Explore the Phil and Penny Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact—and the astounding cutting-edge research facilities and instruments therein—with the new Oregon Quarterly, available now.
With the Knight Campus virtual opening in December, thousands logged on to see the striking architectural features of the new building, from its stunning skybridge that spans six lanes of traffic to cross- laminated timber and wooden design elements configured to symbolize waves of whitewater from the McKenzie and Willamette rivers. Appearance aside, the form contributes to its ultimate function and “beneficial collisions of people,” according to Robert Guldberg, the executive director.
As Guldberg says in writer Ed Dorsch’s feature story, “Everything is designed for collaboration, conversation, and serendipity. That’s what researchers and entrepreneurs need to succeed.”
The winter edition of the university magazine also features a powerful essay by Brian Trapp, an instructor in the English department, on his relationship with his twin brother, Danny, born with severe cerebral palsy and intellectual disabilities. Trapp, director of the Walter and Nancy Kidd Creative Writing Workshops, also teaches in the disability studies minor.
In an interview with the Kenyon Review, which previously published the essay, Trapp said: “I often think of this Djuna Barnes quote from her novel “Nightwood”: ‘There is more in sickness than the name of that sickness.’
“I wanted to show my readers that ‘more.’”
Trapp captures a sibling relationship that is hilarious, heartwarming, and much deeper than one might expect given the limits of Danny’s vocabulary, which provide the essay’s title: “Twelve Words.”
The issue showcases stirring photographs by linguistics-German double major Mya Lansing, who documented live streamers reporting from the front lines of the Black Lives Matter protests last summer. Jeffrey Ostler, Beekman Professor of Northwest and Pacific History, is also featured for “Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas,” his seminal book arguing that the violence historically waged by the U.S. government against Native Americans was nothing less than genocidal war.
The issue spotlights Daniel Lowd, an associate professor in the Department of Computer and Information Science, whose work is as creative as his pastimes. Noteworthy alumni in the winter OQ include Hollywood film editor Sabrina Gimenez, law graduate/hiker extraordinaire Barney “Scout” Mann, and singer Robert Bailey, whose career began with a spot in “National Lampoon’s Animal House” and now centers on his globe-trotting adventures backing up country megastar Garth Brooks.
Rounding out the winter edition is a Duck Tale reflecting on a simpler time — Nov.ember 14, 2015, to be exact, — when the Ducks marched into Palo Alto and squashed the Stanford Cardinal’s playoff hopes, set to a “soundtrack” provided by an ecstatic Oregon Marching Band.