News from the School of IAS
Michele Orr advances gender equity in the outdoors
IAS Alum Michele Orr (’94) is REI’s general merchandizing manager for apparel, and one of her most exciting projects is championing their Force of Nature campaign, a public effort to advance gender equity in the outdoors. Orr and her team are working within the co-op and with brand partners to level the playing field by offering more sizing options for more women. As a co-op, REI is in the unique position of harnessing member feedback to influence brands and expedite change. For example, in 2018, REI doubled its sales of apparel in extended sizes, and in 2019, increased clothing choices for core activities like hiking, swimming, running and yoga by ...
September 13, 2019
Jayne Swift earns Ph.D. in Feminist Studies
Jayne Swift (’10), a member of the Master of Arts in Cultural Studies’ inaugural cohort, graduated with her Ph.D. in Feminist Studies from the University of Minnesota’s Department of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies in August 2019. Swift’s dissertation, Lusty Ladies: Sex Work and Sex-Positive Politics, 1970-2013, analyzes the history and politics of sex-positivity through a cultural history of sex ...
September 10, 2019
Ching-In Chen’s “Lantern Letter: a Zuihitsu” chosen as Split This Rock‘s Poem of the Week
IAS faculty member Ching-In Chen's "Lantern Letter: a Zuihitsu" was chosen as Split This Rock's Poem of the Week and was published in the Quarry: a Social Justice Poetry Database. The poem uses the Japanese hybrid form of zuihitsu to explore connections and kindnesses among strangers in the context of ecological disaster.
September 6, 2019
Cat Vallejo interns as Seattle Art Museum Emerging Arts Leader
Catherine “Cat” Vallejo is a senior at UW Bothell majoring in Community Psychology with a minor in Education & Society. She aspires to be an educator at the high school or college level and has fully immersed herself in campus opportunities, serving as an orientation leader and an assistant advisor in Career Services. This summer ...
September 5, 2019
Jennifer Atkinson: “How should we talk about what’s happening to our planet?”
IAS faculty member Jennifer Atkinson's course on eco-grief and climate anxiety was featured in a Washington Post story titled "How should we talk about what’s happening to our planet?" The article explores how language and emotion shape our response to the climate crisis, and how terminology has evolved from "global warming" to “climate change” to “climate emergency” and "extinction" over time.
September 5, 2019
Amaranth Borsuk’s work exhibited in Kassel, Germany
IAS faculty member Amaranth Borsuk is represented in the current exhibition at the KunstTempel in Kassel, Germany, curated by Friedrich Block. POESIS: Sparchekunst/Language Art (August 29–October 6, 2019) is "snapshot of international language art," featuring 63 artists from 17 countries. The show celebrates the 20th anniversary of the gallery and Block's p0es1s project. Borsuk's text generator Book of Dust will be one of the digital artworks shown. Book of Dust pays homage to Alison Knowles and James Tenney’s A House of Dust (1967), one of the earliest examples of computationally-generated poetry. The original program generated imaginative art installations as venues for happenings and community building using the following structure:
September 5, 2019
Dan Berger on criminal justice reform plans proposed by Sanders and Warren
IAS faculty member Dan Berger coauthored an op-ed for In These Times on the criminal justice reform plans proposed by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Berger and his coauthor, independent scholar and abolitionist Kay Whitlock, described the plans as "exciting steps forward" but also limited--particularly since most incarceration happens at the state rather than federal level. "Discussing their strengths and weaknesses ...
September 5, 2019
Minda Martin screens Ramps to Nowhere
IAS faculty member Minda Martin screened her film Ramps to Nowhere (2019) on August 17th as part of the 2019 Seattle Design Festival on top of the I-5 in freeway park. The screening was joined by 40 community members and was sponsored by Freeway Park Association and the I-5 Lid Team. ...
September 4, 2019
Review of Alka Kurian’s New Feminisms in South Asian Social Media, Film, and Literature
IAS faculty member Alka Kurian's book New Feminisms in South Asian Social Media, Film, and Literature has been reviewed in the Postcoclonial Studies journal. In "Recasting feministic discourses in postcolonial South Asia: an interventionist reading," (March 2019, Postcolonial Studies), reviewer Priyanka Tripathi claims that "Within contemporary socio-cultural and political landscape of India, where violence against women is alarmingly on the rise, New Feminisms in South Asia makes a significant intervention ...
September 4, 2019
Librarian Kaijsa Calkins values her interdisciplinary education
Alum Kaijsa Calkins is Assistant Dean of Education & Research Services at University of Wyoming Libraries where she leads the division that includes special collections, digital collections, digital scholarship and scholarly communication, and library instruction and liaison programs. It’s the career she envisioned while a UW Bothell undergraduate planning to attend library school.
August 26, 2019