Herman Selected CWU Phi Kappa Phi Scholar Of The Year

May 24, 2005

Contact: Barry J. Donahue (509-963-1714/ fax: 963-1452/ e-mail: donahue@cwu.edu)

ELLENSBURG, Wash. - Daniel Herman, Central Washington University history professor, has been selected Phi Kappa Phi (PKP) Scholar of the Year for 2004-05.

In announcing the choice, Dr. Barry Donahue, president of the CWU chapter of PKP, noted, "Professor Herman has been an extremely productive scholar and has the reputation among both students and peers as an excellent teacher." Herman's recently published work "Hunting and the American Imagination" won a prize for best first history book from the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association.

Dr. Karen Blair, CWU history department chair, said, "I marvel at his consistent efforts at enquiry, whether he is grilling a guest speaker from out of town or dissecting a new book in his field. He is the perfect candidate for this honor."

In recognition of his selection as Scholar of the Year, Professor Herman will present a free, public presentation on Wednesday, May 25 at 4 p.m. in Black Hall 150 on "How Hunters Became Heroes: Social Theory and Social Revolution in U.S. History, 1607-1860."

"Colonists tended to reject hunting as a way of life because they identified it with the savagery of American Indians," Herman says "They tended to reject hunting as sport, meanwhile, because they identified it with the excesses of aristocracy. Yet, in the Age of Jackson, American men embraced Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, and other frontier hunters as culture heroes, and sought to emulate those heroes by hunting for sport. That shift in ideas about hunters and hunting inverted Enlightenment social theory and taught new codes of self-assertion, nationalism, and empire."

Hunting, Herman argues, provided a segue between the agrarian norms of colonial British America and the commercial norms of the Market Revolution. At the conclusion of the talk, Herman will speculate on the meaning of hunting in the modern U.S.

"I especially wish to encourage all university faculty, staff, and students to attend in order to honor one of the university's fine scholars and teachers," Donahue notes.

The PKP honor society is the oldest and largest U.S. collegiate honor society, recognizing and promoting superior scholarship in all higher education academic disciplines. The CWU chapter was established in 1976.

CWU juniors, who are scholastically in the top seven percent of their class, and seniors, who are scholastically in the upper 10 percent of their class, are eligible for membership. In addition, a limited number of faculty and alumni who have achieved scholarly distinction are invited to become members.

For more information about the PKP awards ceremony and presentation, or for persons of disability to arrange for reasonable accommodation, call (509) 963-1714, or (for the hearing impaired) TDD (509) 963-2143.