E. Wayne Carp recently published “How Tight Was the Seal? A Reappraisal of Adoption Records in the United States, England, and New Zealand, 1851-1955” in International Advances in Adoption Research for Practice, edited by Elsbeth Neil and Gretchen Wrobel (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009): 17-40. He gave a paper “Opening Adoption Records and Destroying Families: The Myth Exploded in the U.S., England, and Australia, 1953-2007” at the Society for Children and Youth’s Fifth Biennial Conference, “Children at Risk/Children Taking Risks: Historical Inquiries in International Perspective," University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley CA, July 10-12, 2009. In addition, he chaired a panel "‘Special Needs’: Children and the Problem of Adoption, Foster Care, and Institutions,” at the same conference at the University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley CA, July 10-12, 2009. He also has been appointed to the editorial boards of Adoption Quarterly and Adoption & Culture. To read some of Carp's recent articles, click on: http://ssrn.com/author=1342242

In the 2008-09 academic year, Assistant Professor Adam Cathcart published five peer-reviewed articles in such journals as Twentieth-Century China and Journal of Korean Studies, served as faculty columnist for the campus newspaper, did fieldwork in the People's Republic of China, and travelled to Berlin with PLU senior Elizabeth Campbell to research East German-East Asian connections in the Cold War.  In April 2008, along with PLU professor Greg Youtz, he organized a campus dialogue surrounding the Olympic Torch run and the Tibet issue.  In fall 2009, journals will publish at least three of Cathcart's peer-reviewed articles, including a lead article regarding China's use of Japanese war criminals in China Quarterly, the top journal in the field of Chinese Studies.  This fall he is supervising a number of student research projects at PLU, attempting to remain faithful to a cello practice regimen, and writing a daily blog about research, teaching, and music.

In 2008, Michael Halvorson published Defining Community in Early Modern Europe, co-edited with Karen E. Spierling (Ashgate), and "Jews and Jesuits in a Confessional Age: Heinrich Heshusius and the Boundaries of Community in Hildesheim", Sixteenth Century Journal 39/3 (2008). He is currently completing a monograph entitled Heinrich Heshusius and the Polemics of Early Lutheran Orthodoxy (Ashgate).  In 2007, Halvorson was a research fellow at the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbuettel, Germany.

Recent publications by Beth Kraig include articles on Grace Jones and Cynthia McKinney in the African American National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2008 and available through Oxford's online African American Studies Center.  Recent journal articles include "Are We There Yet, Driver? Searching for the Automotive Human,"  Midwest Quarterly 48 (2007), and "It's About Time Somebody Out Here Wrote the Truth: Betty Bard MacDonald and North/Western Regionalism," Western American Literature 40 and "The Unquiet Death of Guglielmo Olivotto," Peace & Change 30 (2005).

The History department is pleased to announce the publication of a new book by Professor Emeritus Phil Nordquist entitled Inquiry, Service, Leadership, and Care: Pacific Lutheran University, 1988-2008 (PLU Press, 2008, ISBN 978-0-87362-971-3).  This is Professor Nordquist's second volume devoted to PLU's history as an educational institution (founded in 1890); the new volume chronicles influential faculty, institutional commitments and struggles, and PLU's emerging global focus.  Copies can be purchased at the Garfield Book Company at PLU.