Faculty News

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Winter Quarter 2009

Professor Banks Receives Grant to Conduct Research

January 2009— Dr. John "Buck" Banks has received a grant from the Royalty Research Fund to conduct research in bird and arthropod conservation in coastal East Africa. The project, which will be a collaborative effort involving UWT students and local Kenyan ornithologists and entomologists, will explore distributions of a near-threatened flycatcher, the East Coast Akalat (Sheppardia gunningi), and its arthropod prey in the Arabuko-Sokoke Forest north of Mombasa. Congratulations Buck!

Autumn Quarter 2008

Professor Julie Nicoletta Appointed to Two Editorial Boards.

September 2008— Dr. Julie Nicoletta was recently appointed to two editorial boards. In July 2008, she was named an Assistant Editor to the Editorial Advisory Committee of the Buildings of the United States series. This series is published jointly by the Society of Architectural Historians and the University of Virginia Press as a state-by-state survey of American architecture. In September 2008, she was appointed to the University Press Committee of the University of Washington Press. The UW Press publishes primarily in areas including Pacific Northwest history and culture, environmental history, visual culture, and Asian studies.

Summer Quarter 2008

Professor Honey Travels giving Lectures on Recent Book

Aug 2008—Dr. Mike Honey has been lecturing on his recent book on Martin Luther King, from New York City and Washington, D.C., to Memphis, Alaska, and San Francisco. Going Down Jericho Road was featured several times in interviews of Mike on National Public Radio at the 40th anniversary of King's death on April 4. Dr. Honey received the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award at a ceremony with Ethel Kennedy in D.C. in May. His book has been optioned as a possible movie. Dr. Honey is also now the President of the Labor and Working-Class History Association as well as UWT's Fred and Dorothy Haley Professor of Humanities. He is looking forward to this year's teaching, which will include a course on black labor, and another on oral history, which are among his special interests.

Dr. Claudia Gorbman attends Film Studies Conference in Glasgow

July 2008—Dr. Claudia Gorbman was the plenary speaker at the annual international film studies conference in Glasgow sponsored by the journal SCREEN. She spoke on "Subjectivity and Film Music" on July 6 at the University of Glasgow. Dr. Gorbman is also one of three editors of a new project from Oxford University Press, the "New Oxford Companion to Audiovisual Aesthetics". In addition, her translation of critic and composer Michel Chion's opus, "Film A Sound Art", is in press at Columbia University Press.

Professor Naidus Invited to be Visiting Artist

July 2008—Congratulations to Beverly Naidus who has been asked to be a visiting artist, speaking on her work at San Jose State University in September 2008. More recently, Beverly’s work was on display in Miami and Los Angeles in the traveling exhibition, 'Creating Art, Promoting Change: Works by Jewish Women' organized by the Hadassah Institute of Brandeis University. Her new digital work will be on display in exhibition at the Two Wall Gallery on Vashon Island in October entitled: 'Up Against the Two Wall'. This exhibition is part of nation-wide series of socially engaged work entitled: The Art of Democracy.

UWT in Costa Rica

June 2008— Last year Dr. John "Buck" Banks began a three-year collaborative project working with scientists from Earthwatch Institute and Coopetarrazu, a coffee grower cooperative in the Tarrazu region of Costa Rica, aimed at better understanding how farmer practices influence coffee yields and quality as well as environmental health. This year UWT undergraduate Lisa Hannon and Buck have been working with Dr. Mark Chandler of Earthwatch Institute and local Costa Rican scientists Sebastian Castro and Natalia Urena to analyze the affects of varying levels of herbicide, fertilizer, density of shade trees, and other practices on coffee plant yields and farm condition/characteristics. As part of this effort, they are comparing arthropod biodiversity across a wide range of coffee grower practices and landscape characteristics. They are working this summer with groups of Earthwatch volunteers to collect data on over 40 farms in the cooperative.

Dr. Erica Cline recently was awarded a Royalty Researd Fund grant to do some work in the same region, exploring the role of mychorrizal fungi on coffee yield and health. She will be conducting research in the Tarrazu region during Winter quarter 2009.

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