Presenting Scholars

Christopher Zinn, Co-director, earned his M.A. and Ph.D. at New York University. He has been Executive Director of the Oregon Council for the Humanities since 1997. Before coming to OCH he taught English and Humanities at Reed College for many years, and was a Lecturer for Portland Arts and Lectures, an Assistant Professor at the Oregon College of Arts and Crafts, and a book critic for the The Oregonian. Mr. Zinn was a Fulbright Senior Lecturer in Turkey in 1993-1994.

Clay S. Jenkinson, Co-director, is a humanities scholar, cultural commentator, author and public radio personality whose work on the Lewis and Clark expedition has earned him wide acclaim. A Rhodes and Danforth scholar, Mr. Jenkinson is the author of several books, including The Character of Meriwether Lewis: "Completely Metamorphosed" in the American West (2000). Mr. Jenkinson has portrayed the characters of Thomas Jefferson and Meriwether Lewis since 1981, and has performed before the Supreme Court, Cabinet Members, and hundreds of audiences in forty-nine states, as well as for Presidents Clinton and Bush.

Barry Lopez is an essayist, short-story writer and international traveler whose 1986 book Arctic Dreams received the National Book Award. Mr. Lopez, who is regarded as one of the nation's premier nature writers, is also the author of About This Life, Of Wolves and Men, and several award-winning works of fiction, including Field Notes, Winter Count, and the fable Crow and Weasel. He lives in the McKenzie River Valley.

Anthony Iaccarino was born and raised in San Francisco, and attended UC Berkeley and UCLA. He has been teaching history and humanities at Reed College since 1999. This past academic year, Professor Iaccarino was a fellow at the International Center for Jefferson Studies in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he completed a manuscript entitled Virginia and the Problem of Slavery in the New Nation. The book will be published by the University of Virginia Press in late 2004.

Stephen Dow Beckham is the Pamplin Professor of History at Lewis & Clark College. For more than three decades he has taught courses on the history of the American West, Pacific Northwest, and Native Americans. His most recent books include The Literature of the Lewis and Clark Expedition (2003) and Lewis & Clark: From the Rockies to the Pacific (2002). He has led field-based seminars over the Lewis and Clark route and is the curator of the national traveling exhibit of maps, rare books, newspapers, and manuscripts drawn from the collections of Lewis & Clark College. Professor Beckham has worked with numerous Indian tribes as a witness before Congress, in federal district court, and in the U.S. Claims Court.

Annie Callan is a poet, author, and lecturer whose work has appeared in AGNI, Boulevard, The Oregonian and the Antioch Review, among others. She is the author of the books The Back Door (poems) and Taf (a novel for young adults). She has received the Academy of American Poets Award, the William Stafford Poetry Fellowship, and the Heekin Foundation's Siobhan Fellowship for Literary Non Fiction. Originally from Dublin, Ms. Callan lives in Portland. She teaches writing workshops at the Northwest Writing Institute, as well as by invitation.

Barbara Belyea is Professor of English at the University of Calgary, where she has taught since 1998. While she teaches a wide spectrum of courses, from Middle English literature to literary theory and records of exploration and discovery, her primary academic interest is in manuscript edition and the history of publishing. Professor Belyea has published numerous articles and essays, and edited the books Columbia Journals and Driving Home (with Estelle Dansereau). Currently, she is working on three editorial projects: the fur-trade journals of David Thompson, Anthony Henday and Peter Fidler.

William Robbins is History Professor Emeritus at Oregon State University, where he taught for over thirty years. He is the author of five books, including Landscapes of Promise: The Oregon Story 1800-1940 (1997), and has written extensively about Oregon's lumber and forestry industry, economic culture, regional identity, and environmental history. Currently, Professor Robbins is finishing work on two histories of Oregon, both due to come out in the next year. He is an avid runner who participated in three fifty-kilometer races last year.

William Lang is Professor of History at Portland State University and Series Book Editor for "Culture and Environment in the Pacific West" at Oregon State University Press. He has written or co-authored four books, and edited three, including Great River of the West: Essays on the Columbia River (1999). Professor Lang serves on the Editorial Advisory Board for the Oregon Council for the Humanities' The First Oregonians book project.

Roberta Conner is a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, which owns and operates Tamástslikt. She is a journalism graduate of the University of Oregon and earned her Masters in Business Management from Willamette University. She joined the Small Business Administration (SBA) in 1984 under a Jimmy Carter intern program that encouraged graduate school graduates to work in the Federal government. She was manager of the SBA branch in Sacramento and, in 1994, when the Sacramento branch was elevated to a district office, Ms. Conner became one of 69 district directors in the U.S. She joined the CTUIR in 1997 to take the position of director at Tamástslikt.

Pat Courtney Gold, raised on the Warm Springs Reservation and an enrolled member of the Wasco Nation of the Warm Springs Confederated Tribes of Oregon, is a scholar and artist whose work has been shown nationally and internationally. She has revived the traditional Wasco art of full-turn twined baskets with geometric figures and motifs unique to the Columbia River area. Ms. Gold, who went to Whitman College and taught mathematics for many years, has most recently been curator of the exhibit Reflecting on Lewis and Clark: Contemporary American Indian Viewpoints at the Maryhill Museum. She has been a Chautauqua scholar for OCH since 1999.

Jeanne Oyawin Eder grew up on the Fort Peck, Assiniboine and Sioux reservation at Poplar, Montana, and graduated from high school in Billings. She earned her B.A. and M.A. at the University of North Dakota and her Ph.D. at Washington State University. She is Assistant Professor at the University of Alaska at Anchorage and Director of the Alaska Native Studies Department there. Professor Eder has traveled extensively speaking about Sacagawea.

Mark Spence earned his Ph.D. in History at UCLA. He is the author of Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of the National Parks (1999) and Lewis and Clark: Legacies, Memories, and New Interpretations, co-edited with Kris Fresonke (2003). He has also authored the manuscript Lewis and Clark and the Nature of Nation, 1804-2006 (under contract). Professor Spence spent the last year on leave from Knox College, where he has taught since 1997. He is a runner and surfer.

Janet Bixby is Assistant Professor of Education at the Graduate School of Education at Lewis & Clark College, where she teaches Social Studies education. She has her A.B. and M.A. from Harvard, and her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin Madison. Professor Bixby is an avid kayaker and outdoorswoman.