News from the School of IAS
Category: Diversity
Kari Lerum selected to join Seattle LGBTQ Commission
IAS faculty member Kari Lerum was recently selected by the Seattle LGBTQ Commission to serve as one of its commissioners. Lerum will be formally inducted at a confirmation hearing held by the Seattle City Council in early January. She will serve a two-year unpaid term. The Seattle LGBTQ Commission advises the Mayor, Council and departments about issues of concern affecting the LGBTQ community, recommend policies and ...
November 29, 2017
“Cry out Loud!” Multiracial Organizing and Documentary Cinema
IAS faculty member Alka Kurian presented two papers at the National Women's Studies Association Conference. In the first, she explored “Cry Out Loud,” a documentary film focusing on racism against Africans in India. Kurian investigated the parallels between racism and communalism in the U.S. and India that discriminate against minorities populations. She highlighted the need for multi-racial organizing between South Asian diaspora in the U.S. and other communities of color and collaboration with protest movements such as Black Lives Matter and Dream Defenders. She stressed that this type of analysis is all the more important during these deeply unsettling times when ...
November 29, 2017
Nikki Neuen connects her talents to gender diversity
Nikki Neuen (’04, American Studies) is Associate Director for Gender Diversity Education and Support Services, where she focuses on infrastructure management, communications, grant writing, and everything else. “Our staff is so small, that we all help with everything – conferences, marketing, volunteer management, fundraising – you name it,” Nikki explains. Gender Diversity increases the awareness and understanding of gender diversity in children, adolescents, and adults by providing family support groups, education and training to professionals serving trans youth, and through their annual international conference, Gender Odyssey.
November 21, 2017
Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies faculty have big presence at the National Women’s Studies Association (#NWSA2017) conference
The NWSA held its annual conference in Baltimore, Maryland this year. The conference’s theme was “Forty Years After Combahee: Feminist Scholars and Activists Engage the Movement for Black Lives” and was an inspiring weekend full of panels, round-table discussions, plenaries, meetings, receptions, networking, and socializing. Seven GWSS faculty presented and co-presented papers. GWSS faculty coordinator Julie Shayne organized a panel called ...
November 20, 2017
Alka Kurian leads discussion of Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Interpreter of Maladies
IAS Faculty member Alka Kurian led a discussion of Jhumpa Lahiri's The Interpreter of Maladies for Columbia Library-hosted Arts Gumbo Book Chats in partnership with SEEDArts this fall. The discussion book featured South Asian/Indian immigrant’s experiences.
November 20, 2017
Dan Berger publishes Rethinking the American Prison Movement
IAS faculty member Dan Berger has published Rethinking the American Prison Movement. The book, coauthored with Toussaint Losier (Assistant Professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst), provides a short, accessible overview of the transformational and ongoing struggles against America’s prison system throughout the 20th century. The book has been hailed as "necessary and important" ...
November 15, 2017
Kyra Laughlin receives full scholarship to attend The Women’s Convention in Detroit
This past weekend (October 27-29, 2017) Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies (GWSS) alum Kyra Laughlin attended the Women’s Convention in Detroit. The convention, aptly titled “Reclaiming Our Time,” was coordinated by the same women who organized the Women’s March in January 2017 which drew hundreds of thousands of people to rally in support of women's rights and to resist the multitude of injustices marginalized communities face. ...
October 31, 2017
Alka Kurian publishes New Feminisms in South Asia: Disrupting the Discourse Through Social Media, Film, and Literature
IAS faculty member Alka Kurian published a co-edited book New Feminisms in South Asia: Disrupting the Discourse Through Social Media, Film, and Literature (Routledge, 2017). This book is a study of the resurgence and re-imagination of new feminist discourse on gender and sexuality in South Asia as told through its cinematic, literary, and social media narratives. It brings incisive and expert analyses of emerging disruptive articulations that represent an unprecedented surge of feminist response to the culture of sexual violence in South Asia. Here, scholars across disciplines and international borders chronicle ...
October 31, 2017
Julie Shayne featured in UW Libraries “How I Work Open” project
October 23-27, 2017 was international Open Access Week, a celebration of shared knowledge, open scholarship, and barrier-free research and scholarly publishing. In honor of Open Access Week, UW Libraries assembled an inspiring collection of interdisciplinary voices from across the University of Washington describing faculty and staff experiences with open access and practicing open scholarship and research. This project is called “How I Work Open” and includes ...
October 31, 2017
Alka Kurian leads book chats at Columbia City Library
IAS faculty member Alka Kurian led a book chat on Mohsin Hamid's novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist on October 19 at Columbia branch library and moderated a film-screening program at Rainier Arts center on October 20. These programs...
October 23, 2017