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Pushing creative boundaries
A. Rachelle McCabe, pianist and composer, is a committed teacher and performer. Solo, duo and chamber recitals have taken her from Atlanta to Ontario to Seattle, and to an appearance on National Public Radio's Performance Today.
B. Mathematician Bob Burton leads Honors College students to debate chaos theory, strange attractors, and determinism, as well as ethics and social implications of policy and history.
C. Erlinda Gonzales-Berry, chair of the Department of Ethnic Studies, is a poet and short story writer. She draws on her bilingual and bicultural background to write about the geographical and social spaces where the two Americas meet.
D. Internationally known printmaker Yuji Hiratsuka bridges traditional Japanese imagery with modern iconography in his richly colored and textured intaglio and chine collé prints.
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For a university that routinely gains national attention for its research in natural resources and other sciences, one might wonder
whether those scholars who pursue truths within the humanities would be overlooked at Oregon State University. Try telling that to them.
A former dean of the OSU College of Liberal Arts once called the college "the best-kept secret in the Pacific Northwest."
It isn't much of a secret anymore.
Bolstered by private gifts to endow chairs, professorships and programs, OSU scholars in the humanities are making a major splash, and not just in the Northwest. From writing, to religious studies, to ethics in science, the university has scholars whose creativity is putting OSU in the national spotlight.
A Place for Writers
OSU boasts a growing number of creative writers whose credentials are truly eye-opening. English professor Tracy Daugherty, who won a 1996 Oregon Book Award for his novel,
What Falls Away, is earning national raves for his latest work,
The Boy Orator.
OSU's Department of English is, in fact, a fertile ground for creativity. Fellow English faculty members Marjorie Sandor and Jennifer Cornell have had work featured in
Best American Short Stories, and Sandor's new book,
The
Night Gardener, is earning plaudits for its writing and originality. Jon Lewis'
The New American Cinema is a comprehensive examination of the film industry. Robert Frank has been the general editor for the
Northwest Reprints Series published by the
Oregon State University Press.
One definitive sign that OSU offers a compelling environment in which writers prosper: In July, the Eugene
Register-Guard took note of the wealth of authors in the area and wrote an extensive feature, calling Corvallis "Lit City."
Nature, Law and Evangelism
Kathleen Dean Moore, who chairs the Department of Philosophy, has written a second book of essays on nature called
Holdfast, a follow-up to her critically acclaimed debut,
Riverwalking. Irwin A. Horowitz, in the
Department of Psychology, co-authored
The Psychology of Law. Sally Gallagher, an OSU sociologist, teamed with several national colleagues to write
American Evangelism: Embattled and Thriving.
The Carpenter-Poet
Perhaps the most unusual and unlikely OSU author is Clemens Starck. A carpenter with the university facilities services unit, Starck stunned the Oregon literary world by winning the Oregon Book Award for poetry a couple of years back. Donšt let him fool you. The former Princeton student is as gifted with a pen as he is with a saw, and his newest book,
Studying Russian
on Company Time, is earning rave reviews in literary circles.
Wrote Oregonian columnist Jonathan Nicholas about the OSU Press: "With book lovers at the University of Oregon, Portland State, and even the Oregon Historical Society all asleep at the wheel, the Oregon State University Press continues its relentless march to the title of premier publishing house in Oregon."
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