Jane Anau

Major: Community Health

I was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1979 to an American-born mother and a Tongan-born father. When I was three, my family moved to Phoenix, AZ, where I lived until I moved to the Pacific Northwest at age 18. I am the youngest of seven children and, I graduated from North High School (Phoenix Union High School District) in 1997. I have spent the last six years working in health care and health research. I plan on earning a degree in Sociology at Portland State University, then continuing to graduate school for a Master and Doctoral degree in nursing.

“Patient Demographics and Usage of Oregon School Based Health Centers”

Oregon School-Based Health Centers (SBHCs) provide free medical care to enrolled students, and in some cases to other community members. Encounter data for the 2001-2002 school year were analyzed to describe adolescent users of SBHCs located at 29 high schools. General medical, reproductive, and mental health care were provided to 12,652 individuals, between the ages of 12 and 19. Racial characteristics of the patients were compared to the school as a whole, as provided by the Oregon Department of Education. Findings suggest that by providing a resource for the general adolescent population, SBHCs plays a role in reducing racial and ethnic disparities in health care.

Matthew J. Carlson, PhD, is a medical sociologist with a primary interest in health care access, quality, and health disparities. He is currently an assistant professor of Sociology at Portland State University, where he is leading a three-year cohort study on the impact of Oregon Health Plan program changes on health care access and quality among adult Medicaid beneficiaries. In addition, he provides research consulting to the Health Resources and Services Administration, and several local health care agencies. He has presented papers and published articles on a wide range of topics including access to health care, consumer experiences with managed health and mental health care, the influence of patient satisfaction on substance abuse treatment outcomes, compulsive gambling, and domestic violence intervention.

Major: Community Health

There is a long and well-documented history of racial and ethnic health disparities in the United States. Health care-seeking behavior of ethnic populations is at a record low compared to other segments of the population. Much is hypothesized about the efficacy of cultural competence in health and human service systems. While many social service institutions want a culturally competent work force; racial and linguistic minorities are under-represented in health and human service occupations. This project examines organizational cultural competence, establishes workforce diversity as a key component of organizational cultural competence, identifies key concepts of successful and sustainable workforce diversity programs and presents effective strategies for institutionalizing cultural competence policy and methodologies.

Siobhan Maty, PhD

Major: Economics

Due to major changes in immigration policy since 1965, the United States has experienced a massive influx of unskilled immigrants, mainly from the third world. The changes in the quantity, quality, and occupational choices of immigrants have had positive and negative effects on the wages and employment of low-skilled U.S. citizens. To understand these effects, this paper analyzes the methodologies used to measure the impact of low-skilled immigration. I propose that the most robust theories claim that low-skilled immigrants have a minimal negative effect on the wages and employment of low-skilled natives, especially African Americans.

Mary King is professor and chair of the Economics Department at Portland State University, as well as an affiliated faculty in PSU’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning. She is a labor economist, with a focus on the dynamics of sex and race in the economy. Professor King is currently serving as Secretary General for the International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE), an organization with members in nearly 50 countries. King received her undergraduate degree in economics from Stanford University in 1979, her PhD in economics from UC Berkeley in 1991, and studied in Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar in 1980 and 1981.

Major: Economics

I grew up on Deer Isle, a small island off the coast of Maine. Having spent a good portion of my early days devising a plan to get off the island, I now spend much of my time strategizing how to get back on, since much of the island has been bought up by rich folks from New York. My academic interests are immigration, informality, Maine and Latin America.

Undocumented, monolingual Spanish speakers face many obstacles in obtaining employment in Portland, Oregon. This paper examines, first, how Mexican-origin workers seek employment, second, the characteristics of the jobs they find, and, finally, their mobility between employers in the United States. The paper concludes that there are various entry points to the United States low-wage labor market, and that factors such as social networks increase access for undocumented workers.

Leopoldo Rodriguez, PhD

Major: Community Development

Churches have been a vital part of the African-American community since before emancipation. When Black churches were established in the South, they not only served their congregants by providing a place to worship and operate within the spiritual realm, they also provided social services such as advocacy, family counseling, food, clothing, housing and financial assistance. The history of Portland’s churches dates back to 1862. Portland’s churches have had a different trajectory than that of churches in the South due to many factors, not the least of which were Oregon’s ambiguous anti-slavery laws, the end of slavery in particular states in the south, and the nature of African American migration from the south. This project examines the role of churches and the nature of social services they provide to the African-American community in Portland, Oregon.

Richard White teaches courses in the University Studies Program that prepares students for further work in the Community Studies and the Healthy People Healthy Places clusters; and courses in the Community Development undergraduate program. Richard also teaches urban theology courses for North Portland Bible College, a non-denominational African-American Bible College; and Contextualized Urban Ministry as adjunct for George Fox Evangelical Seminary. Richard's research interests include urban social structure, social justice, community organization and development, and urban faith-based organizations.

Ph.D., M.U.S. 1996 Portland State University; M.Div. 1978 Emmanuel School of Religion; B.A. 1972 San Jose Christian College.

Brian Durdik

Major: English

Considerable scholarship on the life, times, and writing of John Dos Passos has emerged in recent years, much of which focuses on the cultural significance of his most challenging and critically acclaimed work of fiction: U.S.A. (The 42nd Parallel [1930], 1919 [1932], and The Big Money [1936]). In a general sense, recent studies of Dos Passos and U.S.A. stress the importance of reexamining landmark works that were instrumental in shaping the vibrant and vital proletarian literary formations of Depression-era America, and look specifically to U.S.A. as an exemplary instance of the complex and often contradictory impulses of public discourse during the period. My research continues this renewed interest in U.S.A. as a milestone of modernist/collectivist fiction, giving due consideration to its role in the cultural politics of the literary left, and particular focus to the trilogy’s experimental aesthetic as a dialogic negotiation between early 20th century avant-gardist strategies and the new representational modalities of an emerging mass media. As such, I examine the singular inventiveness of the trilogy’s four textual modes—narratives, newsreels, camera eyes, and biographies—and show how the trilogy problematizes numerous representational strategies central to the Depression-era’s obsession with public discourse. I conclude by showing how a principle configuration of “the speech of the people” in U.S.A. is not a lockstep reiteration of socialist or communist slogans, as isoften leveled against proletarian fiction, but a deeply nuanced interrogation of the rhetorical intersections of mass culture’s social machinery.

Thomas Fisher, PhD

Collin Fellows

Major: Sociology

This study will look at new ways of measuring expertise in and mastery of the role of college student. I will look at the possibility of using Cultural Consensus as a measuring rod of how well students understand this role and search for a tool that will predict levels of success. Finding such a tool can be of use both in predicting first-year college student success and in developing interventions for those who otherwise might drop out of school.

Peter Collier, PhD

Peter Collier is Associate Professor of Sociology at Portland State University. His research focuses on identity acquisition, the development of role mastery, and access issues within higher education. He is the project director for the “Students First Mentoring Program,” a U.S. Department of Education-funded intervention to improve first-generation college student retention rates. With Christine Cress and Vicki Reitenauer, he is co-author of Serving and Learning: A Student Workbook for Community-Based Experiences across the Disciplines (Stylus Press co-published by American Association of Higher Education, 2005).

Renee Honn

Major: English

I have lived in Oregon most of my life and love the unique lifestyle of Portland. My non-academic passion is my band, in which I play guitar and sing. Academically speaking as well as personally, I hold a special place in my heart for all things literary. As a child, I used to write Harvard on my notebooks and pretend I was a college student, and being in the McNair program has helped me to feel closer to that childhood fantasy.

The relationship between mother and daughter is one fraught with cycles of culpability and acceptance. The mother is often perceived to be both responsible for the tangible outcomes of the daughter and the daughter’s perceptions of her childhood. In instances of sexual violence in literature, the mother can become the locus of responsibility and redemption for the daughter, meaning that the daughter may seek to resolve any past pains and hurt through the mother. The desire for resolution with the mother often drives not only the motivations for the characters involved, but it also drives the narrative by giving the characters an unmitigated focus of all emotion.

Jennifer Ruth, PhD

Professor Jennifer Ruth earned her BA from Swarthmore College in 1991 and her PhD from Brown University in 1999. She has been teaching in the English department at Portland State University since 1999 and won the John Eliot Allen award for Outstanding Teacher last year. Her book “Novel Professions: Interested Disinterest and the Making of the Professional in the Victorian Novel” studies the novel's role in the production of the professional class and is forthcoming from Ohio State University Press. She lives with her husband and daughter in SE Portland.

Larissa Hutchinson

Major: Liberal Studies

I will review literature related to the Somali Bantu culture, history and current situation; the refugee resettlement process; and problems of cross-cultural competency and understanding regarding immigrant youth. The Somali Bantu are a new refugee population in the United States, with approximately 13,000 resettling in 50 cities across the country. I will discuss my observations of behavior patterns of Somali Bantu youth at play in Portland, Oregon, and consider what traits might be problematic or helpful in their resettlement process.

Kimberly Brown, PhD

Kimberley Brown, Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics and International Studies at Portland State University, Portland, received her PhD in second Languages and Cultures Education from the University of Minnesota in 1988. Before entering her doctoral program, she taught EFL in Tehran, Iran and ESL in Minnesota. She has served as Vice-Provost for International Affairs (1999-2002), Associate Vice-Provost for International Affairs (1997-1999), Associate Director, International Affairs (1994-1997), and Director of the Program in International Studies from 1994 – 2002). She has played a central role in the implementation of the Portland State University Presidential Initiative on Comprehensive Internationalization, chairing a strategic planning committee, developing in-house documents summarizing the literature on internationalizing the campus, framing a case study of institutional investments in one particular country, and presenting the state of internationalization on our campus in a variety of local and international contexts. She has held extensive leadership positions in NAFSA: Association of International Educators and served as an institutional grants reader and Advisory Council Member for the National Security Education Program. Her International Studies courses focus most frequently on linguistic human rights issues and food, values, and globalization. She routinely teaches a culture in the language classroom course at the graduate and undergraduate level as well as TESOL Methods courses at both levels.

Sarah Stacy Iannarone

Major: Arts & Letters

Given the increased potential for work done by volunteers in the post-welfare state, an examination of their motivation is essential. The cooperative effort between the Mt. Scott-Arleta Neighborhood Association and The City Repair Project in Portland, Oregon, as part of the Village Building Convergence in 2005, presents a unique opportunity to examine specifically, through in-depth interviews and participant observation, the values behind volunteer participation at the neighborhood level within the context of a consciously democratic community-building event. Analyzing the values that emerged within a two dimensional theoretical framework that considers the unit of analysis (individual to social) and the mode of social organization reflected (traditional to postmodern), enables us to sidestep definitive arguments about volunteer “motivation” and “values” to establish a more unified understanding of place-based volunteers as individuals operating within a complex, and changing, social system.

Sy Adler, PhD

B.A. (urban studies) 1971 University of Pittsburgh; M.C.P. 1973 Harvard University; Ph.D. (city and regional planning) 1980 University of California at Berkeley.

Sy teaches the following core courses: History and Theory of Planning in the graduate planning program; Urban Political Structure in the Urban Studies doctoral program; and Theory and Philosophy of Community Development in the undergraduate community development major. He also teaches policy analysis courses and substantive courses in the areas of urban transportation, community development, and comparative health politics. His research interests are closely integrated with his teaching areas. Current projects include studies of planning institutions, theories and practices in the Pacific Northwest, focusing on questions of economic development and social and physical infrastructure supply, land use, and environmental protection initiatives at local, state and regional levels. Dr. Adler believes that the Portland metropolitan area and the Northwest offer a wealth of opportunities to study innovative approaches to understanding and addressing a wide range of crucial planning and development issues, and conveys his excitement to students. He is co-editor of the Journal of the American Planning Association.

Melissa Johnson

Major: History

Church membership in seventeenth-century Congregationalism was a status with religious, social, and legal significance. By the 1640s, the process of becoming a “visible saint” had been formalized, but this process was neither monolithic throughout the Puritan colonies nor universal in terms of privileges conferred on individual members. Becoming and being a church member in seventeenth-century New England was a gendered process. In a society in which hierarchy and maintenance of the social order were necessary components of a godly society, the effects of church membership were contingent upon one’s place in the social order. Historians have generally failed to note the extent to which women’s experiences and privileges as church members varied from those of their male neighbors and relatives. Long before the Cambridge Platform established “halfway” membership for grandchildren of members, women were granted what was, in effect, only partial membership despite the Puritans’ belief in individual spiritual autonomy.

David Johnson, PhD

David A. Johnson is Professor of History at PSU. He received his BA in Comparative Culture from the University of California, Irvine (1972) and PhD in American Civilization from the University of Pennsylvania (1977). His first book, Founding the Far West: California, Oregon, Nevada, 1840-1890 (1992), received the 1992 Best Book Award from the Pacific Coast Branch, American Historical Association, and was finalist for the Victor Prize for Prose Non-Fiction from the Oregon Institute for Literary Arts. At Portland State University, Johnson has received the Burlington Northern Award for excellence in teaching and scholarship (1992), the John Eliot Allen Teaching Award (2000), and the Branford Price Millar for outstanding scholarship and service (2004). From 1993-1996 Johnson was Chair of the Department of History, and, since 1996,Managing Editor of the Pacific Historical Review.

Jessica Marsden

Major: History

I grew up in several small towns around the western United States and finally found myself in Portland in September of 2001. In January of 2003 I started (and now, with the help of others, continue to build) an active Jewish Student Union which serves as a resource for around 500 Jewish students on campus plus other young Jews in the Portland metropolitan area. Having focused my studies on religious topics, I will finish my B.A. in History in December of 2005. From there I’m off to New York City where I will pursue a year of private religious study in preparation for entering rabbinical school.

Through a comparative analysis of several religious conversion narratives from the Jewish, Pagan, and Christian traditions during the Greco-Roman period, I was able to develop a model for conversion in antiquity shaped by two complementary processes, that of the private experience, called spiritual transformation, and that of the public experience, called religious acknowledgement. The texts under consideration include Joseph and Aseneth, Apuleius’ The Golden Ass, and Augustine’s Confessions. The comparison includes an examination of similar structural and thematic elements of each narrative, while also taking into consideration the socio-historical backgrounds. Attention is also given to the social problems that a person may have faced before and after his or her conversion, such as the subsequent acceptance or rejection from various social factions. The dual-process model allows for a deeper understanding of how people in the Greco-Roman period conceived of the religious conversion experience.

John Ott, PhD

John Ott (PhD, Stanford University, 1999) specializes in the ecclesiastical and cultural history of the Middle Ages, particularly northwestern Europe, from1000-1200 C.E. He has been teaching at Portland State Univesrity since 1999, and has had the pleasure of advising several McNair scholars over the past two years.

Lorena Martinez

Major: International Studies

Latinos have many distinct hurdles to overcome in HIV education and prevention. Obstacles include the lack of information in their language, the lack of health care access, and cultural norms that limit their ability to speak about HIV. Many Latinos living with HIV are also often stigmatized within their own community. This project analyses the perspectives of 19 professional service workers and 6 people living with HIV in both the greater Portland and Seattle, to examine HIV in the Latino community, and how AIDS prevention efforts can reach Latinos, an important topic given the rapid increase in this population.

Shawn Smallman, PhD

Professor Shawn Smallman is the Director of International Studies. He received his PhD in history from Yale University. He has published numerous articles on military corruption and political terror in Latin America, as well as undergraduate education and energy security. His first book, Fear and Memory in the Brazilian Army and Society, 1889-1954, received many positive reviews. His second book, A History of AIDS in Latin America, will be published by the University of North Carolina Press. Professor Smallman teaches classes on the Global AIDS epidemic, Human Rights, Modern Canada, the History of Modern Brazil, the Amazon Rainforest, U.S.-Latin American Relations, the Introduction to Latin American Studies, and the Introduction to International Studies. Professor Smallman is a board memberof the Security and Defense Studies Review.

Chyerel Mayes

Major: Psychology

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the number one killer of Americans, and claims more lives than any other major disease. Of the different racial and ethnic groups in the United States, African-Americans suffer disproportionately from this disease. Black men and women are less likely to receive quality health care or be the subjects of research inquiries, and are more likely to have their health concerns ignored by health care practitioners than are Caucasian populations. Despite high mortality rates in African-American populations and the understanding that racial disparities factor into differences in health care, further investigation is warranted. In the following paper, I will address this issue by discussing the individual (e.g. gender, age, education) and contextual (e.g. class, health care system) influences on health outcomes for African American populations. I will also argue that local communities, as well as state and government officials, must advocate further intervention and education efforts in order to ameliorate the disparity across racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic variables.

Gabriela Martorell, PhD

Gabriela Martorell obtained her PhD in Psychology at University of California, Santa Barbara, with an emphasis in Human Development. She has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in developmental psychology, human development, cultural issues in psychology, evolutionary psychology, and developmental psychopathology. Her research interests include attachment theory, cortisol and stress, positive affect, and high-risk populations.

China Medel

Major: English

My essay examines the relationship of women to the Patriarchal order as mediated through food. Using psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan’s notion that we access the world in three registers—the “real,” the “symbolic,” and the “imaginary”—I read the films In the Mood for Love, Vertical Ray of the Sun, Babette’s Feast, Like Water for Chocolate and Polish Wedding to show that female characters’ preparation and presentation of food, by accessing the “real,” works to disturb the patriarchal order of language in the films. I demonstrate that these films routinely associate male characters with literacy (and thus, the “symbolic”), while linking female characters with the sensual and culinary, which I argue represents the “real.” The “real,” for Lacan, is the preverbal, need-based stasis of sustenance and satisfaction. Through food, a tool outside the patriarchal register of the Symbolic, the female characters can express their identities and desires without jeopardizing their places in the cultural order. Food becomes a language outside the Symbolic, reproducing of the sensations of sustenance and satisfaction that characterize the real. The project looks at films’ representations of the ways in which food works as a tool of communication or language, cultural inclusion and community, while providing a critique of the Symbolic system of gender difference and hierarchy and women’s place as Other in it. The readings of the films discuss the successes, problems and “what ifs” of these representation of food’s subversion of the symbolic order, and its implications for the role of women in patriarchal society.

Maude Hines, PhD

Maude Hines received her PhD in Literature from Duke University in 1998, along with graduate certification in African-American Studies and Women's Studies. She specializes in American Literature. Her teaching and research focus on Anglo-American Children's Literature, African American Literature, and Cultural Studies. She is currently completing a manuscript on citizen formation in late nineteenth- century American children's literature. She is also working on a project about the treatment of racial transformation in American cultural production. Her published work includes articles on Philip Pullman, Alice Walker and Paule Marshall, Ecocriticism in Children's Literature, and Louisa May Alcott.

Angie Mejia

Major: Anthropology

Latinas have played crucial roles (both as individuals and collective actors) in important unionization and activist campaigns. But as neo-liberalism slowly changes the landscape of manufacturing industries and the Latina experience becomes more complicated, we are no longer presented with this ‘struggle-turned-victory’ that were frequent in the past thirty years. As an ethnographer, my fieldwork consisted of participant observation in various social justice activities and in-depth interviews with Latinas who identified themselves as committed activists. I looked at the work of women in two organizations: A cooperative dedicated to the empowerment of farm-worker women; and a service union local, where Latinas’ leadership efforts are part of the building of new labor movement – both locally and nationally. As I will show, women participating in this study bring with them varied personal, geographical, socio-economic and cultural experiences that further distinguishes them from the homogenous construct of “the Latina”. I argue that Oregonian Latinas participating actively in a labor union or community organizations will gain a distinctive collective class identity constructed by ethnic identification and common economic experiences. Although I try to place gender as dynamic in the building of this identity, the research shows how at this moment in time, gender may not be a salient factor. Finally, I outline how involvement in these organizations may lead to their active participation in other social justice causes that affects them not only as Latinas, but as women, workers, mothers, and Oregonians.

Jose Padin, PhD

José A. Padin, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of Chicano/Latino Studies. His current research is focused on new Latino immigrant destinations and on racism in the mass media.

Holly Roose

Major: Black Studies/English

I am an older student returning to school after a ten-year break. I am majoring in Black Studies and English with a minor in writing. Aside from being a McNair scholar, I am also on the President's list at Portland State University and will be joining Phi Kappa Phi this winter. My goal is to obtain my PhD and become a tenured professor.

Science’s claims of objectivity and search for truth, free of human prejudices, sound hollow against irrefutable examples of scientists’ bias and creativity in racial projects. Scientific “proof” of racial superiority of certain groups and racial inferiority of others created and defended racial hegemonies that were based more on politics and social constructs than “science.” I will discuss the transition from biblical justification to scientific justifications of white racial superiority. I will offer my perspectives on scientific racism in America and its legacy of ideas about science and race.

Darrell Millner, PhD

Born in Columbus, Ohio in 1946, raised in the Los Angeles area of Southern California where he graduated from California State Polytechnic University with a degree in English in 1969. Taught English and Literature classes there until the summer of 1970 when he moved to Eugene, Oregon. Graduated from the University of Oregon with a doctorate in Education in 1975. Hired to teach Afro-American Literature and History at the Black Studies Department at Portland State University in 1975. Assumed the Department Chairmanship from 1984 to 1995. Currently, a Full Professor. Serves on numerous local, regional and national boards and organizations, including the Editorial Board of the Oregon Historical Society.

Jaye Sablan

Major: Child and Family Studies

I am working towards a Bachelor of Arts in Child and Family Studies and Women’s Studies. My academic and professional interests include Global Feminisms/Women of Color theory and praxis, in addition to multicultural perspectives in social work practice. Additionally, I have been a social justice activist for LGBT/Queer folks, Women, People of Color, and Youth for the past seven years. This summer, I had the honor of working with Dr. Patti Duncan (Women’s Studies) and Professor Jana Meinhold (Child and Family Studies)— their combined guidance has made my experience as a McNair Scholar all-the-more invaluable. Last, I look forward to obtaining a Ph.D. in Social Welfare and teaching social work theory within an anti-oppression framework.

“Collective Experience and Cultural Competence: Asian/Pacific Islander American Women’s Literature as a Window to Ethical Practices in the Mental Health Field”

Scholars contend there is a lack of cultural competence in the provision of mental health services for People of Color. This is especially true for Asian/Pacific Islander Americans (APIAs) in general. When one’s ethnic identity is compounded by other factors such as gender, sexuality, socioeconomic status, levels of acculturation, educational background, etc., frameworks for providing quality psychotherapeutic services become even more complex. Societal oppressions—for example, racism, sexism, and homophobia—should also be taken into consideration, during the scope of the client/helper relationship. The purpose of my research is to contextualize mental health services by focusing on the needs of APIA women. My research produces a narrative of collective experiences on several themes: identity formation, refuge-seeking experience, and sexual harassment/sexual violence in relation to cultural competencies in the professional mental health field. It should be noted that the term “APIA” is sociopolitical and no attempts are made to homogenize the diverse ethnic peoples that constitute this population.

Patricia Duncan, PhD

Jana Meinhold, PhD

Patti Duncan is an Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies. She specializes in Asian American women’s studies, women of color feminist theories, and intersections of race, gender, class, sexuality, and national belonging. She is the author of Tell This Silence: Asian American Women Writers and the Politics of Speech.

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Alana Smith

Major: Economics

The street-corner day-labor market in Portland, Oregon has received attention lately as growing numbers of migrant workers make the sites more visible. My interviews with day-laborers inform my analysis of the issues surrounding the economic activity from a variety of perspectives. A larger context for the phenomenon is presented as well as suggestions for policy on a local level.

Leopoldo Rodriguez, PhD

Leopoldo Rodriguez is Assistant Professor of Economics and International Studies at Portland State University. Between 1998 and 2001, he taught at Eastern Mediterranean University in North Cyprus. His areas of specialization are political economy, development and international economics with a regional concentration on Latin America. He has written about neo-liberalism, the Mexico peso crises of 1994-1995 and the Argentine crises of 2001-2002. He has also conducted research on the Cyprus conflict and female migrant worker in North Cyprus

Khang Tran

Major: Architecture

This analysis employs environmental psychology to consider the cultural impact of living spaces on communities. It considers the argument that professional planners, designers, and architects should hold primary authority for the construction of living spaces and concludes that differences in cultural expectations preclude such a policy. At best, professionals should act as consultants to ensure that inhabitants make informed choices when adapting their cultural preferences to the constraints of creating livable spaces.

Grace Dillon, PhD

Grace L. Dillon, PhD, is Assistant Professor of University Studies. She is editor of Hive of Dreams: Contemporary Science Fiction from the Pacific Northwest (OSU Press) and serves as a member of the Executive Board of the Popular Culture Association. Her teaching and research interests include popular culture, science fiction, Native American studies, and early modern literature.

Jonathan Strong

Major: History

Scholars widely agree that the complex events of Wilmington in 1898 marked an event which, had it occurred outside of the United States, would have been called a coup d’etat. Instead, history books refer to this episode of violence as the Wilmington race riot. Rather than a coincidental progression of events, the coup d’etat marks a methodically planned insurrection to reinstall a select group of white men into the seat of power. While the violence in Wilmington can be dismissed as a race riot, this research suggests that a clearer understanding of the events in Wilmington is gained by dislocating the racial rhetoric used in the white supremacy campaign from the economic and political self-interests of the men who conspired, orchestrated, and led the coup’ d’ etat. Furthermore, this research argues that the supremacy of whiteness was dependant upon political elites and leaders of industry extending their will and reshaping the orthodoxy of Southern culture. If the new edicts and expectations of the “best men” could not be imposed by the rule of law, and if traditionally marginalized poor whites and blacks asserted their rights to self government, the entrenched powers of Wilmington proved that relinquishing the ballot and turning to the bullet, was the most expedient way to reclaim power and codify their vision of a new political, economic, and social order.

David Johnson, PhD

David A. Johnson is Professor of History at PSU. He received his BA in Comparative Culture from the University of California, Irvine (1972) and PhD in American Civilization from the University of Pennsylvania (1977). His first book, Founding the Far West: California, Oregon, Nevada, 1840-1890 (1992), received the 1992 Best Book Award from the Pacific Coast Branch, American Historical Association, and was finalist for the Victor Prize for Prose Non-Fiction from the Oregon Institute for Literary Arts. At Portland State University, Johnson has received the Burlington Northern Award for excellence in teaching and scholarship (1992), the John Eliot Allen Teaching Award (2000), and the Branford Price Millar for outstanding scholarship and service (2004). From 1993-1996 Johnson was Chair of the Department of History, and, since 1996, Managing Editor of the Pacific Historical Review.

Audrey Ward

Major: Biology/Zoology

The power structure, or those with institutional and social power, hold that privilege often to the denigration of other sections of the population. Typical, if not exemplary, of this dynamic was the European scientific community during the nineteenth century, in particular the identification of the "criminal" in "scientific" systems. Specificity of gender and race were being sought; in particular, it was important to prove the dominance of white males through science. However, there did not seem to be an overt requirement made of these men to develop such specific "findings" through omission or mis-representation. There was a concerted movement, perhaps sublimated, to prove the dominance and social appropriateness of a particular group. What sort of social or personal dynamic created this collective effort? Were there overt decisions to thwart the scientific process? If so, from whom? If not, how did this series of events and scientific "findings" come to be? I will examine the work of criminal anthropologists such as Enrico Ferri and Cesare Lombroso, as well as examine the scientific environment from 1900 to 1940. Included will be materials that reflect the lives and personalities of these scientists, and documents developed by European states to define scientific policy.

Richard Beyler, PhD

After living my first eighteen years in a small town in central Kansas, I went to Goshen College (in Indiana) intending to major in mathematics. I also took a fair number of classes in chemistry and physics. But I soon realized that what I had thought of as an “amateur” interest in history was really too serious to neglect. So in 1987 I headed to Harvard’s graduate program in History of Science. I landed upon a fascinating dissertation topic, which I researched during a year of study in Berlin: the career of the physicist Pascual Jordan, who was at once a brilliant theorist, a provocative philosopher, and a controversial right-wing political figure. After graduation, I had two years of post-doctoral fellowships–the first back in Berlin and the second in Washington, DC–before landing a job at Portland State University in 1996. I came to PSU under the aegis of the University Studies program, and then in 1998 switched to being a full-time member of the History Department. My teaching at PSU has been in the history of modern science, but also in comparativeworld history, European intellectual history, and German history.

Eric Webb

Major: Mathematics

This research analyzes approximation methods. The goal is to find a continuous approximation for an ordinary-differential equation, and to have that approximation be within a certain error bound. By thorough examination of Euler’s method, interpolation, and the Lagrange polynomial, I will construct a method for continuous approximations of ordinary-differential equations which cannot be solved exactly.

Bin Jiang, PhD

Bin Jiang is an assistant professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. He has been working on numerical modeling in the field of engineering and industry in the past few years. He developed several effective parallel domain decomposition methods to solve the wet chemical etching problem in the semiconductor industry and the seepage problem from the fluid mechanics. He was also involved in developing sparse matrix software for the high performance solution of sparse linear system, which has been packaged by Sun Microsystems to their HPC Cluster 4 software release.