Simpson Center for the Humanities at the University of Washington
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The Simpson Center invites proposals in various categories from members of the University of Washington community to support projects in the humanities. Proposals are evaluated by the members of the Simpson Center's Executive Board in fall and spring of each year for support for the following academic year.

Collaborative research, public programs, and conferences are included here. Archives for individual research fellowships (Society of Scholars), associate professor research awards, and full professor crossdisciplinary conversations may be found on their dedicated pages.

2007-2008
2006-2007
2005-2006
2004-2005
2003-2004
2002-2003
2001-2002
2000-2001
1999-2000
1998-1999
1997-1998

2007-2008

Public Humanities: Engaging The Community

A Sense of Where We Are, II: Pacific Northwest History and Literature
Organized by John Findlay (History)
This project entails research and teaching concerning the literary history of the Pacific Northwest during Summer Quarter 2007. Simpson Center support is bringing to campus prominent regional writers – poets, novelists, historians – to (a) discuss their work, as well as the issues surrounding regionalism, with students in undergraduate courses in English and History; and (b) present public reading and talks to campus and community.

Reconsidering Viet Nam: Conversations on War and Society
Organized by the Henry Art Gallery
This exhibit is part of an intensive series of interdisciplinary programs exploring the culture of war in the aftermath of Viet Nam and the current campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. These programs reconsider the legacy of the Vietman War as portrayed in the work of An My Le in Small Wars and of Kim Jones in Kim Jones: A Retrospective, exibitions which provide a rich and provocative ground in a thoughtful and critically complex exploration. In conjunction with these exhibitions, the Henry will be launching the University Art Institute, an annual initiative that develops and expands opportunities for dialogue, access, and participation.

Politics, Poverty, and Diversity Speaker Series for Seniors
Organized by John Gastil (Communication)
Gastil will work with the University District Senior Center to convene a lecture series on “Politics, Poverty, and Diversity” at three Seattle senior centers during Autumn of 2007. This series is designed to address issues of interest to Seattle area seniors through accessible scholarly presentations by from UW faculty and graduate students.

 

Large-scale Collaborative Research, Teaching, and/or Public Projects

New Formations of Cultural Studies: Collaboration, Practice, Research
 Organized by Bruce Burgett (Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences and English) and Kanta Kochhar-Lindgren (Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences).  Co-investigators: Danny Hoffman (Anthropology), Ron Krabill (Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences), Kari Lerum (Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences), Craig Jeffrey (Geography and International Studies)
An outgrowth of the Cultural Studies Praxis Collective, this is a multi-year regional collaboration of faculty and academic staff dedicated to using the best critical and creative traditions of cultural studies scholarship to create collaborative research practices across diverse communities.  This year, the New Formations series will host three speakers: Ien Ang (Autumn), E. Patrick Johnson (Winter), and Sonja Kuftinec (Spring).  The series will focus on cross-methodological and trans-local research projects designed to generate new scholarship on the multiple locations of cultural studies and to forge sustainable partnerships for community-based forms of cultural studies praxis.

Science Studies Network
Organized by Alison Wylie (Philosophy and Anthropology), Stephanie Malia Fullerton (Medical History & Ethics), Celia Lowe (Anthropology), Philip Thurtle (CHID and History), Simon Werrett (History)
The Science Studies Network brings together faculty and graduate students at the University of Washington who represent three broad constituencies with interests in science studies: history and philosophy of science; cultural studies of science; and ethics, equity, and policy issues in science. They are planning a two-year program of colloquium meetings with the aim of establishing a robust interdisciplinary research network. Further goals are to foster topic-specific collaborative research projects and to explore their potential for developing an interdisciplinary curriculum in science studies that integrates dispersed course offerings and builds on the success of the existing major in History & Philosophy of Science.

Crossdisciplinary Research Clusters

Cross-disciplinary Perspectives on Early Bilingualism: Developmental and Educational Issues
Organized by Julia Herschensohn (Linguistics), Klaus Brandl (Scandinavian Studies), Yasuko Kanno (English), Sandra Silberstein (English)
This lecture series studies early bilingualism, with a focus on biological development and childhood education. It considers physiological correlates of bilingualism; differences deriving from age of acquisition and proficiency level; “natural” acquisition versus formal learning; educational and policy responses to bilingualism.

 

Critical Medical Humanities
Organized by Sara Goering (Philosophy), Janelle Taylor (Anthropology), Kelly Fryer-Edwards (Medical History & Ethics), Linda Nash (History), Helene Starks (Medical History & Ethics), Mark Sullivan (Psychiatry & Behavioral Health Sciences), Rachel Chapman (Anthropology), and James Pfeiffer (Health Services)
This research cluster is a cross-disciplinary effort that brings together scholars with shared interests in critical and interdisciplinary perspectives on health, illness, and medicine. In its fourth year, Critical Medical Humanities will focus on the theme of “placing” global health, that is, considering global health issues in local context in order to better understand them and to implement just solutions. In particular, they aim to highlight the importance of situating responsibilities for and solutions to ill health in a manner sensitive to histories and power dynamics in particular settings, and in equitable consultation with local peoples. They will invite three outside speakers to give public lectures and participate in classroom discussions and reading groups with faculty and graduate students.

Students Writing in Public
Organized by Stefan Kamola (Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations), Mona Atia (Geography), Mark Pitner (Asian Languages & Literature), Allison Gross (English)
Through the collective effort of graduate students interested in publishing outside of academic media, Students Writing in Public provides an interdisciplinary forum for pursuing individual and collaborative writing projects in public scholarship. Frequent writing-group meetings will fuel a monthly workshop series, at which students may share and improve their writing while developing resource materials on the mechanics of publication.

Forum for Urban Studies in South Asia
Organized by Juned Shaikh (History), Ashish Nangia (Architecture), Rowan Ellis (Geography)
This is a collective of humanities and social science students and faculty who share a scholarly interest in understanding the processes of urbanization in colonial and postcolonial contexts. Through its reading group and public lecture series, the research cluster will reflect critically on the existing social theories of urbanization from the vantage point of historical and ethnographical research from the region. In the process, the group seeks to engage in a dialog with students and scholars of urbanization on the UW campus, and also with a wider public of off-campus scholars and activists through its online discussion group.

Global Futures
Organized by Ann Anagnost (Anthropology), Andrea Arai (Anthropology), Danny Hoffman (Anthropology), Craig Jeffrey (Geography), Jane Dyson (South Asia Studies)
Taking the future as a critical form of engagement, Global Futures seeks to reveal how the future is thought and acted upon across national contexts. One of the powerful means through which futures are made to seem calculable and determinate is in the figurative and literal focus on youth and children as embodiments of the future. Thus this project explores how these forces pinpoint the young as both the figurative subject and literal object in "engineering" national and global futures and how these necessarily lead to the indeterminate results and imminent possibilities that the future must and does produce.

Critical Animal Studies
Organized by Dipika Nath (Women Studies), Andrew Light (Philosophy), Matthew Walton (Political Science), Lawrence Cushnie (Political Science)
The purpose of Critical Animal Studies is to bring together students, faculty, and other academic and non-academic interlocutors engaged in questions concerning the conceptual status and material treatment of non-human animals.  We will organize and host a number of public talks and debates which will highlight, in particular, local public controversies over the treatment of non-human animals in an attempt to reach out to various non-university communities and stakeholders.

Modernist Studies Group
Organized by Matthew Levay (English) and Jennifer Stoffel (English)
The Modernist Studies Group is a research cluster of graduate students who engage in interdisciplinary studies of modernism and modernity. The cluster will provide a forum for members to collaborate on their research—from conference papers to dissertation prospectuses and chapters—and to learn about the research methods of established modernist scholars through a work-in-progress series with faculty from the University of Washington and other institutions.

Queer Worlds:  A Year Long Project in Queer Cultural Studies
Organized by Travis Sands (English), Calla Chancellor (Women Studies), Jessica Johnson (Anthropology), Jason Morse (English)
Queer Worlds, a year long research project of the Interdisciplinary Queer Studies Working Group, investigates the production and deployment of ‘sexuality’ across spaces, scales, and disciplinary formations. This project interrogates the epistemological shifts marked by recent work in queer studies, work increasingly concerned with questions of racialization, the global flow of bodies and culture, and the ‘provincialization’ of Anglo-U.S. sexual epistemologies. In developing new critical frameworks that stress the disproportion of global capital and non-analogous relations between sexual lifeworlds on a global scale, this project investigates how queer public scholarship and non-academic intellectual production craft new forms of politics and collectivity.

Visual Praxis Collective
Organized by Sasha Welland (Anthropology and Women Studies), James Tweedie (Comparative Literature, Cinema Studies), Danny Hoffman (Anthropology), and Yomi Braester (Comparative Literature, Cinema Studies)
This research cluster explores forms of visual praxis in research, pedagogy, and public scholarship by examining how visual work can add to the scholarly record, contribute to theoretical debate and development, lead to research innovation, enhance teaching, and engage diverse audiences in research. Visual Praxis Collective participants meet regularly to workshop visual projects by faculty and graduate students and to curate quarterly film and video festivals that feature a guest speaker and focus on incorporating visual media in teaching and curriculum development.

Crossdisciplinary Symposia, Colloquia, & Conferences

Shifting Empires: Transforming Colonial Rule in the Pacific Islands and Circum-Caribbean Worlds
Organized by Ileana Rodriguez-Silva (History), Kiko Benitez (History), and Rick Bonus (History)
This lecture series will explore the intricate and vast flows of peoples, ideas, commodities, and structures that inform the constitution of subjectivities within imperial fields. Through the analysis of state policies, literary works, emerging mass media, and political/social activism, among other means, collaborators seek to unearth the contradictory aesthetic and ethical values, identities, and individual subjectivities forged in the constant processes of negotiation and contestation brought about by imperial organization. The project particularly focuses on the converging forces that fuel the constant shifts and refashioning of the power fields comprising the imperial terrain. In order to investigate the shifting nature of empire, and the technologies used and cultures produced in its constitutive processes, collaborators center on the study of the U.S. imperial fields at different historical junctures: the 1898 war, mid-twentieth-century decolonization processes, and the 2003 Iraq conflict.

Philosophy of Social Science Roundtable
Organized by Alison Wylie (Philosophy, Anthropology)
This workshop brings together an intellectually diverse and international community of philosophers and social scientists who share an interest in philosophical questions raised by the social sciences, include problems in social theory, epistemological issues specific to the forms of explanation and canons of evidence characteristic of the social sciences, and the ethical and political problems distinctive of research involving human subjects. The roundtable will be complimented by an interdisciplinary humanities seminar which will provide graduate students with the opportunity to engage work by roundtable presenters and on the issues addressed in the seminar.

Sovereigns and Subjects: Jewish Political Thought and Experience in the 20th Century
Organized by Gad Barzilai (Jackson School), Richard Block (Germanics), Susan Glenn (History), Noam Pianko (Jackson School), and Michael Rosenthal (Philosophy).
Since the Enlightenment, Jews have had a double-relation to political power and the modern state.  On the one hand, they have been liberated from tutelage to become minority subjects in liberal states. On the other, they have become sovereigns through participation in those liberal governments and also through the creation of their own state. The purpose of the two-day symposium is three-fold:  1) to explore Jewish perspectives on the central paradoxes and limits of modern liberalism and the nation-state; 2) to see what is unique about the Jewish experience of modern politics; and 3) to find out what this experience has in common with other ways of negotiating the nation-state and the modern world order.

Roman Imperial Art and Ritual
Organized by Alain Gowing (Classics), Sandra Joshel (History), Margaret Laird (Art History)
Roman religion was based on actions rather than theological dogma: rituals were there to be observed; they occurred in specific places, and they relied on objects for their successful completion. Increasingly, Roman material culture has been recognized as a participant in and a representation of ritual practices. During this two-day conference, Roman historians and art historians will address aspects of Roman polytheistic ritual and religion by focusing on an object or a class of objects included in the exhibition, “Roman Art from the Louvre,” which will be on view at the Seattle Art Museum during the spring of 2008.

Beyond Dichotomies: Alternative Voices and Histories in Post-Colonial Viet Nam
Organized by Judith Henchy (Libraries) and Christoph Giebel (International Studies and History)
The second in a series of three workshops on alternative Vietnamese histories will highlight new scholarship on post-colonial Viet Nam that complicates, challenges and counters prevailing historiographical paradigms that have privileged the actions of central states, imposed nationalist, traditionalist or communist teleologies on Vietnamese history and culture, or enforced simplistic Cold War rhetorical postures.  We intend to foreground, for instance, social and intellectual histories that illuminate modes of thinking and being in the post-colonial world, investigate the symbolic order and semantics of post-colonial power, and focus on social and political movements marginalized by dominant Cold War narratives with their presumed dichotomy of a "North Viet Nam" and a “South Viet Nam.”

Cultures of Performance in Modern Austria: Modern Austria Literature and Culture Association 2008
Organized by Sarah Bryant-Bertail (Drama), George Bozarth (Music History), Brigitte Prutti (Germanics), Heidi Tilghman (Germanics), Sabine Wilke (Germanics)
The goal of the Annual convention of the MALCA is to reflect on the shift in paradigm in the humanities as well as the social sciences from text-based models of culture to the notion of performance. Performance as an analytic concept should be particularly productive within Austrian context given the significance of theatricality in the Austrian cultural tradition.

Popular Culture and the Arts in Africa
Organized by Lynn Thomas (African Studies)
This speaker, workshop, and film series will build on the research and teaching interests of a number of Africanist faculty and graduate students at the University of Washington, and will introduce African material and perspectives into campus and community conversation on contemporary music, visual media, and graphic arts. 

 


Expanding Interdisciplinarity from Campus to Communities: Exploring Innovation in Collaborative Research
Organized by Kelly Fryer-Edwards (Medical History & Ethics and Public Health Genetics), and Alison Wylie (Philosophy and Anthropology)
This invitational conference will assemble field-defining practitioners, community partners, and younger scholars in a panel presentation and workshop format. We will explore specifically how community based research practices transform traditional academic research practices through an impact on the design, the conduct, and the outcomes of research in a selection of biological, environmental, and socio-historical fields.

Language and Law: Forensic Linguistics, Court Interpretation, and History
Organized by Gail Stygall (English)
This conference will provide a venue in which participants from China, Thailand, Great Britain, Germany, Spain, Brazil, and others can present and discuss their work in the history of legal language, court interpretation from the perspective of many languages, and forensic work. The work to be presented at this conference will bring together scholars from a variety of disciplines; including law, linguistics, English language studies, and a host of modern language departments. In addition, the conference offers an opportunity for the University of Washington to participate in outreach with the legal community, courts, and law enforcement.

2006-2007

Print version (pdf)

CROSSDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH CLUSTERS

Creating Community Through Blogging
Organized by Matthew Vechinski and Honni van Rijswijk (English)

This research cluster is build on the premise that blogging creates practices and texts that can produce multiple connections within the university and between the university and the wider community.  The organizers are interested in considering the status of blogs as texts as well as ways in which blogs challenge conventional paradigms of research. The cluster will also investigate ways in which blogs are emerging as pedagogical practices and how they can be used in classrooms across the disciplines to engage students. Website

Critical Medical Humanities
Organized by Janelle Taylor (Anthropology), Kelly Fryer-Edwards (Medical History & Ethics), Linda Nash (History), Sara Goering (Philosophy), Helene Starks (Medical History & Ethics), Lorna Rhodes (Anthropology), Mark Sullivan (Psychiatry & Behavioral Health Sciences), Rachel Chapman (Anthropology), and James Pfeiffer (Health Services)

This research cluster is a cross-disciplinary effort that brings together scholars with shared interests in critical and interdisciplinary perspectives on health, illness, and medicine.  In its third year, Critical Medical Humanities will focus our activities on the theme of global health and invite three outside speakers to give public lectures and participate in classroom discussions and reading groups with faculty and graduate students. Audiences at each event are invited to attend receptions, a primary goal of which is to build community among scholars with shared interests at the University of Washington. The group also maintains a listserv for sharing notice of local events of interest. Website

Global Futures
Organized by Ann Anagnost (Anthropology), Andrea Arai (Anthropology), Jane Dyson (Jackson School), Danny Hoffman (Anthropology), and Craig Jeffrey (Geography)

The core theme of this project explores how youth are linked to converging crises in public life around education, labor, militarization, criminalization, and technology and how global processes affecting young people are playing out in different locations, with particular emphases on Africa, East Asia, and South Asia. A retreat for cluster participants, a speaker series, and a website are planned alongside the launch of new courses on the theme of youth and globalization. Website

Modernist Studies Group
Organized by Matthew Levay and Ted Wayland (English)

The Modernist Studies Group is a research cluster of graduate students who engage in interdisciplinary studies of modernism and modernity. The cluster will provide a forum for members to collaborate on their research—from conference papers to dissertation prospectuses and chapters—and to learn about the research methods of established modernist scholars through a work-in-progress series with faculty from the University of Washington and other institutions. Website

Public Rhetorics Permanent War
Organized by Georgia Roberts, Anoop Mirpuri, and Keith Feldman (English)

Public Rhetorics Permanent War is a collective of humanities graduate students and faculty who share a scholarly interest in understanding and clarifying the production and role of public rhetorics during what increasingly appears to be a state of globalized permanent war. This research cluster will focus its attention on the overlap and articulation of three particular sites transformed by globalization from which we believe public intellectual work can emerge, namely, humanistic scholarship, organic social activism, and artistic cultural production. Although the relationship between activist and academic work has often been fraught, our project seeks to bring the work of artists, performers, and scholars together in order to both enable and understand the linkages forged by intellectual and creative engagement with larger communities of global citizens. Website


PUBLIC HUMANITIES: ENGAGING THE COMMUNITY

Broadview University for Teens
Organized by Amy Reddinger (English)

Broadview University for Teens will focus on building practices of literacy for homeless teens through a summer reading group centered on hip-hop culture. These sessions will be co-facilitated by graduate students Amy Reddinger and Georgia Roberts, and will engage teens through the relevant popular cultural realm while simultaneously challenging participants to read and think critically about the readings as well as the larger issues these readings evoke. Website

Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project
Organized by James Gregory (History)

The Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project is a multi-year research project involving University of Washington students and faculty as well as community and labor organizations. Its mission is to collect oral histories, photos, and other materials documenting the long history of civil rights struggles in Seattle and western Washington and to generate new research on the links between labor and racial justice campaigns in this region. Website

Silk Road Lecture and Seminar Series
Organized by Cynthea Bogel (Art History), Selim Kuru (Near Eastern Languages & Civilization), Florian Schwarz (History), Kyoko Tokuno (Jackson School), Joel Walker (History)

This project continues the Silk Road Lecture and Seminar Series begun in 2005-2006 with lectures and seminars focusing on Buddhism along the Silk Road. Co-sponsored by the Silkroad Foundation, the Silk Road Lecture and Seminar Series will bring to campus specialists at the cutting edge of the study of Eurasian cultural history. Each will offer a public lecture and a seminar presentation. The focus of the 2006-2007 series will be pre-modern Islamic Western and Central Asia. Website


LARGE-SCALE COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH, TEACHING, AND/OR PUBLIC PROJECTS

Cultural Studies Praxis Collective
Organized by Bruce Burgett (Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences and English), Kanta Kochhar-Lindgren (Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences)

The Cultural Studies Praxis Collective is a multi-year collaboration of faculty and academic staff at University of Washington-Bothell, University of Washington-Seattle, and Cascadia and Bellevue Community Colleges. It focuses on the integration of diverse projects intended to accomplish three long-term goals: first, to generate and disseminate new research on the multiple locations of the humanities; second, to initiate and institutionalize curricular innovation across the three campuses; and third, to build and develop arts and cultural pathways for community-based research and teaching. Members of the CSPC will co-design and co-teach a series of praxis-based workshops and graduate courses (see Crossdisciplinary Graduate Seminars for more information). Website


CROSSDISCIPLINARY SYMPOSIA, COLLOQUIA, AND CONFERENCES

Explorers and Scientists in China’s Borderlands
Organized by Stephen Harrell (Anthropology)

Anthropologists, historians, botanists, and filmmakers from China, Hong Kong, Europe, and the US will gather at the Burke Museum and the Washington Park Arboretum to present lectures, films, exhibits, and garden tours that illuminate the careers of a variegated group of scientists, explorers, writers, photographers, and missionaries from America and Europe who were active in exploring, collecting, and writing in the northern and western borderlands of China in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  Presented in conjunction with the exhibits “Vanished Kingdoms” and “Tibetan Religious Art” at the Burke Museum. Website

Inventions of the Imagination: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Imaginary Since Romanticism
Organized by Richard Gray (Germanics), Nicholas Halmi (English), Gary Handwerk (Comparative Literature), and Michael Rosenthal (Philosophy)

This international conference will interrogate the category of the human “imagination” from multiple disciplinary perspectives: literary, philosophical, anthropological, scientific, and sociopolitical, among others.  Conference participants will investigate not merely those ideas or objects the creative imagination is thought to have produced, but above all different ways in which the very faculty of the imagination has been “invented” and conceived at distinct historical junctures. Website

Liberalism, Governance, and the Geographies of Law
Organized by Steven Herbert (Geography)

Liberalism, Governance, and the Geographies of Law will be a two-day conference to explore the geographic predicates and consequences of contemporary legal practices. Particular emphasis will be directed toward the exclusionary and inclusionary dynamics that arise from current practices of politics, punishment, and culture. The conference will feature three leading West Coast scholars whose work concentrates upon the intersections between geography and law. Each of these guests will deliver a public presentation and lead a workshop discussion of working papers authored by graduate students at the University of Washington. Website

Performance and History: What History?
Organized by Herbert Blau (English/Comparative Literature, & School of Drama), with the cooperation of Marshall Brown (Comparative Literature)

Over the last generation there has been a mandate to historicize in performance studies, but much of it has been undertaken through a revisionist or quasi-Marxist model filtered through psychoanalysis, feminism, and queer theory.  This conference will examine alternative views of history, with foremost scholars in performance studies addressing a multiplicity of issues, including the long distrust of the theater itself in the canonical drama.  Modern Language Quarterly will be publishing a collection of essays from the conference. Website


SIMPSON CENTER CROSSDISCIPLINARY GRADUATE SEMINARS

Cyborg Democracy
Organized by Tom Foster (English)

The goals of this seminar are to assess the political claims made for new media and technologies and to define possible points of articulation and/or conflict and critique between Marxist traditions and theories of radical democracy, on the one hand, and new technocultural formations, on the other hand. Our objects of study will include both popular reflections on new technologies and social movements organized around them. The course will bring together three strands of inquiry: the ongoing structural transformation of the democratic public sphere and the mass mediation of social relations and models of citizenship; the emergence of new models of cultural belonging out of debates on intellectual property, including copyleft, the creative commons, and open source cultures; and debates about the political meanings of new forms of technological self-transformation, including post- and transhumanism, as well as biotechnology and cognitive theories of the expanded mind or the “natural-born cyborg.”

Public Humanities and the Digital University
Taught by Grey Kochhar-Lindgren and Ron Krabill (Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences, Bothell)

The digital revolution is powerfully reshaping the nature of university/community relationships—as well as identity formation and embodiment practices.  In this course we will explore, assess, and create new forms of public scholarship that address this transformation, examining the relationships between research, the production of knowledge, and community engagements that address us at the outset of the 21st century.  Workshops (physical and virtual) with several of our local and global partner organizations will allow us to consider the uses of the public humanities as a means of building stronger bridges across various “digital divides,” as well as the implications of the digitization of the university for new pedagogical strategies, for emerging university/community partnerships, and for the concept of the human itself. 

Visual Documentation Praxis
Taught by Danny Hoffman (Anthropology) and Keri Lerum (Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences, Bothell)

This course will explore a diverse range of visual practices, from video activism to graphic political journalism. At a time when so much knowledge transmission outside the university depends on the production and circulation of images, students will focus on building skills and relationships to participate meaningfully as scholars, activists, and partners. Participants will explore how literature from visual anthropology and sociology, participatory action research, and activist ethnography intersect with efforts to democratize visual technologies and techniques. Drawing from examples on and off campus, we will consider how new visual technologies can generate alternative community archives.  Through visual production exercises, on-site visits with collaborating institutions, and classroom discussion, students will explore how visual production can expand their research interests and forge unexpected connections within and beyond the university. By translating their “vision” of research from text to digital videos and photographs, participants will consider how their work intersects with other spheres of visual production, from public access television to grassroots community documentary and video activism programs.


SUMMER RESIDENCY DISSERTATION FELLOWSHIPS

Giorgia Aiello (Communication)
Visions of Europe: The Construction of Collective Identity in Contemporary European Visual Discourse
Aiello’s dissertation examines the ways in which a sense of a collective European identity is being constructed in contemporary European visual discourse. Aiello examines visual texts such as public communication materials, photography exhibits, and film in light of European integration and overall processes of globalization; she also highlights how visual imagination has increasingly become cross-culturally strategic and thus also a privileged site for the construction of transnational identities.

Gabriele Eichmanns (Germanics)
The Dialectical Relationship between Heimat and the “Foreign” in the Age of Globalization
Eichmanns argues that the current German discourse on Heimat, up until now a merely national discourse on an allegedly purely German topic, can only be viewed and examined with regard to recent theories on nation and globalization. She posits that the concept of Heimat as an exclusively German discourse needs to be re-evaluated in an age when the local and the global are inseparably intertwined. Thus, scholarship must be informed by and engage with a more extensive cross-disciplinary approach in order to arrive at an accurate picture of Heimat in the 21st century.

Rahul Gairola (English)
Queering Home: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Post-World War II Diasporic Culture
Gairola’s project attempts to comparatively survey cultural texts (literature, film, music) by queer African and Asian diasporas.  Gairola argues that these texts evince the ways in which such subjects complicate and re-appropriate the notion of “home.” While, on the one hand, the nation-state sets the terms for exclusion of these subjects according to race and sexuality, Asian and African diasporas “queer” the very notion of home in acts of resistance that emerge in diverse cultural sites from the end of Word War II to the present.

Jill Gatlin (English)
Nature, Waste, and the Everyday Landscape of Resistance: A Genealogy of U.S. Literary Environmentalism
Gatlin’s dissertation excavates a counter-history of American literary environmentalism, accounting for representations of pollution, waste, and toxics from 1860 to the present. Redeploying and revising traditional literary tropes of the natural landscape—such as the pastoral, the sublime, the frontier, and the wasteland—the texts she examines advance culturally and historically specific understandings of non-human nature and environmental hazard.  In doing so, they challenge problematic formulations of nationalist identity and delineate barriers to and catalysts for environmental justice.

Yurie Hong (Classics)
Gendered Conceptions: Reproductions of Birth and the Body in Greek Literature
Hong’s dissertation investigates the ways in which culturally influenced notions of the reproducing female body are mobilized in Greek medical, poetic, and historiographical texts of the classical period. It examines how literary constructions and uses of images of pregnancy and childbirth are appropriated in male discourses about elite literary, intellectual, and cultural production.

Ji-Young Um (English)
War without End: 20th Century U.S. Wars in Asia and Empire Structured in Dominance
Um’s dissertation project situates and theorizes America’s wars in Asia as a central rubric for understanding racial, national, and imperial formations in the 20th century. Her work explores the ways in which war narratives reveal the contradictions of and contestations over national and imperial formations, as well as the ways in which “war” and “peace” overlap and constitute one another.

2005-2006
Print version (pdf)

CROSSDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH CLUSTERS

Critical Medical Humanities

Organized by Janelle Taylor (Anthropology), Kelly Fryer-Edwards (Medical History & Ethics), Sara Goering (Philosophy), Lorna Rhodes (Anthropology), Linda Nash (History) and Helene Starks (Medical History & Ethics)

This research cluster engages scholarship emerging from perspectives that have pushed beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries in seeking to understand medicine in its many dimensions: as a socially authoritative form of knowledge about nature and the body; as a set of social practices; as a congeries of institutions; and as a site for the formation of subjectivities and for the exercise of governmentality. A faculty and graduate student reading group features visits from three outside speakers, once each quarter. Website

Cultural Dialogues in Opera
Organized by Shelley Lawson, Nichole Maiman, Stephen Rumph (Music History)

Opera—with its combination of poetry, literature, drama, music, art, and dance—is the most inherently interdisciplinary of all musical genres. Cultural Dialogues in Opera brings opera scholars together from divergent fields by providing space to discuss their own research and to examine the writings of other scholars, organizing talks by guest speakers who will to share their interdisciplinary operatic research, and presenting films about or featuring opera. Website

Modernist Studies Group
Organized by Sacha Frey, Matthew Levy, and Matthew Vechinski (English)

This graduate student research cluster engages various issues related to modernism as an interdisciplinary formation. The cluster encourages the participation of students working on visual, musical, cultural, or literary modernisms and historical modernity. Two visiting scholars will be invited to lecture and offer small seminars on topics related to modernisms or modernity, and associated reading groups will be scheduled. The cluster will also organize a work-in-progress series featuring current scholarship of University of Washington faculty. Website


PUBLIC HUMANITIES: ENGAGING THE COMMUNITY

The Living Art of Miguel de Cervantes: A Public Commemoration of the Quijote
Organized by Donald Gilbert-Santamaría (Spanish & Portuguese Studies)

The Living Art of Miguel de Cervantes is a three-day public celebration of the 400th anniversary of the publication of Don Quijote de la Mancha, perhaps the best-known literary work in the Spanish language. The commemoration has two main objectives, both of which derive from our understanding of the Quijote as a "living" work of art. First, the project will highlight the broad influence of Cervantes's work on later writers and artists who find themselves reinterpreting the novel for their own creative purposes. Second, the wide range of events that make up this commemoration are designed to encourage public engagement with Cervantes's novel in new and creative ways, bringing it to life, so to speak, for a new generation of readers. Website

Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project
Organized by James Gregory (History)

The Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project is a multi-year research project involving University of Washington students, faculty, community, and labor organizations. Its mission is to collect oral histories, photos, and other materials documenting the long history of civil rights struggles in Seattle and western Washington and to generate new research on the links between labor and racial justice campaigns in this region. Website

The September Project 2005
Organized by David Silver (Communication)

The September Project is a grassroots effort to encourage civic and campus events on freedom, democracy, and citizenship in libraries on or around September 11. Activities include reflection, discussion, and dialogue about the meaning of freedom, the role of information in promoting active citizenship, and the importance of literacy in making sense of the world around us. The project endeavors to increase and enhance participation locally, nationally, and internationally, and to nurture and sustain the project's information commons. Website

Silk Road Lecture and Seminar Series
Organized by Cynthea Bogel (Art History), Kyoko Tokuno (Jackson School of International Studies), Joel Walker (History), and Daniel Waugh (History)

This project continues the initiative begun in 2002 with "Silk Road Seattle," whose reach to a local, national, and international audience continues with its acclaimed website. Co-sponsored by the Silkroad Foundation, the new Silk Road lecture series will bring to campus specialists at the cutting edge of the study of Eurasian cultural history. Each will offer a public lecture and a seminar presentation. Website
CROSSDISCIPLINARY SYMPOSIA, COLLOQUIA, AND CONFERENCES

Cinema at City's Edge: Film and Urban Space in East Asia
Organized by Yomi Braester and James Tweedie (Comparative Literature)

"Cinema at the City's Edge" is an international conference devoted to the historically new urban spaces under construction in East Asia and their representation in film and other media. As it investigates the ways that this transformation of Asian cityscapes is visualized and mediated, the conference will stage an interdisciplinary dialogue among scholars of cinema, architecture, and urban studies, and it will place developments in the PRC, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and South Korea within a regional context. Website

Feminist Dialogues on Social Justice: Forging Articulations Across U.S.-based Anti Racist and Transnational Feminisms
Organized by Judith Howard (Women Studies and Sociology), Nancy Kenney (Women Studies and Psychology), Serena Maurer (Women Studies), Michelle McGowan (Women Studies), Dipika Nath (Women Studies), and Priti Ramamurthy (Women Studies)

This interdisciplinary conference will draw on U.S.-based anti-racist and transnational frameworks to conceptualize analytic and political connections across international and intranational perspectives, communities, and movements. The conference will generate analytics for the study of historical and contemporary national and transnational formations of genders, races, classes, sexualities, and other key systems of inequalities. These analytics will be articulated through three general themes: societally sanctioned violences, diasporas and migrations, and transnational sexualities. Website

Fictions of the Archives, Rumors of Insurrection
Organized by Gillian Harkins (English), Vicente Rafael (History), and Naomi Murakawa (Political Science)

This project comprises a working group that gathers faculty and graduate students across the disciplines to read recent scholarship on national and international theories of race and justice, and a colloquium featuring the work of key scholars in the fields of law, literature, and critical race studies. Through these channels the project will examine the relation between national and transnational legal institutions, philosophical explorations of law and justice, and analyses of economic, political, and cultural systems of violence and redress, focusing on the emergence of critical race studies in these contexts. Website

Is a History of the Cultural Revolution Possible?
Organized by Tani Barlow (History and Women Studies)

This workshop seeks to examine why and how a dispassionate, accurate, richly interpretive history of the Chinese Cultural Revolution might be written. The scholars involved seek ways to examine the historicity of the event and to address new questions to it. The workshop is held in honor of visiting Katz Lecturer Alain Badiou, whose involvement in Parisian Red Guard politics forms a complex strata of philosophy. Website

Public Rhetorics and Permanent War
Organized by Keith Feldman, Anoop Mirpuri, and Georgia Roberts (English)

This year-long symposium invites four prominent scholars, activists, and cultural workers to engage in a dialogue on the production and the role of public rhetorics during what has been theorized as a state of globalized permanent war. Framed within a multidisciplinary, cultural studies perspective, this series will include a broad range of speakers who will engage the problematic of public culture in dialogue with broader debates surrounding globalization, empire, legal violence, and human rights. Website

WPA: Public Arts in a Time of Crisis
Organized by Barry Witham, Kara Reilly, Elizabeth Bonjean, Amy Boyce, and Sydney Cheek O'Donnell (Drama), and Sonnet Retman (American Ethnic Studies)

This symposium will bring together scholars and artists to evaluate, interrogate, and celebrate the achievements of the largest arts funding project in the history of the United States, the Works Progress Administration. The three-day symposium will explore the fundamental issues affecting the arts in times of crisis: censorship, race as a defining characteristic of American national identity, the value of arts funding, and memory in cultural production. Website
LARGE-SCALE COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH, TEACHING, AND/OR PUBLIC PROJECTS

Cultural Studies Praxis Collective
Organized by Bruce Burgett (Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences and English), Kanta Kochhar-Lindgren (Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences)

The Cultural Studies Praxis Collective is a multi-year collaboration of faculty and academic staff at University of Washington, Bothell, University of Washington, Seattle, and Cascadia Community College. It focuses on the integration of diverse projects intended to accomplish three long-term goals: first, to generate and disseminate new research on the multiple locations of the humanities; second, to initiate and institutionalize curricular innovation across the three campuses; and third, to build and develop arts and cultural pathways for community-based research and teaching. The Collective will host public forums this year at all three collaborating locations. Website

Latinos in U.S. Popular Music
Organized by Shannon Dudley (Ethnomusicology), Michelle Habell-Pallan (American Ethnic Studies), and Marisol Berrios Miranda (Ethnomusicology)

Latino contributions to popular music in the United States are often either relegated to the margins and footnotes of a narrative dominated by the interaction of African and European Americans, or portrayed as an exotic resource for "American" musicians. This project works in opposition to these perspectives, researching the roles of U.S. Latino musicians as interpreters and disseminators of Latin American genres and highlighting their roles as innovators within genres of music that we understand to be indigenous to the United States, such as rock and roll, R&B, jazz, country/western, and hip hop.


2004-2005
Print version (pdf)

CROSSDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH CLUSTERS

Critical Medical Humanities
Organized by Janelle Taylor (Anthropology), Kelly Fryer-Edwards (Medical History & Ethics), Kari Tupper (Comparative History of Ideas), Lorna Rhodes (Anthropology), Linda Nash (History), and Sara Goering (Philosophy)

This crossdisciplinary research cluster engages scholarly work currently emerging at the intersections of a number of fields that is focused on the study of medicine in its many dimensions: as a socially authoritative form of knowledge about nature and the body; as a set of social practices; as a congeries of institutions; and as a site for the formation of subjectivities and for the exercise of governmentality. A faculty and graduate student reading group features visits from three outside speakers, once each quarter. The project seeks to lay the groundwork for establishing critical medical humanities as a strong, active, and visible research community at the UW by bringing together people with shared research interests who are currently relatively isolated within their respective departments, building community, and fostering substantive interdisciplinary conversations. Website

Digital Media Working Group: Interdisciplinary Conversations in Digital Media
Organized by Kirsten Foot (Communication), David Silver (Communication), Travers Scott (Digital Media Program), and Chunhua Weng (Biomedical and Health Informatics)

This interdisciplinary group of scholars engaged with the cultural transformations associated with new media sponsors study groups and presentations and encourages members to collaborate with community members and other disciplines. Activities throughout the year include presentations from UW faculty, graduate students, and invited speakers, panels on current issues in digital culture, and networking receptions that provide outreach and facilitate collaboration opportunities among people in various disciplines whose interests include new media.

Understanding Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discrimination
Organized by Jason Plaks (Psychology), Ratnesh Nagda (Social Work), Maurice Green (Information School), and Sonnet Retman (American Ethnic Studies)

This interdisciplinary research cluster is dedicated to research on stereotyping, prejudice, discrimination, and intergroup relations. It features a lecture series of nationally and internationally-regarded speakers from a variety of fields including psychology, law, history, and ethnic studies. In parallel with the speakers series, the research cluster also features a program of allied seminars and workshops in which members of the UW community discuss theoretical and applied issues raised by each speaker.
COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH

The Modern Girl Around the World
Organized by Tani Barlow (Women Studies), Madeleine Dong (History and Jackson School of International Studies), Uta Poiger (History), Priti Ramamurthy (Women Studies), Lynn Thomas (History), and Alys Weinbaum (English)

This collaborative research group seeks to explain the emergence of the Modern Girl as a global phenomenon in the early- to mid-20th century through an interdisciplinary investigation of global commodity and cultural flows, and modern processes of gender, racial, and national formation. In 2004-2005, the project comes to fruition with a culminating event, a major workshop, taking place in Tokyo in September 2004, and the completion of a manuscript, The Modern Girl Around the World: Globalization, Modernity, and Consumption, an anthology of essays by group members and invited scholars.

Islam, Asia, Modernity
Organized by Stephen Hanson (Political Science), Cabeiri Robinson (Jackson School of International Studies), Laurie Sears (History), K. Sivaramakrishnan (Anthropology), Keith Snodgrass (South Asia Center), and Sara Van Fleet (Southeast Asian Studies Center)

This two-day conference co-sponsored by the Asia centers of the Jackson School of International Studies brings together faculty, students, community intellectuals, and scholars from Asian and western societies to share their perspectives and diverse views about the changing practices and politics of Asian Islam—how these are studied, documented, taught, and represented in the academy and the media and how these practices affect society, politics, art, and culture in Asia. The conference consists of a public lecture by Ziauddin Sardar, two days of panel discussions, a cultural/musical performance event, and a dissertation workshop for invited graduate students working on issues related to the conference themes.

Placing the Humanities: New Locales, New Meanings
Organized by Bruce Burgett (Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, English) and Kanta Kochhar-Lindgren (Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences)

This collaborative workshop series is a sequence of nine events conducted on the UW Bothell campus by visiting scholars and at local sites where humanities-based inquiry intersects with creative and community practices. It brings together faculty from three local campuses to address two related questions: 1) How can the best traditions of humanities-based scholarship be (re)integrated into public conversations that emerge within diverse practices of place and community? 2) How can scholars most effectively engage with and learn from local community workers and sites? The project seeks to provide faculty with an opportunity to bridge the organizational divides among the campuses and sites, to develop models for integrating community workers into classrooms as well as providing students with access to community sites, and to advance the diverse research agendas of individual workshop participants. Brochure
PUBLIC HUMANITIES: ENGAGING THE COMMUNITY

Broadview University
Organized by Amy Reddinger (English)

During Autumn Quarter, four University faculty and graduate students from the English department lead a series of literature classes at Broadview Shelter—a housing program for homeless women and children. This program makes the University and its resources available to a population traditionally excluded from academia, and seeks to both empower the women as students and enrich and strengthen ties between the University and the community at large.

Children of War
Organized by Anthony Geist (Spanish & Portuguese Studies)

Children of War is a multi-layered project that explores the war experience in children's perspectives. The project showcases "They Still Draw Pictures: Children's Art in Wartime from the Spanish Civil War to Kosovo," an exhibition of drawings done by children caught in some of the 20th-century's most devastating conflicts. Accompanying the exhibition is a film series, an undergraduate course, and a public symposium convening survivors, historians, literary scholars, and psychologists. Website

Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project
Organized by James Gregory (History)

The Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project is a multi-year research project involving UW students, faculty, community, and labor organizations. Its mission is to collect oral histories, photos, and other materials documenting the long history of civil rights struggles in Seattle and western Washington and to generate new research on the links between labor and racial justice campaigns in this region. A museum exhibit, K-12 curricula, and a project website are planned. Website

The September Project
Organized by David Silver (Communication)

The September Project is a coordinated effort to foster a public dialogue on democracy and citizenship on September 11. Public spaces such as local libraries will serve as meeting places for talks, roundtables, and performances. The Project seeks to make 9/11 an annual day of reflection and discussion, locally, across the United States, and internationally. Website
CROSSDISCIPLINARY SYMPOSIA, COLLOQUIA, AND CONFERENCES

Africa in the World: Rethinking Area Studies
Organized by Lynn Thomas (History and African Studies, Jackson School of International Studies)

This speakers series seeks to create a campus-wide discussion on developing an expansive and outward-looking African Studies Program. The series includes three invited speakers, one per quarter, whose lectures are linked to related courses. The series will be of interest to a broad cross-section of the University of Washington community interested in international studies, area studies, and colonial/postcolonial studies. Website

American Jewish Writing Today
Organized by Naomi Sokoloff (Near Eastern Languages & Civilization and Jewish Studies, Jackson School of International Studies)

This project explores the explosion of American Jewish writing in fiction, drama, and essays since 1990 by organizing a new undergraduate course and campus symposium on the subject, and by coordinating these efforts and inquiries with Seattle's observance of the 350th anniversary of Jewish life in America and the public programming of Nextbook, a Jewish literary and cultural arts organization. Website

Feminist Conversations: Forging Articulations Between Anti-Racist and Transnational Scholarship
Organized by Judith Howard (Women Studies and Sociology), Nancy Kenney (Women Studies and Psychology), Serena Maurer (Women Studies), Michelle McGowan (Women Studies), Dipika Nath (Women Studies), and Priti Ramamurthy (Women Studies)

This series of interdisciplinary colloquia explores the relationships between U.S.-based anti-racist/multicultural scholarship with postcolonial/transnational feminist scholarship. These colloquia are intended to foster, on the one hand, analyses of the transnational in the U.S., and on the other hand, racialized examinations of the transnational. It is hoped that these modes of analysis will function as liberating models of scholarship and pedagogy for the academy as well as praxis in liberatory struggles globally.

Feminist Epistemologies, Methods, Metaphysics, and Science Studies
Organized by Lynn Hankinson Nelson (Philosophy)

This interdisciplinary conference brings together feminist scholars whose interests lie in epistemology, methodologies, metaphysics, and science studies. The conference is a forum in which to explore the diversity of feminist analyses in these areas, both as they diverge from established traditions, and as they extend some of the more promising lines now emerging within them. Website

Global Languages and Literatures: Multilingual and Transhistorical Conversations
Organized by Monika Kaup (English) and Anthony Geist (Spanish & Portuguese Studies)

This series addresses the globalization debate from a transhistorical and multilingual perspective. It reconsiders the present global hegemony of the U.S. and (American) English in light of the fact that, as late as 1500, both Islam and China were much better positioned than Europe to dominate the millennium that just ended in 2000. Website

Landscapes Imagined and Remembered
Organized by Paul Atkins, Davinder Bhowmik, and Edward Mack (Asian Languages & Literature)

This conference explores the ways in which landscape is an "annexation of nature by culture," as Simon Schama has written, focusing on the perceptual relationship between human beings and their environments, both natural and artificial, in Japanese literary texts from earliest times to the present. Such literary depictions, whether rich landscapes or barren anti-landscapes, are never free from the imprint of culture and cognition.

Latinos in U.S. Popular Music
Organized by Shannon Dudley (Ethnomusicology) and Michelle Habell-Pallan (American Ethnic Studies)

To lay the foundations of a long-term project that involves UW faculty and students in exhibition research and design, this project brings six scholars to campus this year for consultation and colloquia. Subsequent stages of the project will engage graduate students in ethnographic research on Latino music in the Northwest, and produce a museum exhibit in possible partnership with Experience Music Project. Website

Liberating Pedagogies: Locating Freedom in the Classroom
Organized by Stacy Grooters (English) and Riki Thompson (English)

In his final book, Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage, Paulo Friere writes that due to his respect for freedom, he has "always deliberately refused its distortion," especially when theorizing freedom's role in pedagogy. The "Liberating Pedagogies" series of lectures and accompanying workshops seeks to interrogate the role freedom plays in educational policies and theories and asks where freedom should be located in the classroom. Website

Luminous Psyche 2005: Selected Films of Bernardo Bertolucci
Organized by Albert Sbragia (French & Italian Studies)

This event explores the stunning cinema of Italy's most prominent living director, Bernardo Bertolucci. Seven Bertolucci films will be screened at the Seattle Art Museum during January-February 2005. After each film screening, a UW film scholar and a local psychoanalyst will briefly comment on the film and engage the audience in discussion. The final screening will include a round-table discussion with international Bertolucci scholars; Bertolucci has also been invited. An associated course will be offered to UW students.

Narrating Colonial Encounters: Germany in the Pacific Islands
Organized by Miriam Kahn (Anthropology) and Sabine Wilke (Germanics)

This international and interdisciplinary conference explores colonial encounters between Germany and the Pacific Islands, focusing on the rich body of literary and anthropological documents that narrate the encounter. It brings together people from a variety of disciplines and institutions around the world. In addition to the academic panels, a public component is included with such events as a reading by a Pacific Island author and a film showing by an award-winning Pacific Island writer and filmmaker.

Religion and Democratic Culture: The Problems and Possibilities for Peace
Organized by Cabeiri Robinson, Kyoko Tokuno, and James Wellman (Comparative Religion Program, Jackson School of International Studies)

This project undertakes a series of lectures and colloquia designed to produce cutting edge research analysis on the topic of religion, violence, and peace in the contemporary world. It extends the study of religion, conflict, and violence that was the focus of a year-long colloquium series and symposium in 2003-2004 to address the possibilities for peaceful resolution of religious conflicts within and between states and across global cultures.

Science Studies
Organized by Arthur Fine (Philosophy) and Simon Werrett (History)

This speaker series explores dramatic and important changes in our understanding of the sciences, technology, and medicine. Established speakers whose work exemplifies the most innovative and promising cross-disciplinary approaches to the sciences will present their work in lectures and discussions. Website


2003-2004

Print version (pdf)

CROSSDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH CLUSTERS

Early Modern Research Group (EMERGE)

Louisa Mackenzie (French and Italian Studies) and Benjamin Schmidt (History)

EMERGE explores early modernity from a transnational perspective—looking not only across Europe but also to the Americas, Asia, and Africa—and within a generous time frame, producing a more holistic perspective of cultural production than traditionally allotted to the Renaissance and thus allowing a deeper excavation of the period between the Middle Ages and Modernity. The project features lectures dedicated to the exploration of society and culture in the early modern period.

Expanding Disciplinary Representation in Digital Media Scholarship
Kirsten Foot (Communication), Beth Kolko (Technical Communication), and David Silver (Communication)

This interdisciplinary group of scholars engaged with the cultural transformations associated with new media sponsors study groups and presentations and encourages members to collaborate with community members and other disciplines. Activities throughout the year include presentations from scholars within the UW community and three outside speakers. The group also sponsors a series of networking receptions that provide outreach and identify collaboration opportunities for people in various disciplines whose interests include new media.

Science Studies
Monica Azzolini (French & Italian Studies), Arthur Fine (Philosophy), and Simon Werrett (History)

This speaker series addresses the flourishing interdisciplinary field of science studies, exploring the history, philosophy, sociology, and anthropology of the natural sciences, medicine, and technology. Six distinguished scholars whose work is representative of the interdisciplinary nature of the field will present their work over the course of the year, with opportunities for further discussion and interaction organized around each lecture.

Studies in Emotion and Affect
Carolyn Allen (English), Gillian Harkins (English), Jodi Melamed (English), and Kathleen Woodward (English)

The Studies in Emotion and Affect Research Group explores the fault lines of this invigorating interdisciplinary field of study. Rather than presuming the coherence of the field, the group investigates the different and sometimes incompatible objects, methods, and ends of scholarship carried on under this rubric, comparing research methods and hermeneutic models within and across disciplines. The project revolves around a speaker series of distinguished scholars whose work influences, appeals to, and challenges a broad range of scholars in the humanities and the social sciences.
COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH

Cultural Exchange Along the Silk Road: History, Art, Religion
Cynthea Bogel (Art History), Kyoko Tokuno (Comparative Religion, Jackson School of International Studies), and Daniel Waugh (History)

This project is developing web-based material and curriculum dealing with the "Silk Road" to support the expansion of the UW's Silk Road curriculum. The work involves writing web pages, digitizing images, and to the extent possible, translating and editing texts which have not been previously made available to English-speaking audiences.

Literacies of Transnational Migration
Jeffrey Chiu (English) and Kellie Holzer (English)

This year-long series of quarterly panel discussions and reading group meetings examines migrations as new flows of images, ideas and bodies constituted by reconfigured political, social and economic terrains and practices in transnational times. The series seeks to intervene in transnational theory and critique by staging interdisciplinary conversations on the study of migrations, creating collaborative endeavors that synthesize a variety of institutional locations, and generating new knowledge formations.

The Modern Girl Around the World
Tani Barlow (Women Studies), Madeleine Dong (History and Jackson School of International Studies), Uta Poiger (History), Priti Ramamurthy (Women Studies), Lynn Thomas (History), and Alys Weinbaum (English)

This collaborative and comparative project investigates the phenomenon of the Modern Girl as she made her appearance in societies all over the world during the 20th century, with a special focus on international commodity flows, colonial relations, and new media. Following a successful lectures series and presentations of their initial findings at several conferences, the group offered several undergraduate and graduate courses. The next phase focuses on co-organizing an international conference and publishing an anthology.
PUBLIC HUMANITIES: ENGAGING THE COMMUNITY

"Icon and Transformation" at the Jacob Lawrence Gallery
Stevan Harrell (Anthropology and Burke Museum) and Christopher Ozubko (Art)

This art exhibit, curated by Charles McKhann (Whitman College), Yang Fuquan (Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences), and Zhang Yunling (Yunnan Museum of Ethnography), showcases both the traditional ritual art of the dongba priesthood of the Naxi people of northwest Yunnan and the contemporary works created by Naxi artists innovating on the basis of the old ritual tradition. In addition to the exhibit itself, the project features two lectures on Naxi arts, a gallery tour by Professor McKhann, and a panel with Naxi artists and Northwest Native American artists.

Reverent Remembrance: Honoring the Dead
James Nason (Burke Museum)

For thousands of years human communities have prepared their dead for the afterlife and honored them in annual community celebrations that host the spirits of the deceased. Opening October 2, 2003, this Burke Museum exhibition explores the ancient Celtic and European roots of Halloween, the colorful and dramatic Mexican Day of the Dead, the roots of mummification and other death rituals in ancient Egypt, Indonesian cliff burials, and modern American memorials, including those following the 9/11 tragedy. This provocative new exhibit explores ceremonies where "the dead are always welcome, even if death itself is not."
CROSSDISCIPLINARY SYMPOSIA, COLLOQUIA, AND CONFERENCES

Information and the Quality of Life
David Levy (Information School)

In recognition of the emerging problems of the "information age," this conference explores the current state of information imbalance, begins to map its causes and conditions, and proposes remedial actions. The conference includes a keynote lecture, public forum, and panel discussion at Town Hall in Seattle.

Felliniana: An International Conference Celebrating Fellini's Cultural Legacy
Raimonda Modiano (English), Lance Rhoades (English), Albert Sbragia (French and Italian Studies), and Kari Tupper (Women Studies and Comparative History of Ideas)

Felliniana brings together the world's leading experts on cinema, art history, music, psychoanalysis, and feminist criticism, as well as Italian government officials and celebrated film directors and actors, to present a wide-ranging examination of Fellini's cultural legacy ten years after his death. Highlights include a Fellini film festival, an academic conference, a lecture series, an art exhibit of original drawings by Fellini at the Henry Art Gallery, an exhibit of photographs on the film 8 1/2 from the collection of Tazio Secchiaroli, and musical performances by the Orchestra Nostalgico from San Francisco. Website

Human Rights From the Bottom Up
Michael McCann (Political Science) and Angelina Godoy (Jackson School of International Studies)

This series of events co-sponsored by the Comparative Law and Society Studies Center aims to examine human rights issues and institutions from the perspectives of the individuals and communities in whom rights are vested—and particularly of those in marginalized communities, whose rights are most frequently violated. Activities include a speaker series in Autumn and Winter 2003, culminating in an international, interdisciplinary conference on this theme in Spring 2004.

Engaging the Culture of Power In and Out of the Classroom
Stacy Grooters (English) and Brooke Stafford (English)

This series of lectures and accompanying workshops aims to investigate the workings of what Lisa Delpit terms "the culture of power" that operates within educational systems. More precisely, the series attempts to illuminate the ways "scholarly" practices and structures outside the classroom serve to perpetuate the influence of the culture of power within it.

Religion, Conflict, and Violence: Exploring Patterns Past and Present, East and West
Kyoko Tokuno (Comparative Religion, Jackson School of International Studies) and James Wellman (Comparative Religion, Jackson School of International Studies)

Recent religious violence in the West and East has come as a surprise to some; yet, as this series argues, violence and religion have long been associated. This series will compare contemporary and pre-modern religious conflict, cross-culturally and across world religions in order to illuminate patterns of violence and their effect on the modern world.

2002-2003
Print version (pdf)

CROSSDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH CLUSTERS

Digital Media Working Group

David Silver (Communication), Beth Kolko (Technical Communication), and Kirsten Foot (Communication)

The Digital Media Working Group explores the cultural, social, and aesthetic elements of digital media and is organizing a lecture series comprised of scholars, artists, and technologists working in the field.

Early Modern Research Group
Louisa Mackenzie (French and Italian Studies) and Benjamin Schmidt (History)

The Early Modern Research Group explores early modernity from a transnational perspective—looking not only across Europe but also to the Americas, Asia, and Africa—and within a generous time frame, producing a more holistic perspective of cultural production than traditionally allotted to the Renaissance and thus allowing a deeper excavation of the period between the Middle Ages and Modernity. The project features lectures dedicated to the exploration of society and culture in the early modern period.
COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH

The Modern Girl Around the World
Lynn Thomas (History), Tani Barlow (Women Studies), Madeleine Yue Dong (Jackson School of International Studies), Uta Poiger (History), Priti Ramamurthy (Women Studies), and Alys Weinbaum (English)

This collaborative and comparative project investigates the phenomenon of the Modern Girl as she made her appearance in societies all over the world during the 20th century, with a special focus on international commodity flows, colonial relations, new media, the rise of welfare states, and protectionist ideology. Following a successful lectures series and presentations of their initial findings at several conferences last year, this group is entering the next phase of the research project, including the development of a database.

The Second Golden Age of Mexican Cinema
Anne Doremus (Spanish and Portuguese Studies), Cynthia Duncan (Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, UW-Tacoma), and Cynthia Steele (Spanish and Portuguese Studies)

This group examines how the leading Mexican directors of the 1990s and early 2000s engage with Golden Age (1930s –1950s) Mexican cinema, challenging received notions of national, transnational, ethnic, class, and gender identity. Viewing and discussion of fifteen films and related theoretical and critical readings will lead to the preparation of a collection of essays and interviews for publication. The project will also include the screening of films by two leading Mexican directors in the Seattle and Tacoma communities, an invitation for the directors to discuss their work with classes, and a Teachers as Scholars seminar on Mexican cinema for K-12 teachers.

Thinking Sex in Transnational Times
Bruce Burgett (American Studies, UW-Bothell) and Chandan Reddy (English)

This project assesses cross-regional and cross-cultural studies in sex and sexuality as well as the global dimensions of modern sexual discourses, practices, and histories. Bringing seven speakers to campus and inspiring three seminar courses, this project is designed to break new ground in Lesbian-Gay and Queer Studies, Area Studies, and Ethnic and Gender Studies. Website
PUBLIC HUMANITIES: ENGAGING THE COMMUNITY

Contemporary History in Northwest Coast Native American Art
Robin Wright (Art History, Burke Museum)

This public lecture series accompanies the Burke Museum's major exhibition, Out of the Silence: The Enduring Power of the Totem Pole (October 2002 – September 2003). The lecture series will examine the dramatic history of Northwest Coast Native art over the last fifty years through presentations by leading scholars and Native artists.

Myra's War
Steven Pearson (Drama), Robyn Hunt (Drama), Maria Simpson (Dance), and Peter Kyle (Dance and Drama)

This performance project consists of a new theatre/dance/music work, performances, and lectures inspired by the work of Myra Hess, the British pianist who filled the empty National Gallery with concerts while bombs fell on war-torn London. Designed not only to create a new work of art, this project will also facilitate discussion regarding the role of the artist in society, especially as it is re-defined by political or social crisis.

Seattle Humanities Forum: From the Missing: A Conversation on Theresa Hak Kyung Cha
Robin Held (Henry Art Gallery)

Held in conjunction with The Dream of the Audience: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha at the Henry Art Gallery, this panel will take as its focus the proliferating, complicated significance of "missing" as a conceptual and linguistic cue from which much of Cha's work is produced and to which it responds. The panel will entertain, among other things: the terms of Cha's engagement with the politics of nostalgia of suffering and loss; the ways in which the focus on the exilic subject challenges the logics of different modes of representation; the dilemmas and problems of Cha's attempts to speak "from the missing," from the displaced female subject in particular, and from the hidden gendered circuits of global migrancy; and the relationship between corporeality or materiality and the vanished or un-representable.

Texts and Teachers
Gary Handwerk (Comparative Literature) and Willis Konick (Comparative Literature)

Now in its third year, the Texts and Teachers program is a curriculum development and outreach program designed to foster ongoing curricular development and collaboration between university literature departments and high school English programs. UW faculty and local teachers participate in a summer workshop and plan courses that they teach in tandem at both the high school and university levels during the academic year, enabling productive interaction between faculty and students at these levels.

UW Young Humanities Scholars Program
Marc Lange (Philosophy)

This enrichment program in the humanities for advanced Puget Sound high school students, to be taught by UW faculty on the UW Seattle campus, will expose students to crossdisciplinary scholarly traditions that are outside the scope of traditional secondary education. Students will experience the intellectual challenge and rewards of serious study in areas such as art and architectural history, comparative religion, literature, philosophy, international affairs, classics, film, politics, linguistics, and history.
CROSSDISCIPLINARY SYMPOSIA, COLLOQUIA, AND CONFERENCES

Asian Cinema and Visual Culture
Yomi Braester (Comparative Literature)

Held in conjunction with the Seattle International Film Festival, this conference brings the Asian Cinema Studies Society to the University of Washington and will include a one-day workshop for junior scholars, who will produce an edited volume of works on cinema and visual culture in modern China.

A Celebration of Polish History and Culture at the University of Washington
Kat Dziwirek (Slavic Languages and Literature)

Focusing on contributions to Polish and American cultures by several prominent Polish-Americans through a series of lectures in diverse fields including, film, history, literature, architecture, politics, and art, the project, which marks the fiftieth anniversary of teaching Polish at the UW, will enhance the Eastern European component of the Slavic department and stimulate intellectual exchange on cultural issues in the broader community.

Criticism and Social Action: Rhetorical Dimensions of Electronic Texts
Barbara Warnick (Communication)

The conference centers on an undeveloped area of research that brings rhetorical critical study and humanistic perspectives to the study of new media texts on the Internet and World Wide Web. Providing mentorship to young scholars in this area, as well as promoting an emerging field of interest in the analysis of digital media, the conference will feature thirty papers, eight of which will be published in a special issue of The Electronic Journal of Communication.

Displaced Dialects: From Local Language to Panhellenic Poetics
Timothy Power (Classics) and Olga Levianouk (Classics)

This symposium explores the changing nature of the study of Greek dialects from the specialized realm of historical linguistics to a subject around which to organize the discussion of communal identities and literary production. Bringing together scholars who approach the questions posed by ancient dialects from a variety of crossdisciplinary perspectives, the symposium will explore the manifold social, historical, ideological, and poetic implications of the use of local dialects in panhellenic poetry.

Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) Reunion 1966-2002
Patricia Failing (Art History)

This symposium and performance event showcases the history of Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), a legendary group of 1960s and 1970s artists and engineers whose groundbreaking collaborations paved the way for new art using electronic media. The project will include a reunion of E.A.T. founders and Northwest artists and engineers to highlight the accomplishments and regional influences as well as consider the legacy of E.A.T. for artists working with new technologies in the 21st century. Website

Historical Aspects of the Chinese Language
Anne Yue-Hashimoto (Asian Languages and Literature)

This international symposium brings together scholars in the forefront of the field of Chinese linguistics on the centennial birthday of the late Li Fang-Kuei, one of the pre-eminent founders of modern Chinese linguistics, and the date of the opening of a Chinese Linguistics Center in his name at the UW. The symposium will address current questions on the central problems of Chinese language history.

Music in the Making, Music in the Mind: The Next Forty Years of Ethnomusicology at the University of Washington
Phillip Schuyler (Music)

The state of ethnomusicology in the 21st century is the topic of this conference, which coincides with the fortieth anniversary of the Ethnomusicology Program at the University of Washington. The conference will examine the intellectual tradition and evolution of the field of ethnomusicology, as well as plot the trajectory of the field in the future. UW Visiting Artists will discuss the impact of the discipline on music and music education in non-Western countries. Symposium sessions will feature discussion among scholars from a variety of fields and a dialogue with past and present UW Visiting Artists, emphasizing the interdisciplinary and collaborative nature of ethnomusicology and highlighting the historical ties of this program with community arts organization Jack Straw Productions.

Recasting Asia America
Shawn Wong (English) and Chandan Reddy (English)

Located at the intersection of the principal political, economic, and cultural forces of the U.S. nation-state and the set of international political economic conditions that are generally termed globalization, Asian American Studies, like other interdisciplinary endeavors, has in the last decade been engaged in critical conversations about the nature and context of its inquiry, its objects and methods of study, its institutionalization, and its changing political constituencies. This year-long speaker series designed to foster a better understanding of the effects of these transformations, aims, in particular, to rethink the national biases that currently characterize the fields of Asian American studies and stress multiplicities, differences, and non-equivalency across situated positions as a new ground for inquiry.

Semantics and Linguistic Theory
Toshiyuki Ogihara (Linguistics)

The Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT) conference in Spring 2003 will focus on natural language semantics. The keynote lectures will be compiled into a publication.

Transnational Times, Transnational Literacies: A Lecture Series on Critical Pedagogies
Todd Tietchen (English), Rahul Gariola (English), Leslie Larkin (English), Kellie Holzer (English), and Jeff Chiu (English)

This graduate student-organized lecture series aims to increase communication and interaction between disciplines in the humanities and re-invigorate the university as a public forum. Speakers will be asked to imagine and model transdisciplinary methodologies that can encourage educators to overcome the compartmentalization of knowledge and reconstitute spatial, relational, and intellectual boundaries of traditional classrooms and disciplines.
PROPOSAL WRITING INCENTIVE AWARD

Cultural Production and Collective Memory in East Asia
Tani Barlow (Women Studies) and Madeleine Yue Dong (Jackson School of International Studies)

A grant proposal, subsequently funded by the Rockefeller Foundation as Critical Asian Studies: Forum on Trauma, History, and Asia, a four-year Rockefeller residency site exploring the representation of traumatic histories and injustices across Asia and Asian America. The project, which will be housed in the Simpson Center, will bring together UW scholars with visiting fellows from a variety of East and Southeast Asian countries to foster new work in this area, participate in annual workshops, and allow students to participate in New Asianist scholarship.

Ottoman Texts Archive Project Grant Proposal
Walter Andrews (Near Eastern Languages and Civilization)

A grant proposal to the National Endowment for the Humanities to support the collection of Ottoman Turkish texts transliterated into a Romanized alphabet in an online archive. The archive will provide accessibility to the primary texts of the Ottoman Empire, the majority of which are currently inaccessible to Ottomanist scholars. The project has been underway at the University of Washington since 1986.

2001-2002

Print version (pdf)

CROSSDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH CLUSTERS


Early Modern Research Group

Barbara Fuchs (English) and Benjamin Schmidt (History)

Support for an interdisciplinary research cluster of faculty and graduate students featuring lectures dedicated to the exploration of society and culture in the early modern period. This group will explore early modernity from a transnational perspective—looking not only across Europe but also to the Americas, Asia, and Africa—and within a generous time frame, producing a more holistic perspective of cultural production than traditionally allotted to the Renaissance and thus allowing a deeper excavation of the period between the Middle Ages and Modernity. The lecture series will begin with Claire Sponsler (English, University of Iowa) on October 15, 2001.

Project Cinema: Film Studies in the Twenty-First Century
Jennifer Bean (Cinema Studies), Yomi Braester (Comparative Literature and Asian Languages and Literature), and Eric Ames (Germanics)

Support for a research cluster dedicated to the exploration and elaboration of theoretical and historical paradigms now developing in film and media studies. A lecture series composed of three public speakers, one per quarter, will be inaugurated in collaboration with a film conference, "Emergent Forms," to be held on November 7-9, 2001. The speaker series will extend the conversations raised by the conference across the course of the year, offering an opportunity to reflect on themes of political, aesthetic and cultural interest in today's visual world.
COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH

The Modern Girl Around the World
Lynn Thomas (History), Tani Barlow (Women Studies), Madeleine Yue Dong (Jackson School of International Studies), Susan Glenn (History), Uta Poiger (History), Priti Ramamurthy (Women Studies), and Alys Weinbaum (English)

This collaborative and comparative project investigates the phenomenon of the Modern Girl as she made her appearance in societies all over the world during the twentieth century, with a special focus on international commodity flows, colonial relations, new media, the rise of welfare states, and protectionist ideology. Vicki Ruiz (History and Chicana/Latino Studies, UC Irvine) will lecture on the Modern Girl on November 5, 2001; Tim Burke (History, Swarthmore) will lecture on February 23, 2002.
PUBLIC HUMANITIES: ENGAGING THE COMMUNITY

Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Artifacts from China's Cultural Revolution
Stevan Harrell (Anthropology, Burke Museum)

Support for an exhibit, "Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Artifacts from China's Cultural Revolution," at the Burke Museum from January 15 through March 5, 2002, and for an accompanying public symposium, scheduled for February 8-9, 2002, on the Cultural Revolution in Memory and Artifact.

A Sense of Where We Are: History and Literature of the Pacific Northwest
John Findlay (History)

Support for a Summer 2001 undergraduate course, lecture series, and website which examine the intersection of Pacific Northwest history and literature. Prominent regional writers Ivan Doig, Tess Gallagher, James Welch, Mary Glearman Blew, David Wagoner, and David James Duncan will work and talk with students and public audiences on topics in regional literature. This course is designed especially for K-12 teachers, who have expressed the need for coursework in the realms of regional history and literature.

The Languages of Emotional Injury
Roger Simpson (School of Communications) and Jeffrey Cantrell (Radiology)

Support for a public program which will bring distinguished poets and journalists of trauma together to present their work and to engage in dialogue about their different ways of representing human suffering and resiliency. Five evening programs, scheduled for April 22-26, 2002, will present the paired readings of a poet and a journalist. Morning sessions will engage the poets and journalists with smaller audiences. The entire content of the readings and conferences will be streamed for an international audience on www.counterbalancepoetry.org. Among the poets are Carolyn Forché, Frances Driscoll, Semezdin Mehmedinovic, and Jimmy Santiago Baca; among the journalists, Ted Conover and Debra McKinney.

The Silk Road
Daniel C. Waugh (History and Jackson School of International Studies), Joel Walker (History and Comparative Religion), and Cynthea Bogel (Art History)

Support for a rich variety of public education projects involving the University of Washington, the Seattle Art Museum, and the Seattle Symphony, as well as individuals and organizations outside the Puget Sound region. The subject is "The Silk Road," understood as shorthand for the chronologically and geographically broad cultural and economic interactions across all of Eurasia. Among other activities, this project will include a photography exhibit, a website, teacher workshops, and a lecture series with Daniel Waugh on March 28, 2002; Boris Marshak (Head of the Central Asian and Caucasus section of the Oriental Division of the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia) on April 11, 2002; and Roderick Whitfield (Percival David Professor of Chinese and East Asian Art, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London) on April 25, 2002. Website

Honoring Nikkei Heritage in the American West

Gail Dubrow (Urban Design and Planning) and Karen Cheng (Art)

Support for an artbook and Seattle Humanities Forum on the subject of sites significant in Japanese American heritage, with the focus on the meanings these sites hold in the collective memory of Nikkei communities in the American West. The richly illustrated publication is poised at the intersection between public art and scholarly work and includes original works of art.

People of the Forest Project
Matthew Krashan (Meany Hall for the Performing Arts)

Support for a Seattle Humanities Forum developed in collaboration with the UW Program on Africa. It will address the issues of Mbuti culture, the environment, and the rights of indigenous peoples, and will be offered in conjunction with Alonzo King's "People of the Forest Project," a presentation in the UW World Series, Meany Hall for the Performing Arts, October 29 through November 3, 2001.
CROSSDISCIPLINARY SYMPOSIA, COLLOQUIA, AND CONFERENCES

Emerging Forms: Cinema, Narrative, and Technique in the Twenty-First Century
Rahul Gairola (English) and Members of the UW Film Colloquium

Support for the Second Annual Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Film Conference and Short Film Festival to be held November 7-9, 2002, in conjunction with the research cluster "Project Cinema: Film Studies in the Twenty-First Century." The conference will highlight innovative studies of cinema, both nationally and internationally, offering panels and films which investigate such topics as postcolonial/world cinema, emerging voices, film forms, marginal narratives (ethnicity, queerness, gender), and innovations in filmmaking (DVD, digital video).

New Studies in Slavery Symposium
Stephanie M.H. Camp (History)

Support for a one-day symposium on the topic of "New Studies in American Slavery," scheduled for May 24, 2002. Participants will discuss and debate the new ways slavery is being studied, with a focus on the implications of this research for politics and for the study of race and race relations in contemporary society.

Studies in the History of the English Language
Anne Curzan (English)

Support for an interdisciplinary conference devoted to the history of English to be held at the University of Washington on March 22-24, 2002. This conference will bring together some of the world's leading scholars in English historical linguistics to discuss unresolved questions about the development of English as well as pedagogical issues involved in teaching the history of English.

2001 Meeting of the North American Society for the Study of Romanticism

Gary Handwerk (English and Comparative Literature) and Marshall Brown (English and Comparative Literature)

Support for the ninth annual meeting of the North American Society for the Study of Romanticism, to be held at the University of Washington, August 16-19, 2001.

Paradigms Lost and Found: The Implications of the Human Genome Project
Felicia Gonzalez (Henry Art Gallery)

Support for a symposium on April 5-7, 2002 at the Henry Art Gallery. The symposium will explore issues raised by the exhibition "Gene(sis): Contemporary Art Explores Human Genomics," gathering together some of the most prominent thinkers in the country. Visual art, along with other media, can provide the metaphors and images to connect scientific findings with our daily lives, and this symposium will provide a forum for stimulating discussion among artists, scientists, and museum visitors.

Human Agency in a Globalizing World
Uta Poiger (History) and Nikhil Singh (History)

Support for a year-long lecture series on "Human Agency in a Globalizing World" featuring Amy Kaplan (English and American Studies, Mount Holyoke College) on October 11, 2001; Paul Gilroy (Sociology and African American Studies, Yale University) on January 28, 2002; Mahmood Mamdani (Herbert Lehman Professor of Government in the Departments of Anthropology and Political Science, and Director of the Institute of African Studies at Columbia University, New York) on March 7, 2002; Michael Hardt (Literature and Romance Studies, Duke University) on April 8, 2002; and Aihwa Ong (Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley) on May 9, 2002. The series will draw together a broad audience from the humanities and social sciences through discussions of the issue and concept of agency, especially germane today given that processes of globalization have come to overwhelm many of our discussions of social and political projects.

Nature and its Publics in the Tropical World
K. Sivaramakrishnan (Anthropology), Gary Handwerk (Comparative Literature), Lucy Jarosz (Geography), Linda Nash (History), and Priti Ramamurthy (Women Studies)

Support for a collaborative research group and a series of colloquia focused on the representations of nature and debates over the natural in tropical contexts around the world. The lecture series will explore the ways in which issues of ethno-nationalism, race, class, and gender have influenced public culture, the literary imagination, and political disputes over the conservation of nature in the tropics. Speakers include Ann Gold (Religious Studies, Syracuse) on January 31, 2002; Donald Moore (Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley) on February 21, 2002; Warwick Anderson (History of Science and Medicine, University of California, San Francisco) on April 18, 2002; and Alan Bewell (Comparative Literature, University of Toronto) on May 30, 2002.

Luis Buñuel: The Liberating Eye
Cynthia Steele (Spanish and Portuguese) and Steve Shaviro (English)

Support for a one-day symposium, scheduled for November 10, 2001, which will focus on the cinema of Spanish director Luis Buñuel, in conjunction with a new team-taught course, "The Liberating Eye: The Cinema of Luis Buñuel" (SPAN 491/C Lit 497), and a Teachers as Scholars seminar. This conference will bring together scholars from Europe, the U.S., and Mexico, to reevaluate Buñuel's unique symbiosis of surrealism, anarchism, melodrama, and contradictory gender politics. The project will also include a film series in the fall quarter.

Western Conference on Linguistics
Richard Wright (Linguistics)

Support for keynote speakers for the annual Western Conference on Linguistics to be held on October 26-28, 2001. The conference will feature sessions on syntax, phonology, semantics, pragmatics, phonetics, sociolinguistics and historical linguistics, in addition to two sessions of particular regional interest: a special session on Spanish linguistics and a special session on languages of First Nations.
CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT

Texts and Teachers
Gary Handwerk (English and Comparative Literature) and Willis Konick (English and Comparative Literature)

Support for the expansion of the UW Texts and Teachers program, a curriculum development and outreach effort that enables the collaborative teaching of university and high school courses. The one-week summer workshop is designed to welcome new high school teachers to the program.

Program in Textual Studies
Raimonda Modiano (English and Comparative Literature) and Míceál Vaughan (English and Comparative Literature)

Support to bring guest speakers to campus to enrich the three core courses of the graduate program in Textual Studies. Concerned with the maintenance, preservation, and transmission of texts, Textual Studies offers three core courses, Hypertext, Textual Theory, and Oral and Scribal Texts. These visitors will also contribute to a faculty-graduate student colloquium on the development of undergraduate general education courses in textual studies.

In Vivo: Traversing Scientific and Artistic Observations of Life
Phillip Thurtle (School of Communications, CHID), Elizabeth Rutledge (School of Medicine), and Marta Lyall (Art)

Support for the development and offering of a team-taught course which will encourage students to consider the commonality in all human understanding and observation through a study of the theme of emergence. The course's most innovative element is an optional laboratory component that will involve the overlaying of the latest laboratory techniques from biological science, art, and digital communications. Experiment will not only be used as an instrument of discovery, but also as a powerful critical tool.

2000-2001

Print version (pdf)

COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH

Memory, Identity, Conflict, and Communication
James Clowes (Comparative History of Ideas )

Support for the creation of a faculty research group that will help devise the central theoretical core of the Identity, Conflict, and Communication international studies series. The faculty group will develop and participate in the seminar HUM 498, "Memory, Identity, Conflict and Communication," to be offered Spring 2001. The group will also host a region wide conference on these themes.

Health, Healing, and the Arts in Africa
Lucy Jarosz (Geography) and Sandra Chait (Program on Africa)

Support for a collaborative, interdisciplinary year-long program of lectures, roundtables, cultural events, and courses centered on the concept of Health, Healing, and the Arts in Africa. The goal of the project is to promote scholarly conversation at the UW as well as in the local community—in particular the high schools of Western Washington. The objective of these conversations is to broaden the narrow image so often ascribed to Africa.
PUBLIC HUMANITIES: ENGAGING THE COMMUNITY

2001 and Beyond: The Films of Stanley Kubrick
Albert Spragia (French and Italian, Cinema Studies)

Support for a retrospective to bring to Seattle and the UW five of the most famous films of the internationally controversial American-British filmmaker Stanley Kubrick. Each film will be introduced by a visiting scholar who will also answer questions.

Culturas de las Américas
Jennifer Sepez Aradanas (Latin American Studies) and Cynthia Steele (Latin American Studies)

Support for a year-long series of presentations by artists, musicians, and other performers to highlight the diversity in Latin American and U.S. Latino cultural expressions.

Better Living Through Science: Contemporary Art and Human Genomics Forum
Richard Andrews (Henry Art Gallery)

Support for a forum that will explore the implications of the human genome project on our understanding of human life and identity. The event will feature 1) artists and collaborators in intensive workshops; 2) a roundtable discussion with artists, scientists, community members, and academic partners; and 3) public presentations by artist/collaborator teams.

Distinguished Poets Series
Roger Simpson (Communications) and Jeffrey Cantrell (Radiology)

Support for a reading series of renowned poets who will visit Seattle for readings and related educational activities with university and local high school students. The series will aim to increase university, community, and public access to great writers—especially those whose art can have a social impact

Graphic Design in the Mechanical Age—Discussion Forums
Tamara Moats (Henry Art Gallery)

Support for a series of three programs to accompany the Henry Art Gallery exhibition Graphic Design in the Mechanical Age: Selections from the Merrill Berman Collection, a survey of European graphic design from between the world wars. The series format will consist of three evening discussions combining a lecture by a visiting scholar with a response by a University of Washington faculty member. Its content will focus on the aesthetics, influence, and social/political message contained in the images designed during this productive and experimental period in graphic design.
CROSSDISCIPLINARY SYMPOSIA, COLLOQUIA, AND CONFERENCES

Desire Unlimited: The Cinema of Pedro Almodóvar
Anthony Geist (Spanish and Portuguese)

Support for a one-day conference to focus on the films of Pedro Almodóvar. Invited scholars will present papers followed by a round-table discussion with local film studies faculty, members of the Seattle film community, and the audience. As a capstone to the event, Almodóvar will present his most recent film and discuss it with the audience.

Graphic Design in the Mechanical Age: Lecture Series
Christopher Ozubko (Art)

Support for a lecture series hosted by the School of Art which will bring three outstanding European designers/educators to Seattle for presentations related to the Henry Art Gallery's exhibition on graphic design, as well as current issues of contemporary design. The series will include public lectures, one-on-one forums, and class activities for the School of Art with each guest designer.

The Western Humanities Alliance Conference: The Pious and the Profane: Religion and Public Culture
David Knechtges (Asian Languages and Literature), Sarah Abrevaya Stein (Jackson School of International Studies), Christine Goettler (Art History), Brannon Wheeler (Near Eastern Languages and Civilization), and Eugene Vance (Comparative Literature)

The Simpson Center organized and hosted the 19th annual Western Humanities Alliance Conference. A product of two year's worth of work by faculty and staff, the conference brought an outstanding group of scholars to campus. Talks and discussions were organized around 5 major themes: 1) Ritual and Ceremony, 2) Place, Space and Boundaries, 3) Life and the Afterlife, 4) Cultures of Religion, and 5) Contested Discourses.

Materializing Modernity in China
Madeleine Yue Dong (Jackson School of International Studies)

Support for a conference to reflect upon the changing shape of Chinese national and cultural identities over the last century and to prepare participants papers for inclusion in an edited volume.

American Area Studies Conference
Nikhil Pal Singh (History)

Support for a three-day summer institute at which an interdisciplinary collaborative research group of social science and humanities scholars will work to develop a new center on American Studies. This center will focus on advancing the current turn within the discipline away from an exclusive emphasis upon U.S. national culture and history and towards a wider and more complex understanding of local, regional, and transnational processes and developments. The institute will focus on issues of program content, future curricular development in graduate studies, and the expansion and co-ordination of faculty resources.

Information and the Human Body
Phillip Thurtle (Communications) and Robert Mitchell (Comparative Literature)

Support for an interdisciplinary project to promote crosstalk between departments on the subject of the human body as a "semiotic device." This project will include faculty and public colloquiums featuring visiting scholars who will speak on the topic.

Ladino in Print
Sarah Abrevaya Stein (History)

Support for a symposium, "Ladino in Print," hosted by the Jewish Studies Program and Spanish and Portuguese Studies. The symposium is designed to bring scholars of Ladino texts in dialogue with one another, to generate an innovative anthology on Ladino print culture, and to enrich the field of Sephardic Studies at the University of Washington.


1999-2000

COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH

Comparative Islamic Studies
Brannon Wheeler, Ilse Cirtautas, Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak, and Deborah Wheeler (Near Eastern Languages & Civilization)

A continuing project and seminar on the study and teaching of Islam in the context of the liberal arts curriculum and the design of interdepartmental programs in Islamic Studies, and including the publication of essays and curricular materials.

Performing the Subject
Jane Brown (Germanics), Marshall Brown (English), Robert Dahlstrom (Drama), Richard Will (Music History), Claudia Zahn (Music)

A project examining eighteenth-century dramatic characters from the standpoints of literary history, musicology, critical theory, opera production, and stage design, and including a graduate seminar with visits by leading performers, directors, and scholars.

Dialogues Between the Humanities and Social Sciences
Laurie Sears and Lynn Thomas (History), Victoria Lawson and Matthew Sparke (Geography)

A project linking literary and social science theory, empirical studies and literary texts, and including a graduate seminar with outside speakers.
PUBLIC HUMANITIES: ENGAGING THE COMMUNITY

Inside/Out: New Chinese Art Exhibit
Richard Andrews (Henry Art Gallery)

A symposium/lecture series, along with a film series and teacher training, in conjunction with the first major international exhibition to explore how social, economic, and cultural changes have influenced artists in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, as well as artists who have emigrated to the West in the later 1980s.

Mountain Patterns: The Survival of Nuosu Culture in China
Stevan Harrell (Anthropology)

An exhibit about the Nuoso people of China at the Burke Museum, including a graduate museology seminar, a speaker series, outreach to local schools, publication of an exhibit catalogue, and a Seattle Humanities Forum.

Univer+City
The Simpson Center organized and hosted an ambitious colloquium that brought together approximately 125 leaders of Seattle's cultural organizations together with the Mayor and members of city government and University administrators and faculty to discuss ways of creating stronger partnerships and collaborative projects. Keynote speakers included Julie Ellison (Michigan) and Mary Schmidt Campbell (NYU). Panels including President Richard McCormick and Dean David Hodge also addressed the assembled group.
CROSSDISCIPLINARY SYMPOSIA, COLLOQUIA, AND CONFERENCES

The German "Wende" and the Transformation of Europe
Anke Biendarra (Germanics)

A conference reflecting on the fall of the Berlin Wall and ensuing German reunification from the perspectives of history, anthropology, and political sociology, and including a teachers' workshop and a graduate student panel.

Comparative Religion Program Twenty-Five Year Anniversary Project
Eugene Webb (Comparative Religion, International Studies)

A commemoration of the anniversary of the Comparative Religion Program to create a permanent outreach and promotional infrastructure for all program endeavors centering in a six-part lecture series on Jerusalem in the western religious tradition.

Modernism Workshop
Jessica Burstein (English)

An interdisciplinary forum on artistic and cultural modernism (1890-1940), including readings, manuscript critiques, workshop presentations, and lectures by visiting speakers.

International Conference on Humanistic Discourse
Leroy Searle (English) and John Treat (Asian Languages and Literature)

An international conference on scholarly communication and endangered languages.

Transforming Public and Academic Cultures: American Ethnic Studies for the Next Millennium
Michelle Habell-Pallan (Ethnic Studies)

A two-day symposium and performance series highlighting multi-disciplinary scholarship and artistic perspectives that examined relationships between public and academic cultures relating to American Ethnic Studies in the twenty-first century.

African Studies Literary Series
Sandra Chait (English)

Readings of creative works by UW African and African Diaspora students as well as by visiting African or African Diaspora writers.

Prayer, Magic and the Stars
Scott Noegel (Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations), Brannon Wheeler (Near Eastern Languages and Civilization), Joel Walker (History)

A conference investigating communal and individual techniques utilized in the Near East to gain access to divine power.

Contemporary Issues in Printmaking
Shirley Scheier (Art)

A three-week conference including artist lectures, panel discussions, and workshops to strengthen ties between UW art students and the Seattle artistic community, foster the exchange of ideas among local and national arts groups, and reflect on the history and transitions of the past thirty years.


1998-1999

COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH

Word and Image
Noah Simblist (Art)

Support for a year long program to bring paired artists and critics to campus for brief residencies, with lectures on contemporary art and criticism, and the relation between them, including workshops and exhibitions of work

Vienna, 1900
Richard Gray (Germanics)

A year-long collaborative research project that developed on-line materials and an interactive Web site for an undergraduate course, focusing on the art, culture and philosophy prominent in the life of Vienna, ca. 1900.
PUBLIC HUMANITIES: ENGAGING THE COMMUNITY

The "Clemente Course"
Margaret Ann Bollmeier (Washington Commission for the Humanities)

Partnership support for the "Clemente Course," a rigorous humanities course covering Poetry and Drama, Moral Philosophy, Art History, American History, and Critical Thinking and Writing, originally designed by Earl Shorris, and taught to students who have lived in chronic poverty. Students who successfully complete the course receive a certificate of achievement, and if they perform at a high level, six hours of college credit awarded by Bard College.

Musicianship In the Schools
Robin McCabe (Music)

Funds to create programs to advance and further the development of musicianship. A portion of the funds provided support for on-campus concerts by student groups (such as the "Guerilla Gabriella Ensemble") and for a yearly prize for student musical compositions. The program also sent UW student musicians to work with local music teachers and students in the middle schools and high schools, offering clinics, encouragement, mini-concerts, and the equivalent of masters classes for young musicians.
CROSSDISCIPLINARY SYMPOSIA, COLLOQUIA, AND CONFERENCES

Lectures and Residency
Carol Thomas (History)

Support for a brief residency and lectures on ancient history & archaeology by Vassilis and Margherita Aravintinos.

Lecture and Residency
Collett Cox (Asian Languages and Literature)

Support to bring Prof. Paul M. Harrison, a noted authority on Buddhism from Australia, for a lecture and consultation on research in Seattle.

Do Ask, Do Tell: Outing the Northwest
Gail Dubrow (Architecture)

Support for a conference sponsored by the Washington Historical Society, focusing on the history of gay and lesbian issues in Washington State and the Pacific Northwest.

Japanese Studies Conference
John Treat (Asian Languages and Literatures)

Support for international travel for distinguished foreign speakers at an up-coming Japanese Studies Conference.

Ensemble Intercontemporaine
School of Music

Support for a two day residency by Ensemble Intercontemporaine, one of the premier international groups devoted to the performance of contemporary music. The residency will include master classes, clinics, and a concert.

Is It Possible to Traverse the Fantasy in Cyberspace?
Slavoj Žižek (Institute for Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana)

Ranging across topics as seemingly unrelated as Greek tragedy, Japanese tamagocchi dolls, the Bosnian crisis, Mary Kay Letourneau, and the movie The Mask, Žižek's lecture focused ultimately on the potential effects of cyberspace and new media on subjectivity and human interaction. He described predominant contemporary theories of cyberspace and then offered an alternative interpretation of his own.


1997-1998
CROSSDISCIPLINARY SYMPOSIA, COLLOQUIA, AND CONFERENCES

Teaching Islam in the Liberal Arts Curriculum: A Workshop
Brannon Wheeler (Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations)

This conference/workshop, focused attention on the problems of teaching Islam in the context of the Liberal Arts Curriculum. The conference was designed as a working professional meeting, inviting participants who are all directly involved in the current problem of designing courses and articulating issues central to the contemporary problem of teaching Islam as part of a liberal arts education.

Medieval/Renaissance Colloquium
Eugene Vance (French and Italian)

The Medieval/Renaissance Colloquium sponsored a quarter-long series of lectures and discussions, partly in conjunction with a new course focusing entirely on Rome.

International Conference on Humanistic Discourse--ICHD ‘97
Hazard Adams (Comparative Literature)

This conference was jointly sponsored by the Center, in cooperation with the University of California at Irvine and the Humboldt Foundation, as a continuation of a project begun in 1993 by Professor Murray Krieger, Wolfgang Iser, Jacques Derrida, Ernst Behler, and Hazard Adams. The original idea for the project was to assemble a body of distinguished scholars in the humanities to meet at least once yearly for the discussion of the current state of Humanistic Discourse, viewed in international perspective and with an eye to intellectual, cultural, institutional and political aspects of the role of humanistic learning and discourse in the contemporary world.

Fulfilling Peirce's Dream: The 5th International Conference on Conceptual Structures, ICCS ‘97
Leroy Searle (English)

A conference on Conceptual Structures, convened by an international group of scholars and professionals in computer science, artificial intelligence, and knowledge representation. This research group has pursued for more than a dozen years the development of a set of protocols and research tools for knowledge representation based on the work of John Sowa, whose own work, in turn, derives from the existential graphs of Charles Sanders Peirce.

Critical Theory Colloquium
Nikolai Popov (Comparative Literature)

Now in its third year, this colloquium focused on writers as critics.

Voice, Text and Hypertext at the Millennium: An Inaugural Conference in Textual Studies
Raimonda Modiano (English)

This international conference coincided with the creation of a new interdisciplinary Ph.D. concentration in Textual Studies, supported as a Collaborative Research Group by the Center. The conference invited 45 distinguished scholars from all over the world to speak on current issues, problems, and prospects in textual editing, scholarship, and information exchange.

The State of the Art: Criticism, Theory and The Defense of Poetry
Hazard Adams (Comparative Literature)

This conference, organized to honor Professor Hazard Adams, upon the occasion of his retirement after 20 years of distinguished service to the University of Washington, and more than 40 years to his profession, offered an ideal opportunity to examine a crucial topic for literary criticism and study: the role of theory and the current state of the question, first posed by Plato in his Republic, of the defense of poetry as a human pursuit.

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Archives 2/1999-6/2003
Katz Distinguished Lectures in the Humanities
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Campus Projects
HASTAC Consortium
Human Rights Public Culture
Full Professor Crossdisciplinary Conversation Award
Associate Professor Research Initiative
Society of Scholars
Platforms for Public Scholarship
Undergraduate Summer Institute
American Music Partnership of Seattle (AMPS)
Wednesday University
On the Boards Podcasts with UW Scholars
Danz Undergraduate Courses
Summer Dissertation Research Fellowships
Institute on the Public Humanities for Doctoral Students
Teachers as Scholars
Reclaiming Childhood
Difficult Dialogues: Southeast Asian American Pluralism
Project for Critical Asian Studies (1995-2006)
Silk Road
Certificate in Public Scholarship
Cultural Policy and Governance | Winter 2010
Sound Cultures | Autumn 2009
Seattle Fandango Project: Community Activism Through Art | Autumn 2009
Feminist Legacies / Feminist Futures | Autumn 2009
History and Politics in the Work of Dipesh Chakrabarty | Autumn 2009
Dangerous Subjects: Contention, Violence, and Control in Latin America
EMERGE: Media in the Early Modern Age
Local Communities and Global Identities in Asian American Studies
The Race/Knowledge Project
Queer + Public + Performance
Beyond Borders: Alternative Voices and Histories of the Vietnamese Diaspora
Hypatia 25th Anniversary Conference
Indigenous Representation at the AYP Exposition
Legacies of Unification: Twenty Years of German Unity
New Universities
Science Studies Network: Representations
Social Science and the State
The Great Depression in Washington State
Indigenous Representation at the AYP Exposition
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