News from the School of IAS

Category: Diversity

After the MFA: Sun, moon, wind, ocean – Talena Lachelle Queen and the poetry of art in community

By Natalie Singer (’16) As a student who preceded me in the UW Bothell MFA in Creative Writing & Poetics, Talena Lachelle Queen was someone I heard about often during my time in the program but didn’t have the chance to meet until after we both had graduated. I was excited to interview Talena because to me, she represents the real-world successful example of how one can realize a practice and career in art-making and community leadership and advocacy. While writing poetry, teaching, and mothering, a juggle I also seek to balance, Talena has figured out how to activate the conversation around art, its purpose and potential, in her community. While she advances her own practice, she is driven by the motivation to make art a civic venture and the belief that communities need art to thrive. Here is an edited version of our interview ...

July 17, 2018

Poetry and Persistence: Belonging and Expression for First-Gen Students of Color

“I want to help minoritized students flourish and thrive in higher education. As a Cultural Studies student who wishes to go into Student Affairs, it is important for me to think of the best ways to serve and support diverse populations of students. I am very interested in using poetry as a way to cope, to heal, to create communities, and to make meaning. Being accepted into a university and going to class is not enough to help students succeed in college. All students are knowledge creators, and poetry is just one of the ways in which minoritized students can resist the restrictions of academic institutions.” ...

July 9, 2018

Lauren Berliner publishes Producing Queer Youth: The Paradox of Digital Media Empowerment

IAS faculty member Lauren Berliner published Producing Queer Youth: The Paradox of Digital Media Empowerment. Based on over three years of participant action research with queer teen media-makers and textual analysis of hundreds of youth-produced videos and popular media campaigns, the book challenges popular ideas about online media culture as a platform for empowerment, cultural transformation, and social progress. It offers a nuanced picture of openings that emerge for youth media producers as they ...

June 29, 2018

Kari Lerum receives Washington State Labor Research Grant

IAS faculty member Kari Lerum has received a Washington State Labor Research Grant from the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies at University of Washington. The grant will fund the first year of her new research project, “Assessing the impact of anti-trafficking legislation on transgender sex workers.” This research comes out of years of community-based work, most recently with the Coalition for the Rights and Safety of People in the Sex Trade and the Seattle LGBQ commission. This project will focus on ...

June 26, 2018

Media & Communication Studies launches MCS International Student Mentor Program

Ten Media & Communication Studies (MCS) international students met on May 31 for the launch of a student mentor program that connects students with faculty members. IAS faculty member Min Tang, who spearheaded the program, and Kristin Gustafson, faculty coordinator for the MCS Curriculum Area Working Group, held a roundtable discussion where students shared their experiences, questions, challenges, and support they would like to have from MCS and IAS. The conversation ranged from ...

June 4, 2018

Anida Yoeu Ali exhibits at MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum and is reviewed in Bangkok Post

IAS faculty member Anida Yoeu Ali exhibits in a new group show titled “Diaspora: Exit, Exile, Exodus of Southeast Asia” curated by Loredana Pazzini-Paracciani. The group exhibition features artists from MAIIAM’s permanent collection who engage with historical or autobiographical accounts of the diaspora experience drawing particular attention to the act of crossing the permeable, geopolitical borders that punctuate Southeast Asia. The exhibition also received a review in the Bangkok Post article titled “The Invisible Borders.”

May 29, 2018

Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies celebrates its second birthday!

Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies (GWSS) students, staff, and faculty, along with supporters at UW Bothell, gathered for a recognition ceremony to celebrate the end of our second year. As is now tradition, the day was dedicated to Dr. Leslie Ashbaugh, beloved colleague who passed away before the degree launched. GWSS faculty member Kris Kellejian shared memories of Leslie and GWSS faculty coordinator Julie Shayne presented student Mica Coronel with the Leslie Ashbaugh Feminist Praxis in Education (LAFPIE) Award.

May 25, 2018

Yolanda Padilla publishes “Literary Revolutions in the Borderlands: Transnational Dimensions of the Mexican Revolution and its Diaspora in the United States”

IAS faculty member Yolanda Padilla published a book chapter, "Literary Revolutions in the Borderlands: Transnational Dimensions of the Mexican Revolution and its Diaspora in the United States," in The Cambridge History of Latina/o Literature. Padilla's chapter uses what she calls a transnational Chicanx studies framework to analyze literary responses to the Revolution by Mexicans in the United States. Taken together, the diverse writings ...

May 21, 2018

Malak Shalabi brings Syrian voices to the West

IAS alum Malak Shalabi (’18, Law, Economics & Public Policy) is featured on the University of Washington homepage today. The article, “Speaking Words of Justice,” looks at Shalabi’s work on sectarian violence in Syria and the voices of Syrian people in the United States. This work started as part of Shalabi’s undergraduate research with IAS faculty member Bruce Kochis, for which she won a Library Research Award.

May 1, 2018