Community Engagement in Arts and Humanities: A Graduate Student Series
About the event
In this presentation, two WSU graduate students will present on their Publicly Engaged Fellowship Projects that they completed over the summer, reflecting on how their work impacts the community.
Harvest Interludes
Abstract: During wheat harvest season, many family-owned farms along the Palouse and Washtucna Coulee hold group lunches in a central location where everyone working the harvest pauses work and has a meal together. These lunches began out of necessity, needing to feed the harvest crew, but today continue as a tradition for family, friends, and community members of all ages and backgrounds to gather and spend time with one another during their busiest time of the year. Live instrumental chamber music is a genre of music that is not easily accessible to the working farmers of rural southeastern Washington, with the nearest major cities who host concerts such as the Tri-Cities, Pullman, and Spokane sometimes being at least a two-hour drive away. With my project, I wished to continue the rural outreach established by faculty and fellow peers in the WSU School of Music as well as further strengthen the bond WSU shares with the rural communities and farmers of southeastern Washington. Knowing that harvest is many of these families’ busiest time of year, the goal of my project was to organize a chamber music concert series that brought live music to wheat harvest lunches along the Palouse and Washtucna Coulee as a way to give back to the farmers and acknowledge a year’s worth of work.
Bio: Calby Van Hollebeke a 2nd year Master of Arts candidate with an emphasis in Music Performance and studies oboe with Dr. Keri McCarthy at Washington State University. She completed undergraduate studies at the University of Montana where she studied with Dr. Jennifer Cavanaugh and graduated with a B.M. in Music Performance. Calby has performed with the WSU Symphonic Wind Ensemble, WSU Symphony Orchestra, Montana Youth Symphony, UM Symphonic Wind Ensemble, UM Symphony Orchestra, UM Grizzly Marching Band, UM Chamber Orchestra, Glacier Symphony, Butte Symphony, and Missoula Symphony Orchestra. Calby is from Washtucna, WA and grew up on her family’s wheat farm just outside of Kahlotus, WA where she raised pigs, chickens, and goats. In her free time, she enjoys baking, crocheting, spending time with friends, and caring for her 4-year-old goldfish, Vincent.
Reigniting Labor in the Palouse: Recording the Voices, History, and Ongoing Struggle of UAW 4591
Abstract: In partnership with the WSU Libraries Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections (MASC), my project seeks to create the beginnings of an archive capturing the stories of labor organizers associated with UAW 4591. Consisting primarily of oral histories, I draw connections between militant labor organizing, the empowerment of communities, and how these experiences ripple outward beyond ourselves. Through institutional ethnographic approaches of centering the individuals’ narrative experience in the context of WSU as a workplace, as well as the context of a sociopolitical moment where we see the labor movement building momentum while being under threat, I wish to begin this archival foundation by gathering oral histories of both past and present organizers. Since the history of our union is intertwined with WSU as an institution, as well as the communities we share in, I believe this archive can support and bolster pro-labor conversations in and beyond the Palouse. As a labor organizer, I believe it’s imperative to remember how our union got here, and how we can honor that memory.
Bio: Gavin Doyle (he/him) is a 5th year PhD candidate in English- Rhetoric and Composition at Washington State University. He previously graduated from California State University, San Bernardino with a BA in Philosophy, and a MA in Rhetoric and Composition. He is also a labor organizer and head trustee with UAW Local 4591, representing Academic Student Employees at WSU. His primary fields of research include labor studies, critical prison studies, prison abolition rhetoric, disability studies, rhetoric of health and medicine, and political rhetoric. In his free time, he likes to sketch, spend time with loved ones, and to be reminded, time & again, that this world is worth fighting for.