News from the School of IAS
Alka Kurian interviews Pulitzer Prize winner, leads South Asian film events
In December 2020, IAS faculty member Alka Kurian interviewed the Pulitzer Prize winner poet Vijay Seshadri for the Tasveer Author Meets event. In November 2020, Kurian was a panelist for the “Triumph over Misogyny,” “Duties, Dreams and Desires in a Young Woman,” “Displacement and Trauma: Sri Lanka’s Civil War and Partition of India,” and “Courageous Ordinary Lives in Flood-prone Assam,” panels at the South Asian Film Festival of Montreal.
January 6, 2021
Acclaimed photojournalist David Ryder documents 2020
Master of Arts in Cultural Studies alum David Ryder (’11) has been working non-stop. An independent Seattle photographer and filmmaker, Ryder’s portfolio includes extensive experience with wildfires, disaster zones, protests, and hurricane coverage. 2020 was his busiest year yet.
January 6, 2021
Madison Nikfard: Personal growth through writing, digital arts
Madison Nikfard, a Media & Communication Studies graduate (’20) who excelled in writing and digital arts, continues at UW Bothell in the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing & Poetics program. For making the most of her UW education, Nikfard was recognized this past academic year as one of the Husky 100 students honored from across all three UW campuses.
January 4, 2021
David Goldstein co-authors Toni Morrison’s Secret Drive
IAS faculty member David Goldstein published a book co-authored with Dr. Shawnrece D. Campbell (Stetson University), Toni Morrison’s Secret Drive: A Reader-Response Study of the Fiction and Its Rhetoric (McFarland Press). The book argues that late Toni Morrison ...
December 28, 2020
Ching-In Chen receives 2020 BIPOC Seed Grant Award on Intersectional Sustainability
IAS faculty member Ching-In Chen was awarded a BIPOC Seed Grant on Intersectional sustainability: Imagining solutions to racial and environmental injustices from the University of Washington Resilience Lab in partnership with the Campus Sustainability Fund. The seed grants support resilience and compassion building initiatives that foster connection and community, educate the UW community and spark dialogue. The selected projects proposed solutions to environmental and societal problems that have a disproportionately negative impact on ...
December 18, 2020
Jennifer Atkinson collaborates with youth/teen climate activists
IAS faculty member Jennifer Atkinson collaborated this fall with youth theater groups and young climate writers to explore the emotional impact of our climate crisis. For the newest dramatic production created by Cry Havoc Theater Company in Dallas, Texas, Atkinson contributed a series of interviews based on her work helping students navigate eco-anxiety and climate despair. The resulting piece, titled Endlings, is Cry Havoc’s fourth ...
December 17, 2020
Shana Lee Hirsch publishes Anticipating Future Environments
M.A. in Cultural Studies alum Shana Lee Hirsch has published a new monograph, Anticipating Future Environments: Climate Change, Adaptive Restoration, and the Columbia River Basin, with University of Washington Press. In this book, Hirsch tells the story of restoration science in the Columbia River Basin, surveying its past and detailing the work of today’s salmon habitat restoration efforts. Her analysis ...
December 16, 2020
In Defense of a Humanities Education
IAS junior Joe Lollo wrote an opinion piece for The Husky Herald on the relevance of humanities education. A double-major in Culture, Literature & the Arts and Media & Communication Studies, Lollo is an aspiring educator and has been contributing to The Husky Herald for two years. “The humanities really are a valuable course of study – it is not only edifying and intellectually stimulating, but ...
December 15, 2020
Teaching in the moment: The 2020 election
As the elections unfolded dramatically this year, IAS faculty members Min Tang and Camille Walsh combined their backgrounds in media, communications, law, economics and public policy to create their course, The 2020 Election: U.S Media and Politics. “We structured the class in a way that allowed students to talk about self-selected issues in a community that wants to have those difficult and rewarding conversations,” said Walsh.
December 15, 2020
Walking and thinking go hand in hand
IAS faculty member Jason Lambacher’s course The Art and Politics of Walking discusses walking as a vehicle to explore other topics — paying attention, mindfulness, politics, protests and environmental design. In the year of the coronavirus, Lambacher didn’t have to spend much time persuading students who have been cooped up at home to go outside and walk.
December 15, 2020