From campus to wherever you call home, we welcome you to learn from and connect with the College of Arts & Sciences community through public events spanning the arts, humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences. We hope to see you this February.

February 4 | (Center for Southeast Asia and its Diasporas)

February 5 | (Communication)

February 6 |? (Art + Art History + Design)

February 10 | (Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies)

February 19 | (Stroum Center for Jewish Students)

February 21 | (Political Science)

February 21 | (East Asia Center)

February 26 | (American Ethnic Studies)

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Week of February 3

February 4, 3:30 pm – 5:00 pm | (Center for Southeast Asia and its Diasporas)

In February 2021, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing led a military coup that ousted Myanmar’s democratically elected government, headed by State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, whose party had won a historic landslide in the November 2020 elections.?Since late 2023, the Myanmar military has suffered one unprecedented battlefield humiliation after another, as it faces the nationwide uprising of hundreds of armed, anti-state groups committed to a revolution to remove the army from political power for the first time in history.

Join Associate Professor?Mary Callahan?as she explores the evolving crisis in Myanmar four years after the coup.

Free

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February 4, 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm |? (Department of Chemistry)

The Amazing Lives of Defects in Crystals

Professor Daniel Gamelin — Department of Chemistry, 天美影视传媒
Recipient of the Paul Hopkins Faculty Award

In the spirit of the Hopkins Award, this talk will explore a few historical examples and our group’s research of defects in inorganic materials used to express interesting and (sometimes) impactful physical properties. It will illustrate the role of basic science in driving the development of next-generation technologies.

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February 5, 5:30 pm – 7:30 pm | (Department of Communication)

Social media has reshaped how Americans consume news. As content creators rise as primary sources of information, they are overtaking traditional journalists for younger audiences. This shifting landscape brings critical questions: What does this mean for journalism? What does this mean for news consumers? How can we navigate news literacy in a digital world? And what role do these voices play in shaping the media ecosystem?

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February 6, 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm | (School of Art + Art History + Design)

There exists a pervasive illusion that journalism embodies truth and objectivity, yet it is fundamentally entrenched in a Eurocentric perspective that has long exacerbated social polarization. What ideological forces underpin this medium, enabling it to perpetuate such divisions?

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February 7, 7:30 pm |? (School of Music)

David Alexander Rahbee leads the UW Symphony in “With Love, from Scotland,” a program of works by Thea Musgrave, Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, and Felix Mendelssohn. With faculty guests Carrie Shaw, soprano, and Frederick Reece, narrator.

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Additional Events

February 3 | (Simpson Center for the Humanities)

February 5?| (School of Music)

February 5 | (Stroum Center for Jewish Students)

February 5 | (History)

February 6 | (Burke Museum)

February 7?| (School of Music)

February 7 | (Simpson Center for the Humanities)

February 7 | (Linguistics)

February 7 | (Burke Museum)

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Week of February 10

February 10, 3:30 pm – 6:00 pm | (Department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies)

Recent years have seen the proliferation of cop cities, limits on free speech, and the gutting of governmental safety nets. In this context, trans and intersex people have been the casualties of a fascist agenda that seeks to outlaw abortion and to erase and further marginalize oppressed communities.

Join Dr. Sean Saifa Wall in a conversation that asks questions, speaks truths, and offers a way forward through these troubled times.

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February 11, 6:30 pm | (Simpson Center for the Humanities)

In the?Analects, Confucius compares someone who has not adequately studied the classic?Book of Odes to a person standing with their face to a wall—unable to see, unable to act. In this talk, Edward Slingerland, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Distinguished University Scholar, and Professor of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia, unpacks scattered and vague references in the Analects?to construct a coherent account of how the Book of Odes?was used in early Confucianism as a tool for virtue ethical self-cultivation, as well as how the?Analects?itself, as a piece of literature, was meant to help train moral-perceptual expertise.

Free

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February 12, 7:30 pm | (Department of Digital Arts and Experimental Media)

Digital Arts and Experimental Media presents Daniel Peterson’s latest music composition, Into the Air, which explores the ephemeral nature of sound and the paradox of being. Inspired in part by Jorge Luis Borges’?Everything and Nothing, the 80-minute piece embodies both presence and absence, holding within it the traces of countless influences while remaining transient and?unimaginable; idiosyncratic and universal. The piece fuses Parmegiani’s?De Natura Sonorum?with Beethoven’s?Piano Sonata No. 32?through custom algorithms written in the audio programming language, SuperCollider.?The stereo piece will be diffused in real-time across 20 speakers.

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February 13, 7:30 pm| (School of Drama)

The Winter’s Tale?by William Shakespeare centers on King Leontes of Sicily, who becomes irrationally jealous and falsely accuses?his best friend?and his wife, Hermione, of infidelity.?Tragedy?immediately?befalls his family and the kingdom. Sixteen years later,?Leontes’ lost daughter?Perdita, falls in love with?Florizel,?the Prince of Bohemia.?Leontes repents, and a “miracle” is revealed?leading to reconciliation and renewed relationships.??

: $10 – $20

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February 13 through April 18 | (School of Art + Art History + Design)

Opening: Thursday, February 13

Working to emulate the interdisciplinary artistic environment Jacob Lawrence experienced in his formative years, this exhibition explores a legacy of collaboration between artists and poets.?artists & poets is a part of the re-grounding of the Jacob Lawrence Gallery in its mission of education, experimentation, and social justice. The show and space of the gallery will be split into two parts. The Cauleen Smith’s Wanda Coleman Songbook?will function as the contemporary example of this great legacy of exchange between artists and poets. The other half of the exhibition will focus on Dudley Randall’s?Broadside Presswhich began in Detroit in 1966 and will pull from archives to capture the press’s history and output.

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Additional Events

February 12 | (Asian Language & Literature)

February 12 | (History)

February 13?| (South Asia Center)

February 14 | (School of Music)

February 14 | (Meany Center for Performing Arts)

February 14 | (Simpson Center)

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Week of February 17

February 19, 4;30 pm – 6:00 pm?| (Stroum Center for Jewish Students)

Guest lecturer Naomi Seidman will take us inside? “the Freud craze” to explore the impact Freud’s work had on Eastern European Jews.

The Austrian journalist Karl Kraus reportedly quipped, “Psychoanalysis is the disease of assimilated Jews; Eastern European Jews make do with diabetes.” And yet, Eastern European Jews were fascinated by Freud and psychoanalysis, flocking to lectures on the subject and following Freud’s life and career with curiosity and enthusiasm. This lecture will trace “the Freud craze” in the burgeoning Hebrew and Yiddish press of the interwar period when readers eagerly sought information about “the most famous Jew in the world,” and journalists and others were compelled to actively translate psychoanalytic terminology from German into Jewish languages.

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February 21, 1:30 pm – 3:00 pm?| (Department of Political Science)

Christina Schneider – “International Financial Institutions and the Promotion of Autocratic Resilience”

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February 21 | (East Asia Center)

Politicians and political parties make promises during electoral campaigns. However, achieving a policy goal can sometimes hurt them electorally, and a party can be better off not pursuing what its supporters want. This study empirically demonstrates that Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party has been gaining an electoral advantage by not achieving its stated goal of revising the constitution.

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February 21, 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm | (Department of Political Science)

Center for Environmental Politics: David Konisky, Indiana University Bloomington, “Disparities in Disconnections: Utility Access in the Age of Climate Change”

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February 21, 2:30 pm – 4:30 pm | (German Studies)

Prof.?Dorothee Ostmeier?will deliver a lecture in honor of beloved UW Prof.?Diana Behler.

In literary Romanticism to AI tales, portals mediate change between concrete and virtual, human and non-human realities. This lecture straddles the fringes of reality shifts in the Brothers Grimm and ETA Hoffmann’s tales, inserting literary German discourses on the imaginary into the vibrant questions asked by anthropologists and cultural critics, and engineers of digital virtuality.? All diversely investigate possible futures beyond our anthropocentric minds and psyche.

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February 22, 4:00 pm | UWAA Movie Night: Singles (UW Alumni Association)

Get ready for a night of nostalgia, laughter, and love at this special screening of “Singles,” the classic rom-com set against the backdrop of Seattle’s iconic grunge scene. Filled with awkward first dates, unpredictable connections, and the kind of romantic chaos that only young adulthood can bring, this movie is the perfect blend of romantic misadventures and the energy of ’90s Seattle. SIFF Executive Director Tom Mara, ’88,?will introduce the film.

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Additional Events

February 19?| (School of Music)

February 20 | (School of Music)

February 20?| (School of Music)

February 20 | (Jackson School)

February 21 | (Meany Center for Performing Arts)

February 22 | (Classics)

February 22 | (Center for Child & Family Wellbeing)

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Week of February 24

February 24, 6:00 – 7:00 pm | (Slavic Languages & Literatures)

Please join us on Monday, February 24, at 6:00 pm, for a reading and a conversation with an award-winning Polish poet Krzysztof Siwczyk, and his translator Prof. Piotr Florczyk, moderated by Prof. Agnieszka Je?yk.

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February 26, 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm?| (Department of Chemistry)

Weston and Sheila Borden Endowed Lecture in Theoretical Chemistry

Professor Abraham Nitzan?–?Department of Chemistry, University of Pennsylvania
Host: David Masiello

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February 27, 6:00 – 7:00 pm | (School of Art + Art History + Design)

Join us for this year’s Kollar Lecture in American Art featuring Colby College’s Tanya Sheehan. This talk explores how Black life could and could not be represented on the walls of Harlem Hospital by Jacob Lawrence in 1937, and how a commitment to the publicness of Black care took shape in Lawrence’s private images.

Free

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Additional Events

February 24?| (School of Music)

February 24 | (University Faculty Lecture)

February 25 | (Meany Center for Performing Arts)

February 26 | Provost Town Hall (Provost Office)

February 27 through March 1 | (Meany Center for Performing Arts)

February 27 through March 2 |? (Dance)

February 27 | Can the Subaltern Sweat? Race, Climate Change, and Inequality (Public Lectures)

February 28 | (Political Science)

February 28 | (Classics)

February 28?| (Linguistics)

February 28 | (German Studies)

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Closing Exhibits

March 1 |

March 1 |

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Have an event that you would like to see featured in the ArtSci Roundup? Connect with Kathrine Braseth (kbraseth@uw.edu).

February 20, 1:00 pm | Husky Union Building

The College of Arts & Sciences welcomes the UW community of faculty, staff, and students to participate in the second annual “Big Read.”

Tune into the conversation with Dr. Joy Buolamwini, founder of the Algorithmic Justice League and author of Unmasking AI: My Mission to Protect What is Human in a World of Machines and?Dr. Emily M. Bender, UW Professor of Linguistics and Director of the Master’s Program in Computational Linguistics.

Free |

February 20, 4:00 pm | Brechemin Auditorium

Listen as Thomas Harper, associate professor of voice, and Carrie Shaw, Artist in Residence in voice, lead their students to perform from the vocal repertoire.

Free |

February 20, 7:30 pm | ?Meany Hall

Among the most esteemed musicians in the world today, pianist Wu Han, violinist Philip Setzer, and cellist David Finckel share deep musical connections. Finckel and Setzer were longtime members of the legendary Emerson Quartet, which played its farewell performance in Seattle just last year from the Meany stage. Wu Han is renowned as an orchestral soloist and chamber player, and with Finckel, helms The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.

They are back to perform captivating works by Claude Debussy, Felix Mendelssohn, and Bed?ich Smetana.

Tickets |

February 21, 6:00 – 8:15 pm | Husky Union Building

Christopher Miller, a writer and journalist based in Kyiv, Ukraine and Brooklyn, New York, will discuss his book, The War Came to Us.

The book tells an inside story of Miller’s personal experiences, vivid front-line dispatches, and illuminating interviews with unforgettable characters. It will take readers on a riveting journey through the key locales and pivotal events of Ukraine’s modern history.

Free |

February 21, 7:00 pm | Ethnic Cultural Theater

Join a panel of academics, artists, and activists involved in the taiko community as they discuss the role taiko has in the community and how the art form and its values are adapting to a changing world.

Panelists include ethnomusicologist Deborah Wong, Winter Quarter Ethnomusicology Visiting Artist Shoji Kameda, and taiko artist and activist Stan Shikuma.

February 21 – 22, 7:30 pm | & Brechemin Auditorium

Small combos perform original music and arrangements of jazz standards, modern classics, and deep cuts from the popular music repertoire over two consecutive nights of performance.

Free |

February 22, 4:00 pm | Climate Crisis: Our Response as Artivists, Kane Hall

The UW Alumni Association and Meany Center are excited to gather a UW College of the Environment alumna, a current student (majoring in geography) and creators of Small Island Big Song to talk about issues of climate change, advocacy, art, and culture. Panelists each come to these topics from different vantage points and will share their reflections on how these topics all impact one another.

Join the conversation as they explore ways people can use their voices to push the needle on political, economic, social, and cultural questions at the root of this global concern.

Free | More info & Registration

February 22, 7:00 – 8:30 pm | ?Thomson Hall

February 22, 7:30 pm | Meany Hall

This ‘Cycle’ celebrates sound, a major discovery of the twentieth century, and musique concrète. It is a fiftieth-anniversary homage to the inventiveness of?, who clearly created an upheaval in the world of music that has had no precedent.

Drawing on the same sound material that was forged from the first movement of Schaeffer’s , as well as from a personal collection of sounds that have been stored away over the years, these four pieces go through a process where they develop out of each other, question each other, echo each other, and complete each other through allusions, commentaries, metonymies, and continuations.

Free |

February 23, 12:00 – 1:00 pm | University Heights Center

Mea Joy Ingram and her father Airileke will lead this drumming workshop, teaching some of the basic rhythms on their Garamut (Papuan log drum). Aremistic, a master percussionist from Tahiti, will also join in to share Tahitian rhythms on To’ere (Tahitian log drum).

Whether it is the Tahitian To’ere, the Fijian Lali, the Vanuatuan Tamtam, the Cook Island Pate, or the Papuan Garamut, a tradition of slit log drums reverberates across our “Sea of Islands” from one end of the Pacific to the other.?

Free |

February 23, 2:00 pm | Brechemin Auditorium

Faculty violist Melia Watras invites the community to join in celebrating the release of her new album, “Play/Write,” which features music composed by Leilehua Lanzilotti, Frances White, and Watras. This event includes performances by faculty violinist Rachel Lee Priday, Pacific Northwest Ballet concertmaster Michael Jinsoo Lim and Watras, as well as a Q&A with the artists.

Free |

February 23, 2:30 – 3:30 pm | University Heights Center

Get ready to sweat and have some fun while learning Sega Dance from Mauritius with drumming accompaniment by Small Island Big Song artists. Dance is a form of storytelling that preserves cultural memory and history. Sega is both the national dance of Mauritius and a profound artistic embodiment of the historical and cultural memory of colonial slavery. It is a testament to the strength of the human spirit and the capacity to create and express beauty and joy out of nothing.

Free |

February 23, 2:30 – 3:30 pm | Denny Hall

The Old Yiddish short story “The Rabbi Who Was Turned into a Werewolf” (Mayse Bukh, 1602 ) tells the fascinating tale about a Rabbi-turned-werewolf-turned-Rabbi and his scheming wife. A magic ring with an ancient inscription and Hebrew letters written in the snow play a key part in the Rabbi’s transformation.

This talk explores the role of language and letters, arguing that the werewolf’s access to literacy enables a transcultural and translingual discourse, which highlights not just the contested position of Yiddish but also Hebrew as the language of the Galuth. The Rabbi’s story ultimately presents an allegory of the Diaspora.

Free |

February 23, 3:30 – 5:00 pm | ?Gowen Hall

Join in for a talk and discussion with Jana Foxe, Graduate Student in the Department of Political Science, and faculty discussant Cricket Keating from the UW Department of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies.

Free |

February 23, 7:30 pm | ?Meany Hall

Tickets |

February 24 – August 4, Henry Art Gallery

LOVERRULES is an expansive exhibition of Hank Willis Thomas’ prolific interdisciplinary career, including photo-conceptualist works and sculpture that examine American culture, with a particular focus on perceptions of race and gender. The exhibition includes more than 90 works drawn from the collection of the Jordan D. Schnitzer Family Foundation.

February 23, 7:00 – 9:00 pm |

February 24, 2:00 – 3:30 pm |

February 24, 1:30 – 3:00 pm | Seattle Art Museum

Accruing new meaning as they move from one place and context to another, material objects enable imaginative encounters between the indigenous and foreign, the familiar and unfamiliar.

The Seattle Art Museum invites everyone to join historians and archaeologists for a conversation that will deepen participants’ understanding of the interconnected ancient global world. This roundtable includes four ten-minute presentations on examples that embody conceptions of space and spatial movement within maritime Asia.

Tickets |

February 24, 2:30 pm | ?Music Building

Bassoonist and long-time former School of Music professor Arthur Grossman returns to campus to lead a master class with UW bassoon students of Paul Rafanelli (Grossman’s former UW student).

Free |

February 24, 8:00 pm |? Meany Hall

Small Island Big Song with special guest John-Carlos Perea celebrates the seafaring cultures of the Pacific and Indian Oceans. This immersive concert features Indigenous musicians from as far afield as Taiwan, Papua New Guinea, Madagascar, Mauritius, Australia, and Rapa Nui (Easter Island), all with their own unique musical lineages. From oceanic grooves and? soulful island ballads, to contemporary styles of roots, reggae, R&B, and grunge, they unite as one voice to make a powerful musical statement from a region on the frontline of the climate crisis.

Tickets |

Have an event that you would like to see featured in the ArtSci Roundup? Connect with Kathrine Braseth (kbraseth@uw.edu).

January 22, 7:30 pm | ?Meany Hall

Chamber group Frequency—violinists Michael Jinsoo Lim and Jennifer Caine Provine, violist Melia Watras, and cellist Sarah Rommel—performs works by Benjamin Britten, Felix Mendelssohn, Kaija Saariaho and the world premiere of a new work by Melia Watras in this exploration of the musical form of theme and variations.

Tickets |

January 22, 3:30 – 5:00 pm | Thomson Hall

Join Walter Hatch, an affiliate faculty at the Japan Studies Program, for a special book talk. Hatch will defend the argument that political cooperation best explains Germany’s relative success and Japan’s relative failure in achieving reconciliation with neighbors brutalized by each regional power in the past.

Free |

January 22, 7:00 – 8:30 pm | Kane Hall

Join the East Asia Center and the Japan Studies Program for a talk and discussion featuring Mira Sucharov, Professor of Political Science at Carleton University in Ontario and Omar M. Dajani, Professor of Law at the McGeorge School of Law, University of the Pacific, in Sacramento, California, as part of the department’s War in the Middle East Lecture Series on the aftermath of October 7, the war in Gaza and responses worldwide.

Free |

January 23, 6:30 pm | Brechemin Auditorium

UW instrumental performance students compete for a chance to perform with the UW Symphony. Judges for this competition are Brian Shaw, trumpet, and Logan Esterling, oboe.

Free |

January 23 & 24 | Thompson Hall & Zoom

|El Houb (The Love, 2022), directed by Shariff Nasr, follows Karim as he navigates coming out as gay to his Moroccan-Dutch Muslim family. This film screening will be introduced by Louisa Mackenzie and Nicolaas P. Barr (Comparative History of Ideas).

| This virtual panel about the award-winning Dutch film El Houb (The Love, 2022) will discuss how dominant white European narratives of “coming out” normatively frame queer freedom in contradistinction to racialized Others – particularly Muslim men.

January 24, 7:00 – 8:30 pm | ?Kane Hall

In this History Lecture Series, Professor Devin Naar takes a look at how Seattle became home to one of the largest communities in the United States of Jews from the Muslim world.

Free |

January 24, 4:00 – 6:00 pm | ?Allen Auditorium

Join the Canadian Studies Center for the premiere screening of A Kabluna at the 天美影视传媒.

This is a documentary about Inuktitut Language Scholar Sydney Tate Mallon (“Mick”) and his life and partnership with the 天美影视传媒. The film follows Mick as he visits the UW to meet his students during his final year of teaching in 2019, where he shares about his life and work.

Free |

January 25 – 27, 8:00 pm | Meany Hall

Spain’s premiere dance group returns after 14 years for a rare Seattle engagement. The company is internationally renowned for its expressively powerful and refined movement style exemplified in three classic works: White Darkness, a lush and virtuosic one-act ballet created as a requiem; The vivacious and satirical Sad Case embodies the fiery, syncopated rhythms of Mexican mambo; And, Passengers Within is inspired by people determined to question the status quo.

Tickets |

January 25, 3:30 – 5:00 pm | Thomson Hall

Before World War II, traders, merchants, financiers, and laborers steadily moved between places on the Indian Ocean, trading goods, supplying credit, and seeking work. This all changed with the war and as India, Burma, Ceylon, and Malaya wrested independence from the British empire.

Boats in a Storm centers on the legal struggles of migrants to retain their traditional rhythms and patterns of life, illustrating how they experienced citizenship and decolonization.

Kalyani Ramnath (University of Georgia) narrates how former migrants battled legal requirements to revive prewar circulations, in a postwar context of rising ethno-nationalisms that accused migrants of stealing jobs and hoarding land.

Free |

January 25, 3:00 – 6:00 pm | ?Communications Building

Join the Department of Asian Languages & Literature for Washin Kai Conversations featuring Ven. Taijo Imanaka, Seattle Koyasan Temple. This is presented by Washin Kai: Friends of Classical Japanese at UW.

Free |

Have an event that you would like to see featured in the ArtSci Roundup? Connect with Lauren Zondag (zondagld@uw.edu)