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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.
2007-2008 Public Humanities: Engaging The Community A Sense of Where We Are, II: Pacific Northwest History and Literature Reconsidering Viet Nam: Conversations on War and Society Politics, Poverty, and Diversity Speaker Series for Seniors
Large-scale Collaborative Research, Teaching, and/or Public Projects New Formations of Cultural Studies: Collaboration, Practice, Research Science Studies Network Crossdisciplinary Research Clusters Cross-disciplinary Perspectives on Early Bilingualism: Developmental and Educational Issues
Critical Medical Humanities Students Writing in Public Forum for Urban Studies in South Asia Global Futures Critical Animal Studies Modernist Studies Group Queer Worlds: A Year Long Project in Queer Cultural Studies Visual Praxis Collective Crossdisciplinary Symposia, Colloquia, & Conferences Shifting Empires: Transforming Colonial Rule in the Pacific Islands and Circum-Caribbean Worlds Philosophy of Social Science Roundtable Sovereigns and Subjects: Jewish Political Thought and Experience in the 20th Century Roman Imperial Art and Ritual Beyond Dichotomies: Alternative Voices and Histories in Post-Colonial Viet Nam Cultures of Performance in Modern Austria: Modern Austria Literature and Culture Association 2008 Popular Culture and the Arts in Africa
Language and Law: Forensic Linguistics, Court Interpretation, and History
Print version (pdf) CROSSDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH CLUSTERS Creating Community Through Blogging Critical Medical Humanities Global Futures Modernist Studies Group Public Rhetorics Permanent War 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 Silk Road Lecture and Seminar Series LARGE-SCALE COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH, TEACHING, AND/OR PUBLIC PROJECTS Cultural Studies Praxis Collective CROSSDISCIPLINARY SYMPOSIA, COLLOQUIA, AND CONFERENCES Inventions of the Imagination: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Imaginary Since Romanticism Liberalism, Governance, and the Geographies of Law Performance and History: What History? SIMPSON CENTER CROSSDISCIPLINARY GRADUATE SEMINARS Cyborg Democracy Public Humanities and the Digital University Visual Documentation Praxis SUMMER RESIDENCY DISSERTATION FELLOWSHIPS Gabriele Eichmanns (Germanics) Rahul Gairola (English) Jill Gatlin (English) Yurie Hong (Classics) Ji-Young Um (English) 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. 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 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. 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. 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, te |
