(Ashland, Ore.) Southern Oregon University Raiders fans will be decked out in red this weekend to celebrate Homecoming 2011. Four games are scheduled from Friday night through Saturday night, including two home games for the Raiders volleyball team, this week’s Cascade Conference Team of the Week. Read more
(Ashland, Ore.) — The dumps and compost piles of yesteryear may seem like an unlikely place to learn about culture, but discarded items reflect society, educating anthropologists on what people ate, wore, used as tools and other insights into daily life.
Chelsea Rose, an archaeologist with Southern Oregon University’s Laboratory of Anthropology, holds a piece of 18th-century ceramic after digging at Amisfield Tower in southern Scotland this summer.
Chelsea Rose, an archaeologist with Southern Oregon University Laboratory of Anthropology has discovered exactly that after years of digging in Scotland. This summer, she went back to Scotland for the fifth time, digging at Amisfield Tower—a Scottish border tower completed in 1600—and an area inhabited since prehistoric times. Located in the southern Scotland area known as Dumphriesshire, the tower was built by the Charteris family, who arrived in Scotland with William the Conqueror.
“Last year we explored the landscape to see what was there. This year we targeted certain areas—one area ended up being a medieval garbage dump. We found bones from the food people were eating, coins, a piece of carved ivory and a lot of medieval pottery,” Rose said.
“Lamb—they ate a lot of lamb,” she added.
(Ashland, Ore.) – The Hannon Library at Southern Oregon University will hold a dedication ceremony on Nov 4 for a sculpture collection of humanitarian peacemakers. Meera Censor, an Ashland resident and artist, donated her collection to the library. It features 21 sculptures of people from all around the world that have contributed to peaceful causes. Icons such as Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela are expertly recreated in hydrostone and bronze. The ceremony takes place at 3 p.m. with a ribbon-cutting ceremony on the first floor of the library. A reception will follow in the Meese Room (#305) with light refreshments. The event is free and open to the public. Read more
(Ashland, Ore.) — Don’t be alarmed if you see police tape throughout the Southern Oregon University Science Building on Oct. 29—it’s all part of SOU’s CSI-style forensic science workshop.
High school and community college students from southern Oregon and northern California will participate in the seventh annual, hands-on Science Workshop, solving a crime using state-of-the-art instruments. The free workshop still has spots available, but time is running out. The deadline to sign up is Oct. 21. Read more
(Ashland, Ore.) – Hannon Library presents author Tony Platt on Tuesday, November 1st at 4 PM in the Meese Meeting Room on the SOU Ashland campus. Platt will be joined by OSF actors Robynn Rodriquez and Derrick Lee Weeden in readings from his new book “Grave Matters.” The bitter legacies of archaeology and the politics of reparations are examined in the book, which focuses on the Big Lagoon, an historic Yurok site on the northern California coast, while illuminating larger issues. This free presentation explores the origins and consequences of the looting of native graves and the story of the Northwest Indian Cemetery Protection Association.
Tony Platt is the author of ten books and 150 articles dealing with issues of race, inequality, and social justice in American history. This deeply researched history is written in an accessible style that combines cultural critique with first-person narrative. Howard Zinn has praised his work as a “fascinating excursion into history, full of provocative insights about the culture of remembering.” Platt is professor emeritus after teaching at the University of Chicago, UC Berkeley, and CSU Sacramento. Platt also consulted on David Edgar’s 2-play epic “Continental Divide” commissioned by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. The author will sign copies of “Grave Matters” after this free presentation. For more information contact Hannon Library at (541) 552-6835 or Anna Beauchamp beauchamp@sou.edu or (541) 552-6823
(Ashland, Ore.) — For the third year, Southern Oregon University will showcase a campus theme—an annual conversation across campus and the community that focuses on a specific topic and features multiple events.
This year’s theme is Civility—a timely topic in all areas of our society.
“We see incivility in virtually every aspect of our lives—in politics, day-to-day social interactions, sports, online social networks and the media,” says Daniel Morris, an SOU French professor and campus theme co-director. “We want to explore what it means to be civil, and hope to find ways to increase civility at all levels of society.” Read more
To the litany of changes being wrought by global warming, we may be able to add one more: where wine grapes can and can’t be grown.
Read the full story here: www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/story/2011-10-06/climate-change-could-impact-wine-growing-regions/50682188/1
PROSPECT, Ore. — When Robert Coffan discovered psathyrella aquatica, he wasn’t looking for it. Coffan convinced a pair of mycologists at Southern Oregon University, Darlene Southworth and Jonathan Frank, to come take a look.
(Ashland, Ore.) – The Theatre Arts program of the Department of Performing Arts at Southern Oregon University offers a season of fable, fantasy and farce from November 2011 through May 2012. Six plays in two theatres are produced during the academic year by SOU faculty, guest artists and over 280 students. Read more
(Ashland, Ore.) — The first of weekly science-related seminars at Southern Oregon University begins Oct. 7 with a discussion on rain forests. The full series is listed after the jump.
The Friday Seminar Series takes place throughout the academic year and features a variety of subjects and speakers. Future topics are yet to be announced.
The first seminar, “The Forgotten Rainforests: Temperate and Boreal Rainforests of the World,” begins at 4 p.m. in the Science Lecture Hall, room 118, on campus. Dominick DellaSala, PhD, president and chief scientist of the Geos Institute, will speak. Read more