News from the School of IAS
Category: Cultural Studies
Alumnus of the year: David Ryder
Seattle photographer and filmmaker David Ryder, who received a Master of Arts in Cultural Studies (MACS) in 2011, has been recognized with a 2020 University of Washington Bothell Alumnus of the Year Award. In the highly competitive realm of freelance photojournalism, Ryder’s skill and hard work over the last 15-plus years also has earned him recognition and commercial success with an impressive list of media outlets. Ryder credits his success, in part, to MACS, which gave him space to “think about what I was doing and reflect on doing it in a more meaningful and ethical way, thinking about all the different ways power intersects with journalism, photography and using someone’s image.”
May 14, 2020
Frances Lee on becoming a bridge person in precarious times
Cultural Studies alum Frances Lee (’18) has published a new essay, “Becoming a Bridge Person in Precarious Times,” through their Bainbridge Residency with The Seventh Wave. Lee asks, "As people who are called to do bridge work, how do we do so now, in the time of quarantine, global pandemic, and personal, communal and global grief?" Read their essay.
May 12, 2020
Helen K. Thomas nominated for Fulbright grant to Nigeria
Master of Arts in Cultural Studies alumn Helen K. Thomas has been nominated for a Fulbright grant to Nigeria, to pursue an independent project entitled, “Cultivating Self-Determination and Global Citizenship in Girls Through Young Adult Literature”. The proposal is grounded in academic work she completed as part of the Cultural Studies program, and is deeply rooted in her long history of community involvement, particularly with ...
May 1, 2020
Dan Berger: As the Coronavirus Spreads, Prisoners are Rising Up for their Health
IAS faculty member Dan Berger published an op-ed in The Appeal about the rising number of protests in jails, prisons, and detention centers against the spread of the pandemic. More than 3,000 incarcerated people have participated in more than 75 protests and uprisings, Berger and his coauthors write. He coauthored the op-ed with two researchers from Perilous Chronicle, a digital timeline of prisoner unrest in the twenty-first century. ...
April 28, 2020
Kristin Gustafson elected to Association of Educators in Journalism and Mass Communication’s teaching committee
Members of the Association of Educators in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) elected IAS faculty member Kristin Gustafson to the organization’s Teaching Committee. The 3,700-member professional, nonprofit, international organization is “the oldest and largest alliance of journalism and mass communication educators and administrators at the college level.” Gustafson will serve a three-year term beginning October.
April 21, 2020
Amadanyo Oguara publishes “Fisherman’s Son”
Alum Amadanyo Oguara (’16) has published his first book, Fisherman's Son, available on Amazon. Drawing from his Cultural Studies education, Fisherman’s Son follows Oguara's childhood adventures growing up in the fishing villages of Nembe, Nigeria and in the big cities of Lagos and Port Harcourt, Nigeria. It is ...
April 9, 2020
Christian Anderson publishes Urbanism without Guarantees
IAS faculty member Christian Anderson has published Urbanism without Guarantees: The Everyday Life of a Gentrifying West Side Neighborhood with the University of Minnesota Press. Based on extensive ethnographic work among residents from a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood of New York City, the book lays out an unconventional way of understanding how everyday life is intimately connected to some of the most consequential economic and cultural dynamics shaping urban space today. ...
April 8, 2020
Dan Berger awarded grant to study labor movement origins of affirmative action
IAS faculty member Dan Berger was awarded a Faculty Labor Research Grant by the UW Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies to study the labor movement origins of the fight for affirmative action in the 1960s and 1970s. In particular, he is looking at how working class Black organizers sought affirmative action across three interrelated domains: the university, labor unions, and ...
April 6, 2020
Dan Berger: In a Pandemic, Prisons are a Problem
IAS faculty member Dan Berger published an article in the UW Center for Human Rights website on the problem pandemics pose for prison. "While Washington state has ostensibly abolished the death penalty, its approach to incarceration now puts thousands of people at risk–in and out of prison–of a most painful and preventable death due to coronavirus," Berger writes. "The safest measure to “flatten the curve” ...
March 27, 2020
Berette Macaulay receives arts award and discusses MFON on Art Zone
In February, two anonymous Seattle patrons of the arts announced the fourth annual Champion of Seattle Arts (COSA) Award winner: Berette S. Macaulay, local artist, curator, and M.A. in Cultural Studies candidate.“Working with a variety of established local arts organizations, Berette has brought forth recent exhibitions of power and strength, focusing on female-identifying photographers of the African diaspora ...
March 6, 2020