Department of History, WSU Vancouver
Undergraduate scholars at WSUV impress the campus
At WSU Vancouver’s 2018 Research Showcase held on April 12, undergraduates Megan De Moss and Kacie Dominici placed 1st and 2nd in the Showcase undergraduate podium presentations.
The following week on April 17, students in Professor Xiuyu Wang’s History 469 seminar presented their research in a special History Exposition, sponsored by the WSUV History Club, that drew a large crowd.
WSUV spring and summer 2018 history graduates will celebrate their accomplishments with faculty at the annual history graduation party and Phi Alpha Theta ceremony May 3 at Prof. Sue Peabody’s house.
Congrats to our new PhDs!
Hans-Petter Grav (December 2017)
Carey McCormack (April 2018)
Dong Jo Shin (April 2018)
History on Radio
Professor Laurie Mercier believes in taking recent history scholarship to large, public audiences and she has been doing so for the past two decades on Portland’s KBOO 90.7 FM radio. Co-host of the monthly Old Mole Variety Hour, Mercier interviews historians about recent work that illuminates contemporary issues.
“Because every year is an anniversary year for the historian,” she often uses the show as an opportunity to reflect back on events of 50 or 100 years ago to understand current political and social movements, foreign policy, and economic and cultural change. For example, in 2018 on the 50th anniversaries of the Tet Offensive, Martin Luther King’s assassination, and the passage of the Fair Housing Act, she spoke with Christian Appy about American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity; with Michael Honey on To the Promised Land: Martin Luther King and the Fight for Economic Justice; and with National Book Award nominee Richard Rothstein about his The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How our Government Segregated America.
‘Retiree’ Still Active
To no surprise to colleagues who know her, former WSU Vancouver history professor Dr. Jacqueline Peterson-Loomis hasn’t slowed down a bit since she retired a half-dozen years ago. As executive director of the Portland Chinatown History Foundation, Peterson has been busy with the Chinatown History Project, creating exhibits at the Oregon Historical Society Museum and preparing to launch an entire museum, the Portland Chinatown Museum. The soft opening and inaugural exhibition will be June 7, 2018, 127 NW Third Avenue Portland, 4:00 to 8:00 pm. For more information see www.portlandchinatown.org.