Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Machines In Desolation: Images Of Technology In The Great Basin Of The American West, Todd Shallat

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

Mythic thinking about technology as an engine of progress has shaped the ways Americans have come to perceive the boundaries of vacant space. In the Great Basin of the Rocky Mountains, where the West still appears to the East as empty and formless, photography and art tell richly symbolic stories about wastelands transformed into wealth. Often those stories aggrandize machines and engineering. The essay presents a visual sampling of machines remaking the desert from three historical eras. First, from the postbellum era of the transcontinental railroad, are pictures of barrens redeemed by science and industrialization. Second, from pioneer Utah, are …

Herrick's Wild Civility, Martin Corless-Smith

English Literature Faculty Publications and Presentations

When one reaches for a book to take on a trip there might be any number of reasons for making a choice, but undoubtedly preeminent for me is company. I find that more often than not I take Herrick. And I have wondered why this is. Part of the reason is that he is at once familiar, and so I bring the familiar with me as one might a friend, but he remains somewhat enigmatic. I have been reading his Hesperidesfor longer than I care to recall, and it is not as if I haven't finished reading it so …

Progressive Foote? Gender Politics In An 1887 Letter From Mary Hallock Foote, Tara Penry

Western Writers Online

Mary Hallock Foote is not known for progressive gender politics. Quite the opposite. As her biographer Darlis Miller observes, Foote and her longtime friend Helena DeKay Gilder agreed that woman’s most important work lay in the home, and suffrage would distract her from her primary duties. But Foote did not always practice her belief in the separate spheres of men and women perfectly. Not only did necessity compel her for a time to support her family, but an 1887 letter also shows that in her professional life, Foote did not always think of her work as feminine or separate from …

Indigenizing King Lear, Michael K. Johnson

Western Writers Online

Staged with an all‑aboriginal cast, the 2012 production of William Shakespeare’s King Lear at Canada’s National Arts Centre creatively reimagined the play in a frontier New World setting. Directed by Peter Hinton, and starring August Schellenberg (Mohawk) as Lear, the production placed Shakespeare’s drama in seventeenth‑century Canada, amongst a group of Algonquin people on the outer edge of European colonialism and cultural contact. The idea for this resetting of the play originated with August Schellenberg—some 45 years ago—who thought that Lear would be particularly adaptable to an indigenous / First Nations setting. That it took nearly half a century to …

From The Dust Bowl To Frederick Manfred’S The Golden Bowl—A Journeyman’S Masterpiece, Randi Eldevik

Western Writers Online

The time and place of Frederick Manfred’s birth—1912, on a farm in a corner of northwestern Iowa close to the South Dakota and Minnesota borders—gave him several perspectives on American life, resulting in the creation of several kinds of fiction. Manfred’s most celebrated novels, the five Buckskin Man tales, take place in the nineteenth century and have a wild west (mostly South Dakota) setting: they arose out of Manfred’s awareness of the dramatic and tumultuous events that had occurred near his home during the hundred years before his birth. But Manfred’s own childhood and youth in a settled agricultural community …

Styleless Style? What Photorealism Can Tell Us About “The Sixties”, Craig J. Peariso

Art, Design & Visual Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

This essay reads 1960s “photorealist” painting and its critical reception against two sets of contemporary social analyses. First, it places these artistic and critical works next to Pierre Bourdieu's 1965 text Photography: A Middle-Brow Art, demonstrating that, although the critical literature surrounding “photorealism” tended to assume that its involvement with photography grew out of a desire for an objective realism, contemporary thought on photography was anything but convinced of the medium's transparency. Second, it looks to cultural critics like Susan Sontag and Jacob Brackman to propose that, rather than seeing the art of this period in opposition to the …

Vigilante Violence Vs. Freedom Of Choice In Marriage: The Foray/Zajazd In The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Of The 18th Century, Lynn Lubamersky

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

The most famous poem in the Polish language, ‘Pan Tadeusz’ by Adam Mickiewicz, tells of the foray – an institution where the nobles might carry out acts of vigilante violence. Generally speaking, noble families would make use of the court system in search of justice, but if they could not gain justice within the courts system, they might seek vengeance through violent collective action. In some cases, the reason why estates were being raided and their inhabitants attacked was that noble families claimed to be defending the family honor. They might say that a lady’s honor had been insulted if …

Immigrant Brides In Taiwan: New Land, New Hope?, Yuwen Chen

Student Research Initiative

In the last two decades, transnational marriages have been growing in Taiwan, Republic of China (R.O.C). Increasing numbers of Taiwanese men have married bride immigrants from Southeast Asian countries (Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Cambodia) and Mainland China. These women usually are from low socio-economic class and have little formal education (Chen, Katsurada & Wu, 1998; Tsai, 2006; Tsai & Hsiao 2006). Their offspring are the so-called “New Taiwanese Children”(NTC). The academic performance of New Taiwanese Children has become a contested issue in Taiwanese society, because these children are viewed by some as not being able to contribute to …

Branding Basques, Bilbao, And Boise: Marketing As Metaphor For History, John Bieter, Nina M. Ray

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

Purpose – Naturally occurring brands combine history, anthropology, sociology and marketing to explain the phenomenon of communities defined by a sense of place. Focusing on both the Basque Country and Basques in Boise, Idaho, we discuss the naturally occurring brand of the Basque people throughout history into the modern day. We explain who the Basques are and how they have branded themselves through language, place, industry, food, drink and culture with mention of similarities to other communities and the lessons that other ethnic/cultural communities can learn. The purpose of the paper is to address the “marketing and imagined communities; nations …

Melville In Tahiti: A Gis Approach, Jessica Ewing

Student Research Initiative

This presentation will focus on Melville's period in and around Tahiti in 1842, a part of the biographical record vexed by conflicting scholarly accounts of Melville's whereabouts and actions, and by inconsistencies—as well as outright falsehoods—among surviving documents and the author's own account of his experiences in his second book Omoo. Digitally expanding on methods of traditional scholarship, I will present the evidence in visual, electronic form by using ArcGIS software to map Melville’s movements, supplying relevant data and documentation and mapping alternate interpretations of the author's travels. The layered digital maps will locate the author at specific dates and …

Immigrant Brides In Taiwan: New Land, New Hope?, Yuwen Chen

Student Research Initiative

In the last two decades, transnational marriages have been growing in Taiwan, Republic of China (R.O.C). Increasing numbers of Taiwanese men have married bride immigrants from Southeast Asian countries (Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Cambodia) and Mainland China. These women usually are from low socio-economic class and have little formal education. (Chen, Katsurada & Wu, 1998; Tsai, 2006; Tsai & Hsiao 2006) Their offspring are the so-called “New Taiwanese Children”(NTC). The academic performance of New Taiwanese Children has become a contested issue in Taiwanese society, because these children are viewed by some as not being able to contribute to …

我爸爸，中国的朋友 / My Father, A Friend To China, Elizabeth Myers Macinata, Josephine B. Howe, Erik Van Ingen Schenau

College of Arts and Sciences Poster Presentations

This short talk introduces the life of Daniel F. Myers (1889-1973) and his experience in China from 1929 to 1944. Myers was an American automotive engineer selected initially by a representative authorized by Marshal Zhang Xueliang to set up and engineer a truck manufacturing factory in Mukden (Shenyang), Manchuria (Dongbei, North-East China). Although Shenyang fell to the Japanese in 1931, Myers stayed until 1933. Throughout the 1930s, Myers continued to work for the Chinese, first as technical advisor and service manager of Cathay Motors, then as Technical Advisor, regarding the development of automotive and other industries, to the Trust Department …

Salzburg Chorbuch W.B. Xiv Magnificat Traditions In Post-Tridentine Salzburg, C. Michael Porter

Music Faculty Publications and Presentations

The cultural and political climate of post-Tridentine Salzburg was transformed in 1587 with the election of prince-Archbishop Wolf Dietrich von Reitenau (1559–1617). This Italianate leader, due to his charisma and strong theological education at Rome's Collegium Germanicum, ushered in a new era of Catholic reform. In addition to reforming the regional Salzburg rite into the approved Roman rite, Wolf Dietrich desired to recreate the artistic environments of his Italian alma mater through the patronage of several musical collections.

Despite these dedications by composers whose works are representative of late sixteenth-century Italian styles, a closer examination of the surviving works …

Blood In The Water: Salvadoran Rivers Of Testimony And Resistance, Adrian Taylor Kane

World Languages Faculty Publications and Presentations

From the 1970s to the early 1990s the dominant forms of literary production in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua were testimonial literature and literature of resistance. During this time period, all three of these Central American countries were embroiled in bloody civil wars, and the written word was employed on the cultural front as a means of denouncing and resisting various forms of oppression. For both historical and artistic reasons, rivers frequently play an important role in cultural production from and about this era and have thus become embedded in the complex web of ideological signifiers that comprises the discursive …

Entretien Avec Fabienne Kanor, Jason Herbeck

World Languages Faculty Publications and Presentations

D’origine martiniquaise, Fabienne Kanor est devenue romancière etréalisatrice après une première carrière dans le journalisme. Dans cet entretien, elle parle surtout de son deuxième roman, Humus(2007), qui raconte à voix multiples les récits de quatorze femmes qui se trouvent à bord d’un bateau négrier à destination des Antilles et décident de se jeter à l’eau. Kanor se penche surl’histoire de la traite négrière et surl’acte d’écriture, ainsi que sur sa propre identité en tant qu’écrivain de la “diaspora”, ayant grandi en Métropole dans une famille d’origine antillaise.

I Would Rather Not Lie, Eider Rodriguez, Nere Lete

World Languages Faculty Publications and Presentations

The man shakes her hand. The woman takes a seat in front of him while placing her purse between her legs and leaving her heels exposed in her flat hoes. The man looks at her from over his glasses.

When Students Write Literary History: Regionalism, Populism, And Literary Value In A Gold Rush Magazine, Tara Penry

English Literature Faculty Publications and Presentations

At my urban university in the Intermountain West, English majors enter a course called Literature of the American West with expectations formed from a global media culture of genre paperbacks and Hollywood films. They are skeptical about the literary value of popular forms such as westerns. Some fear that anything written for wide distribution and money must violate what Henry James called the artist's "conscience." James well knew his own answer when he asked about the nineteenth century Western writer Bret Harte some thirty years after the westerner's first success, "Has he continued to distil and dilute the wild West …

Thoroughly Modern Millie - Play Program (March 2013), Carrie D. Applegate

Department of Theatre Arts Programs (UP 620)

Play program for the musical, Thoroughly Modern Millie produced in the Morrison Center by the Boise State University Departments of Theatre Arts and Music, March 14-17, 2013.

Thoroughly Modern Millie - Theatrical Lobby Poster, Carrie D. Applegate

Department of Theatre Arts Posters

Poster for the production of Thoroughly Modern Millie produced by the Boise State University departments of Theatre Arts and Music, March 2013 in the Morrison Center for the Performing Arts. Poster design by Carrie Applegate. Photographed, Tess Gregg as Millie Dillmount.

Troubled Consciences: New Understandings And Performances Of Penance Among Catholics In Protestant England, Lisa Mcclain

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

Prior to Protestant reforms of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Catholic clerics frequently preached about the necessity of confessing one's sins to a priest through the sacrament of penance. After the passage of laws in the 1570s making it a criminal offense to be a Catholic priest in England, Catholics residing in Protestant England possessed limited opportunities to make confession to a priest. Many laypersons feared for their souls. This article examines literature written by English Catholic clerics to comfort such laypersons. These authors re-interpreted traditional Catholic understandings of how sacramental penance delivers grace to allow English Catholics to confess …

Teaching White Papers Through Client Projects, Russell Willerton

English Literature Faculty Publications and Presentations

White papers are increasingly prevalent in business and professional settings. Although textbook resources for white paper assignments are limited, a white paper assignment completed for a community client can provide a learning experience that students enjoy and that strengthens ties between the university and the community. This article describes a way to approach the white paper assignment in a communications-focused course and identifies resources to support white paper assignments.

Bitter Milking Art Education? (Re)Orienting, (Re)Deeming, (Re)Claiming, (Re)Presenting M(Other)Work In Art Education, Anniina Suominen Guyas, Linda Hoeptner Poling, Kathleen Keys

Art, Design & Visual Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Reviewing the existing literature of women and/or mothers in academic roles paints a pretty grim picture. Even worse is the prediction for success that shies far from optimistic. Some inequities in higher education need to be considered: "women lag behind their male counterparts in tenure status, promotion to full professor, and salary. Overall, considering all full-time faculty at all types of institutions, women earn about 80 percent of what men earn" ("Inequities Persist", 2005, p. 1). The adherence to Family Medical Leave Act provisions or other familial and maternal related leave are inconsistent across academia and, even in their most …

What Is Esl?, Gail Shuck

English Literature Faculty Publications and Presentations

Much has been said about the diversity in the population we often refer to as ESL students. Although the bulk of the research on secondlanguage writing in the 1980s and 90s was concerned mostly with international students with visas to study in the US, significant attention in the last decade has been paid to an important distinction between international students and US-resident learners of English. Several books have been written about resident linguistic minority students (Harklau, Losey, and Siegal; Ferris; Kanno and Harklau; Roberge, Siegal, and Harklau) and the ways in which their needs as writers differ from the …

Collaboration: Talk. Trust. Write., Jim Fredricksen

English Literature Faculty Publications and Presentations

We have long recognized English classrooms, at all levels, as sites ripe for collaborative activity among students; when students read, write, and learn together, the classroom becomes a microcosm of the work we do as professionals in the field. In writing, collaboration can be vital. Collaborative writing often leads to projects that are richer and more complex than those produced by individuals, potentially engaging multiple audiences in broader conversations. However, collaboration can also present its own particular set of challenges, ranging from the practical (How do authors find each other and determine publication avenues?) to the more theoretical (Is the …

A Motorcar Runs Through It: Imagining The Unwritten Western Book, Tara Penry

English Literature Faculty Publications and Presentations

Address to the Thomas Wolfe Society, Thirty-Fifth Annual Meeting, 25 May 2013, Boise, Idaho.

In the last session this morning, David Radavich said, “Ultimately, Thomas Wolfe did not find the home that he was seeking. He remained restless... [and] his true home was in writing.” I too would like to talk this evening about the relationship between home and community on the one hand and restless motion on the other. I am interested in Wolfe’s thoughts about homes and communities in A Western Journal, and in the way—had he lived—westerners themselves might have continued to influence him as he …

How The Axe Falls: A Retrospective On Thirty-Five Years Of Sir Gawain And The Green Knight Performance, Linda Marie Zaerr

English Literature Faculty Publications and Presentations

This retrospective represents a new approach to using historical performance as a tool for understanding medieval narrative performance. The core of the article traces how an individual performer’s interaction with a stable medieval text both indicates directions medieval performers may have taken and suggests the limitations imposed by modern performance conventions. The discussion touches on issues of adaptation and translation, variation in troupe composition and audience, expectations of modern audiences, impact of costume choices, and limitations of audio and video recordings as documentation of live performance. Juxtaposing eight performances of a single passage clarifies how performance can transform a text, …

The Muslim Refugee Family: On The Way To Citizenship, Heidi Naylor

English Literature Faculty Publications and Presentations

In the spring of 2001, just before the world went post-9/11, my husband approached me about hosting an Afghan refugee family of four. I was hesitant. But my reservations-lice, tuberculosis, the loss of solitude-seem petty and insulting now. In the end, they were out-weighed by his enthusiasm.

Coping With Conquest, Todd Shallat

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

On March 10, 2006, the United Nations assailed the United States for denying the natives of the Boise Valley their traditional rights to an oval of sagebrush that spanned the desert corners of four western states. Already Congress had offered $140 million for 27 million acres in four western states. "The fight is not over," said Raymond Yowell of Elko, a cattleman descended from Shoshone-Paiutes who never agreed to relinquish their land. "You cannot sell out a nation. The [settlement offer] does nothing to change our inherent rights."

The Hispanic Profile Data Book For Idaho, Errol D. Jones, Rosaura Conley-Estrada, Greg Hill

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

The 2010 United States Census confirms the continuing dramatic growth of Idaho’s Hispanic people. Demand for demographic data and information regarding the Hispanic population continues to be essential for understanding and serving Idaho’s Hispanic community. In recognition of this need, in 2004 the Idaho Commission on Hispanic Affairs developed the first Hispanic Profile Project, a demographic report of Idaho’s Hispanic community at that time. Another Hispanic Profile report was published in 2007.

Finding Community In The Mitchell Hotel, Alan Virta

Library Faculty Publications and Presentations

"Lesbian and gay people are the only people on Earth who have to find their tribe. We aren't born into it. You have to have a place to go find the tribe. And so you will start with the most obvious place."—Phyllis Burke, in the documentary film The Castro

For gay men and women in Boise, there was no "obvious place" in their own hometown until the summer of 1976, when a group of local businessmen, with the help of friends and family, turned a corner of an old hotel into that place: Boise's first gay bar. The hotel, known …