News from the School of IAS
Frances Lee writes on the pitfalls of empathy and the commodification of suffering
Frances Lee’s article, “Seeking change without the commodification of pain and suffering,” was published in The Seattle Globalist on Dec 10. The Cultural Studies alum discusses how social movements rely on emotion and the dead end this creates. “If you don’t care about someone or a group of people until the media has made it abundantly clear that they are suffering, then your concern and engagement is not laudable, but ordinary, expected, and unremarkable.”
December 13, 2018
Jennifer Atkinson interviewed on “Constant Wonder”
IAS faculty member Jennifer Atkinson was interviewed about her new book, Gardenland, on "Constant Wonder" (BYU Radio). Her talk highlights the historical development of garden writing in the United States and discusses the desires, anxieties, ideologies, and social movements that underlie this genre.
December 13, 2018
Amaranth Borsuk exhibits collaborative work at Pierogi Gallery in New York
Curated by Heather and Raphael Rubinstein, the show Under Erasure takes its title from Jacques Derrida's concept of sous rature, which posits that to put a word under erasure (sous rature) is "to signal the inadequacy of inherited language while also recognizing its inevitability." The exhibition includes work by artists and writers who draw upon and obscure sourced texts. According to the curators, "Many of the works included in the exhibition, by artists such as Jenny Holzer and Glenn Ligon, utilize erasure and redaction to emphasize the political ...
December 10, 2018
Jennifer Atkinson at Climate Science on Tap!
IAS faculty member Jennifer Atkinson joined a panel of climate experts including Meade Krosby (UW Climate Impacts Group) and Sarah Myhre (UW Oceanography) to speak on the topic of Environmental Grief & Hope at Climate Science on Tap! The Climate Science on Tap program is a partnership between Cascadia Climate Action and the University of Washington that offers public panel discussions to build community understanding of, and engagement with climate change, its related causes, impacts, and solutions.
December 10, 2018
Ellen Donnelly exhibits Call Me Rabbit in Los Angeles
MFA alum Ellen Donnelly (’16) will exhibit Call Me Rabbit, an immersive video installation, at Actual Size in Los Angeles, CA from December 15 to January 19. The New York-based artist’s first solo exhibition uses imagery, audio, and rhetoric from wellness culture, online marketing, and social media to create an anxious but intriguing landscape to consider our place as individuals and the way we define ourselves as such.
December 7, 2018
Margaret Redsteer co-authors chapter on Tribal Lands for National Climate Assessment and Carbon Cycle Report
IAS faculty member Margaret Redsteer was one of the authors on the recently released National Climate Assessment and Carbon Cycle Report. Her co-authored chapter on “Tribal Lands” focused on traditional land-use and agricultural practices of Indigenous people of the United States, Canada and Mexico that can inform our understanding of carbon cycling and carbon sequestration. Further ...
December 5, 2018
Rebecca Brown publishes Not Heaven, Somewhere Else, a cycle of stories
IAS Senior Artist-in-Residence Rebecca Brown's new book of stories, Not Heaven, Somewhere Else, a cycle of stories was published by Tarpaulin Sky Press in October. The book has been reviewed in The Seattle Review of Books and The Stranger. From The Seattle Review of Books: "Rebecca Brown is the smartest writer in Seattle. ..."
December 5, 2018
Queer and Trans POC sex worker perspectives
IAS faculty member Kari Lerum, in collaboration with the Seattle LGBTQ Commission, the Seattle Commission for People with DisAbilities, SWOP-Seattle, and the Coalition for the Rights and Safety for People in the Sex Trade, led a public forum at Seattle City Hall featuring the voices of Queer and Trans POC in the sex industry. The event, which attracted approximately 70 community members, focused on the crisis caused by recent federal legislation (SESTA/FOSTA) on the lives of the minoritized ...
December 5, 2018
Kristine Mroczek presents “Markers of ‘Indigenous-made’ Souvenirs”
IAS faculty member Kristine Mroczek presented her work at the National Communication Association annual conference in Salt Lake City, Utah. The title of her poster presentation was “Markers of ‘Indigenous-made’ Souvenirs: The Semiotic and Discursive Production of ‘Authenticity’ and Cultural Capital in Australian Aboriginal Tourism Arts."
December 5, 2018
Travis Sharp publishes new artist’s book: one plus one is two ones
MFA alum Travis Sharp just published his artist’s book! one plus one is two ones (Recreational Resources, 2018) is a mass-produced handmade book about fake math and infinity, hand-written (in part an homage to Hanne Darboven's hand-written alternative mathematics conceptual art projects) & scanned & reproduced in an unlimited edition via CreateSpace. The work also includes many of Sharp’s drawings of hashtags and a procedural erasure of his Twitter feed via Fibonacci, patron saint of Twitter infinity.
December 5, 2018