Volume 55, Number 17   December 10, 2007         

On the left
In a Nov. 27 CBS 5 Eyewitness News "Good Question" segment, Professor of Political Science Robert Smith answers the question: "What is the origin of ‘left wing’ and ‘right wing’ for liberal and conservative?" Smith explained that the terms date back to the French Revolution. "After the Revolution, the king seated his supporters on his right and his opponents on his left. In parliamentary democracies, they follow that tradition of seating the liberals or the socialists on the left and the conservatives on the right."

Casting a line
Associate Professor of Creative Writing Toni Mirosevich was profiled in the Nov. 21 edition of the Pacifica Tribune. Mirosevich discussed her recently published non-fiction collection "Pink Harvest: Tales of Happenstance," her upbringing in a Croatian-American fishing family, and how writing and fishing are similar. "The sea holds great possibilities for the imagination, it always does," Mirosevich said. "My father taught us that life with the sea is a gambling life, certainly for a fisherman, the gamble of the big catch or empty net. I think the 'gamble' has a lot to do with writing. When you sit down to the page you gamble that you are going to hit something or hit nothing. It's casting the line every time."

For more media coverage of faculty, staff, students, alumni and programs, see SF State in the News.

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Last modified Dec. 10, 2007 by University Communications.