News from the School of IAS
Helen K. Thomas commentary on African American cultural practices featured in the Seattle Times
For a front-page Easter-edition feature on black women and Sunday hats, the Seattle Times drew on the expertise of IAS alum Helen K. Thomas (16, Cultural Studies). “It’s important to acknowledge,” says Thomas, “that we did not always have authority over our own selves and our own bodies, clothes, hair or looks. We were not, as black women, always afforded the luxury of adorning ourselves. So for us, there is something about wearing a hat that is deep."
April 28, 2017
Maximilian Dixon shares his career journey in emergency management
IAS alum Maximilian Dixon ('11, Environmental Studies) visited with Jennifer Atkinson’s students to share his career path in disaster preparedness and mitigation. Maximilian is the Earthquake Program Manager for the Washington State Military Department’s Emergency Management Division (WA EMD). He manages the Earthquake, Tsunami and Volcano Programs and is responsible for coordinating the seismic and associated hazard risk reduction efforts between federal, state, tribal, and local partners with a goal of increasing community resilience. He staffs the ...
April 28, 2017
Policy Studies alumni discuss their career paths with students
Alums Nate Brown (’13), Natasha Hundley (’07), and Brandon Mayfield (’10) recently visited campus to discuss their career trajectories, how they’ve applied policy studies to their professional roles, and resources they maximized as students. Nate Brown is a Research Coordinator at the Center for Education Data and Research (CEDR). Nate entered education research following ...
April 28, 2017
Dan Berger’s Captive Nation featured in Social Justice
IAS faculty member Dan Berger wrote and spoke about his award-winning book Captive Nation: Black Prison Organizing in the Civil Rights Era recently. The journal Social Justice published a review forum on the book in its latest issue, with commentary from Sarah Haley, Toussaint Losier, and Waldo Martin as well as an author's response from Berger. He also ...
April 27, 2017
Rob Turner speaks about Promises to Keep: Environmental Racism
IAS faculty member Rob Turner was honored to be an invited speaker on April 22 at the 6th Annual North Puget Sound Conference on Race sponsored by the Communities of Color Coalition. The conference theme this year was Promises to Keep: Environmental Racism.
April 27, 2017
IAS student Kyra Laughlin wins Chancellor’s Medalist Award!
Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies (GWSS) major Kyra Laughlin received the UW Bothell 2017 Chancellor’s Medalist Award. The award is an honor that recognizes graduating seniors who have achieved academic excellence and served as a consistent source of inspiration for faculty and students alike. In winter 2017 Kyra founded the campus group Sexual Assault and Violence Education (S.A.V.E.), which works from a grassroots empowerment model of social support and awareness raising. With Kyra at the helm, the group applied for and won the T-Mobile Equity and Inclusion Grant, and collaborated with IAS faculty member Lauren Lichty and Campus Safety director Cham Kao to revise the UW Bothell website's Sexual Assault Support pages. Kyra continues to build new awareness initiatives and programming for Sexual Assault Awareness Month (April), and delivers class presentations and trainings in our residence halls.
April 26, 2017
Joshua Heim calls for rethinking the suburbs as a site for the arts
Joshua Heim ('10, Cultural Studies) has recently published a call to rethink the suburbs as a space for arts engagement and development. The article, posted on the Americans for the Arts Artsblog, poses a challenge in its very title: “Over 50 percent of American live and work in suburbs. Are 50% of them arts leaders?” Since graduating from the MA in Cultural Studies, Heim has worked as ...
April 25, 2017
Adam Romero wins 2017 Vernon Carstensen Award
IAS faculty member Adam Romero has won the 2017 Vernon Carstensen Award for best article in Agricultural History, the journal of record in the field. Romero's article, “‘From Oil Well to Farm’: Industrial Waste, Shell Oil, and the Petrochemical Turn (1927-1947),” explores the emergence of petroagriculture in California in the interwar period. It tells the story of how two industrial waste products of California’s petroleum industry became industrial agriculture’s chemical salvation ...
April 24, 2017
Julie Shayne and IAS alums Teresa Polendo and Liam McGivern speak about supporting immigrants
On Sunday April 23, 2017, IAS faculty member Julie Shayne, and IAS alums Teresa Polendo and Liam McGivern spoke to a group of activists at the Indivisible Edmonds townhall meeting. Attendees came to learn more about the present realities for local immigrants. Shayne provided background to the situation, discussed and countered myths about immigrants, and shared additional educational resources. Liam McGivern ...
April 24, 2017
Jason Lambacher delivers paper on “The Politics of Ecological Nostalgia”
IAS faculty member Jason Lambacher attended the annual conference of the Western Political Science Association (WPSA) this month in Vancouver, B.C. The WPSA is the regional professional association of political scientists and is internationally known as a hot spot for work in environmental political theory. He delivered an environmental political theory paper titled, “The Politics of Ecological Nostalgia.” Lambacher's paper ...
April 21, 2017