crazy eights while we just sat there, energy spent, watching that tireless dog enjoy the wild and unconstrained delight of being dog. We had to laugh.

Edward Lueders, from New America, vol. 3, No. 2, Summer-Fall, 1977

The boy would leave to take his grown-up life abroad. The dog would die. And I would live my life and last to write this epigraph. Edward Lueders

Nicole Walker 58

The Curving Wall in Wayne County, Utah

An American Poet is Taken to Lunch in Tokyo

The stucco wall we build around our mesa home is curved.

For Amy Horiuchi and Naoshi Koriyama

Three poets through the noonstruck streets. They shortcut walk between the shouldering dark side-walls of shops, talk static, like minutes in a clock.

Sego-Lily: State Flower of Utah

Inside the wall the rigid house confines our lives in neat rectangles.

Our of the shadows once again, across sunstreet, in though a small red door—woman first, then the two men. The one, much too tall, must bend.

Inside walls make three-way corners the roof is nailed aslant. the shingles overlap.

Inside, the smell of warm food lends to their talk good savor. When they bring the wood chopsticks, then seaweed soup, green tea, tempura—food

Outside the wall encircling the house, the planet Earth completes its rounds. The wall is there to help me see the global curves beyond my sight.

becomes their new bond, as if words are not enough to say what poets share of life. While they eat, they laugh; good nature writes their epigraph.

Between the house and curving wall the captured earth collects my footprints.

Edward Lueders

Outside the stucco wall the seasons turn and swirling winds erase them. Only the wooden gate, opening out or shut but always there between, is straight.

“Cities and towns encroaching on the range of the sego-lily have left this species in a precarious position… Attempts to cultivate this handsome plant have not been successful.” -Stanley L. Welsh, Flowers of the Canyon Country Below eroding mountain walls, up though sand and shattered rock a single urgent sego-lily stands gentle, vulnerable, exquisite, wild: open, cream-and-purple satin-petalled cup held level and erect upon its strong fine firm slim long thin stem bulb rooted shallow in its cache of sand; yearly grows more singular nods at the wind shuns love

Edward Lueders

Edward Lueders 60

STUDENT SCHOLARSHIPS Thanks to generous contributions from our community of alumni and friends, students throughout the College of Humanities continue to be academically successful and financially supported. In fact, the College gave over $90,000 in undergraduate scholarships for the 2007-008 academic year.

Community Scholarships for Diversity Congratulations to our 2007 Community Scholarships for Diversity graduates:

Poonam Kumar | Amed Samatar Ser vice Learning Scholars We also applaud our 2007 Lowell Bennion Center Service Learning Scholars graduates:

Patrick Fernandez | Erin Peterson | Christine Cushing In order to graduate as Service-Learning Scholar Graduates, students must complete 400 service hours, 10 credit hours of service-learning coursework, a one-hour seminar course, and an integrative service project.

Steffensen C annon Scholarships

O.C. Tanner Humanities House residents 06-07, (Left-Right) Kira Jones, Colin Ledbetter, Cory Richardson, Breanne Miller, Mackenzie Edwards, Carolyn Tanner Irish, Jonathan Hayes, Heather Johnson,Jaymes Myers, Stephany Murgia, Brenda Robles,Kseniya Kniazeva and Christina Day. Not pictured: Daniel Cairo

O.C. TANNER HUMANITIES HOUSE

The Steffensen Cannon Scholarship Fund was established in honor of Ellen Christina Steffensen Cannon. Each year graduate and undergraduate students from the College of Humanities compete for this most prestigious scholarships and honor. This year six undergraduates students received this award: Brin Bon, Elizabeth Clark, Kseniya Kniazeva, Rochelle McConkie, Owen Stewart, and Randall Wood. These students are some of the brightest, most engaged students in the University. We are honored that they have chosen to study areas within the College of Humanities and wish them much success in the coming academic year.

Each year, 12 undergraduate students from the College of Humanities are selected to live in the O.C. Tanner Humanities House in historic Fort Douglas. We are honored to celebrate the graduation of five of this yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s residents: Heather Johnson, Andrea Krall, Poonam Kumar, Breanne Miller, and Cory Richardson. Each of these students has excelled while studying at the University. Their plans after graduation include graduate school, law school, national and international internships. We are proud that they have embarked on successful careers in academia, journalism, law, mass media, publishing, and public relations.

CONVOCATION May 4, 2007 “In preparing for today, I realized that until this year I had never really thought about what an education in the humanities meant. I enjoyed my classes, and found them challenging, but I had never considered what it meant to be a student of English, philosophy, history, or communications. Last fall, I had an opportunity which changed all that. I joined Professor Jeff Metcalf with a project called “Humanities in Focus.” This project was a year-long course which enabled diverse students of all ages, who had never completed a college education, to study various courses in the humanities. I had the opportunity to interview several of these incredible students and I began to listen to each of their stories. And as I did, I was amazed and moved by what I saw. These individuals had endured poverty, homelessness, discrimination, violence, terminal illness, and so many more incredible feats. I listened to a woman who had been the victim of domestic abuse tell her story. She talked about studying art history, and as she spoke longer, I could see her face become more engaged, and then, opening her arms up wide, she defined the term “controposto” with the gusto of a robust Italian man. She proudly demonstrated how renaissance statues used this technique to create more realistic portrayals of the body, and as she explained this, I saw passion in her eyes. She did not want her education to end here. She paused, and said “I want more for my children than I have known; I want to see brilliance of life sparkle in their eyes, not just the dim awareness of survival.”

-Beth Ranchau, Convocation Speaker May 2007

HONOREES AT THIS YEAR’S CONVOCATION INCLUDED: Jack P. Lewis, Young Alumni Association Outstanding Senior Award Spencer. P. Eccles, Distinguished Alumnus Howard B. Anderson, Honorary Distinguished Alumnus Irene Fisher, Honorary Distinguished Alumna Elizabeth Clement, Ramona W. Cannon Faculty Award for Teaching Excellence Alfred Seegert, Ramona W. Cannon Award for Graduate Student Teaching Excellence 64

And as I listened to this woman tell her story, I realized that this is what our education in the humanities has been about. It’s about experiencing that “brilliance of life” and hunger for knowledge each day. It’s about actively engaging in the world around us rather than just passing through it with a “dim awareness” of our surroundings.“ -Beth Ranchau, English (’07) Excerpt from commencement address, given May 4, 2007 (pictured at left)

MAjOR GIFT HIGHLIGHTS jULY 1, 2006 THROUGH jUNE 30, 2007 Bueneventura Buena Ventura Mining Research in Peru

The Marriner S. Eccles Foundation Hartland Project

Burton Family Foundation Family Literacy Center

Fairchild Martindale Foundation Korean Language and Culture

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Foundation Deseret News Endowed Scholarship Tanner Humanities Center

Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund Jared R. Larson Fund in Early American History Mary Ann Gardner James H. & Mary Ann Gardner Endowed Scholarship in the Department of History

Barbara S. and George L. Denton Carolyn Tanner Irish Humanities Building

Ellis R. and Kathryn S. Ivory Gordon B. Hinckley Chair in British Studies

Jarvis & Constance Doctorow Family Foundation Humanities in Focus Program YourStory Ute Project YourStory Reflections on Refugees Project

Kendeda Foundation Environmental Humanities Graduate Program

David S. Dolowitz Living Trust David S.“Sandy” and Anne M. Dolowitz Lecture on Human Rights The Katherine W. Dumke and Ezekiel R. Dumke, Jr. Foundation Support of College sponsorship of a 100-team Latino(a) Youth Soccer League

U.S. Department of Education Developing Teacher Leaders in English Language and Reading Instruction Middle East Center, National Resource Center Funding

National Science Foundation Constituting the Arctic Environment Research Grant

Utah Arts Council Guest Writers Series and Outreach

O. C. Tanner Charitable Trust Carolyn Tanner Irish Humanities Building Annie Clark Tanner Fellow Tanner Humanities Center

Utah State Office of Education Tanner Humanities Center Zoos, Arts and Parks Fund Classical Greek Theater Festival

David Simmons Interdisciplinary Professorship in History and Communication The Roy W. Simmons Estate Gordon B. Hinckley Chair in British Studies

Kathryn Lindquist Trust Humanities Art Fund

Saudi Arabian Oil Company Middle East Center

Larry H. and Gail Miller Gordon B. Hinckley Chair in British Studies

Swedish-American Chamber of Commerce Establishment of the Franklin S. Forsberg Digital Media Laboratory in the Department of Communication

Judith Burton Moyle Maybelle Burton Fellowship in the Department of History Humanities Art Fund

George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Foundation Family Literacy Center at West High School Carolyn Tanner Irish Humanities Building

National Endowment for the Humanities Endangered Language Preservation

THANK YOU The students and faculty of the College of Humanities wish to express their profound gratitude to the many friends and alumni who have offered their support this past year. We appreciate them for recognizing that, ultimately, a â&#x20AC;&#x153;Research Oneâ&#x20AC;? university is only as good as its liberal arts core. The enduring strength of the University of Utah is tied directly to the strength of the College of Humanities, and we draw our strength from the resources our generous donors help provide.

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