A Celebration of U.S. Latino Literature
Zeh Elected to Leadership Role in Whale Research
Harmon Honored for Book on Puget Sound Indians
Listing of Additional A&S Awards and Honors

A Celebration of U.S. Latino Literature
In 1994, Lauro Flores, associate professor of Romance Languages and Literature, assumed editorship of The Americas Review, an internationally renowned quarterly of Latino literature and art. Soon he added another daunting project: an anthology of works from the Review's first 25 years. Published by the University of Washington Press in 1998, the anthology, The Floating Borderland: Twenty-Five Years of U.S. Hispanic Literature, received an American Book Award for 1999.

Lauro Flores

As editor of the anthology, Flores consulted literature critics nationwide to narrow down the quarter-century worth of works published in The Americas Review. The anthology includes 78 writers and 13 artists spanning three generations of Hispanic descent.

The Floating Borderlands celebrates the emergence of a potent force on the American literary scene: the coming of age of contemporary Hispanic writers. "The formative years of the move-ment were my formative years," says Flores, who was born in Mexico and educated on both sides of the border. "Latino literature has been made part of the canon and we are not going back."

Although the book celebrates the 25th anniversary of The Americas Review, it also coincides with the journal's demise, as the Review's publisher can no longer afford to produce the publication. "The journal had a wonderful purpose in helping to establish some of these major writers," Flores told the Seattle Times. "Hopefully they will serve as models for the younger writers. The only pity is that there is nothing out there to take its place."

Zeh Elected to Leadership Role in Whale Research
For nearly two decades, UW Statistics Professor Judith Zeh has been studying whales, using statistical analysis to learn more about the size and dynamics of bowhead whale populations. Zeh's expertise recently led to her election as chair of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) Scientific Committee.

	Judith Zeh

The goal of the IWC, says Zeh, is to ensure that all stocks of whales are maintained at an appropriate level and not depleted. The Commission's Scientific Committee, made up of about 140 scientists named by 40 member governments, provides valuable information about scientific aspects of whaling.

A key piece of information about any whale population is its size. Other information might include the impact of environmental factors--environmental warming, whale watching--on whale populations, as well as identification of single interbreeding populations. Such information is significant as the Commission develops whaling policies.

As chair of the Scientific Committee, Zeh is the Commission's principal scientific advisor. She is the first woman to serve as chair in the IWC's 52-year history.

Why is a statistician like Zeh intrigued by whale research? It offers interesting challenges, she says. "Since we must study whales out in the ocean, there are intriguing statistical problems in answering scientific questions," she explains. "For example, in counting whales, how do we account for the ones we are not able to see or hear? Or when identifying whales in photos by their markings, how do we account for the ones without markings? It's the role of the statistician to account for the whales that cannot be identified from obvious data."

Zeh will serve a three-year term as chair of the IWC Scientific Committee.

Harmon Honored for Book on Puget Sound Indians
Just like the people she's worked with and written about, Alexandra Harmon has reinvented herself.

Harmon, assistant professor in the UW's American Indian Studies Center, is also an attorney who spent much of her legal career representing Puget Sound Indian tribes. She returned to college earlier this decade to earn a doctorate in history at the UW and eventually shaped her dissertation into a book that was recently honored with a Governor's Writers Award, presented by Governor Gary Locke.

The idea for Harmon's book, Indians in the Making: Ethnic Relations and Indian Identities Around Puget Sound (University of California Press, 1998) grew from her legal career working with Evergreen Legal Services, Small Tribes Organization, and several Western Washington Indian tribes.

"From my research it became apparent that the stories of Indian people are far more complicated and interesting than the goal-oriented stories we had to tell about them in court," says Harmon. "I wanted to look into those stories and understand the historical issues I explored as an attorney without having to simplify them."

Harmon hopes that her book will expose readers to "more information about the Indian people of this region and how inventive and resilient they have been." She adds that she would like people to come away with an understanding of the dynamics of race relations.

"Indian and non-Indian peoples always have had a considerable amount of interaction in this area," explains Harmon. "These relations have effects in defining how alike and different we are. There is a consistent push-pull relationship on both sides."

Additional Awards and Honors

Brian Atwater, affiliate professor of geological sciences, was elected a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union.

Jere Bacharach, director of the Jackson School of International Studies and professor of history, has been named Stanley D. Golub Endowed Professor.

Leah Ceccarelli, assistant professor of speech communication, is one of two recipients of the Golden Anniversary Monograph Award from the National Communication Association, which honors the most outstanding scholarly monograph published during the preceding calendar year.

Gary D. Christian, divisional dean for the sciences and professor of chemistry, has been awarded a Charles University Commemorative Medal for his achievements in the field of analytical chemistry.

Tom Colonnese, acting director of the American Indian Studies Center, has been appointed by President Clinton to the Board of Advisors on Tribal Colleges and Universities.

Terri DeYoung, associate professor of Near Eastern languages and civilization, won a Choice Award for her monograph, Placing the Poet: Badr Shakir al-Sayyab and Postcolonial Iraq. DeYoung also was named to the board of directors for the Amin Rihani Foundation in Washington, D.C.

Charles Engel, Richard Startz, and Stephen Turnovksy , professors of economics, have all been named Castor Professor of Economics.

Diane Gromala, assistant professor of communications, has received a Fulbright Fellowship to research interface design and teach cultural theories of interface design in New Zealand.

Charles Hirschman, professor of sociology, has been named to the Boeing International Professorship.

Craig Hogan, chair of the Department of Astronomy and professor of astronomy and physics, has received a Humboldt Research Award for Senior U.S. Scientists.

David B. Kaplan, Ann E. Nelson, and Laurence G. Yaffe, professors of physics, were elected to the Fellowship of the American Physical Society.

Kevin Kawamoto, assistant professor of communications, has received the American Society of Newspaper Editors Institute for Journalism Excellence Fellowship.

Victor Klee, professor of mathematics, has received the Carl B. Allendoerfer Award from the Mathematical Association of America for an article written with John R. Reay in Mathematics Magazine.

Bruce Margon, professor of astronomy, has been named the UW's Annual Faculty Lecturer for 1999-2000. The purposes of the annual lectureship are "to acknowledge outstanding creativity and scholarship by University faculty, and to inform the University community about the work of the awardees."

Charles Nelson, professor of economics, has been named Ford and Louisa Van Voorhis Professor in Political Economy.

Peter Rhines, professor of atmospheric sciences and oceanography, has received the 1999 Henry Stommel Research Award from the American Meteorological Society.

The Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities has received a Woodrow Wilson Innovation Award from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. The $5,000 grant is to recognize and support the Center's efforts to broaden the career horizons of humanities Ph.D. students as part of their graduate training.

Quintard Taylor, professor of history, has been named Scott and Dorothy Bullitt Chair of American History.

Farhat Ziadeh, professor emeritus of Near Eastern languages and civilization, received a 1999 Arabic Symposium Award at Wayne State University for his exceptional accomplishments in the field of Arabic studies.

[Autumn 1999 - Table of Contents]