Come curious. Leave inspired.

While February might be just 28 days, the UW offers an exciting lineup of more than 40 in-person and online events. From thought-provoking art and music to conversations on culture, history, and science, the UW community invites you to explore, learn, and connect across disciplines throughout the University. In addition, take a look ahead at what’s happening in March.

In addition,?.

ArtSci On Your Own Time

Recorded Lectures: ?(History)
Incarceration is a hotly debated topic in the United States, a country that has one of the highest rates of incarceration in the world. Looking at the practice from a historical perspective, what can incarceration teach us about who we were and who we are now? What might histories of incarceration, and the histories of those who have been incarcerated, tell us about power dynamics, belonging, exclusion, struggle, and hope across societies in the past and present? The 2026 History Lecture Series explores the practice of incarceration, tracing its change over time from antiquity to our modern world. Following the lectures, the recordings will be available online.

Podcast: (School of Drama)
A lively and opinionated cultural history of the Broadway Musical that tells the extraordinary story of how Immigrants, Jews, Queers, African-Americans and other outcasts invented the Broadway Musical, and how they changed America in the process.In Season One, host David Armstrong traces the evolution of American Musical Theater from its birth at the dawn of the 20th Century, through its mid-century “Golden Age”, and right up to its current 21st Century renaissance; and also explore how musicals have reflected and shaped our world — especially in regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, and equality. Free.

Exhibition: (Henry Art Gallery)
Primarily featuring works from the Henry collection created in the twenty-first century, Figure/Ground reflects a period in which hard-won civil rights and claims to self-determination have been eroded across the US, disproportionately affecting Black, Brown, LGBTQ+, and other marginalized communities. Free.

Book Club: The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones (UW Alumni)
Stephen Graham Jones is the NYT bestselling author of more than forty novels, collections, novellas and comic books. He is a professor of English at the University of Colorado Boulder, and an enrolled member of the Blackfeet Tribe of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation of Montana. Free.

Recorded Lectures:
Featuring selected lectures from 1996 to today, UW Graduate School’s Office of Public Lectures YouTube features an incredible lineup of artists, scientists, researchers, and more!

Week of February 2

January 29–February 8 | (School of Drama)
In this new translation of Chekhov’s ”serious comedy of human contradictions”, a group of artists and dreamers meet in the countryside and wrestle with the costs of ambition, unspoken longings, and the harsh realities of artistic pursuits. Set against a backdrop of love, passionate aspirations, and the search for meaning,?The Seagull?captures the fierce hopes and quiet heartbreaks of an artistic career.? Directed by MFA Student Sebastián Bravo Montenegro.

Online – February 2 | ?(Jackson School of International Studies)
Presented by Radhika Govindrajan, Director, South Asia Center and Associate Professor, Anthropology, 天美影视传媒; Sunila Kale
Professor, South Asia and International Studies 天美影视传媒; and Milan Vaishnav, Senior Fellow and Director, South Asia Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Trump in the World 2.0 is an online series of talks and discussions featuring guest speakers and faculty exploring global perspectives on a second Trump administration. Free.

February 3 | (Asian Languages & Literature)
This is a unique opportunity to learn from UW Professor Zev Handel and get a peek into a linguistic history that has shaped the world. Like the book, this talk will be accessible to everyone—regardless of whether you have any knowledge of Chinese characters or East Asian languages. Free.

February 3 | (Jackson School of International Studies)
A Welcome & Research Presentation with 2025-26 UW Fulbright Canada Special Foundation Fellow, Clinton Westman. Free.

February 4 |
(History)
This lecture explores the evidence for ancient incarceration in vignettes: reading letters that prisoners wrote on papyrus, investigating spaces where they were held, and analyzing depictions of captives in monuments, law courts, and homes. Roman evidence does not model a just society, but it does offer a mirror where we can see modern practices of incarceration in a new light, asking which aspects of contemporary prisons are unique to modernity, and which reflect longer histories. The 2026 History Lecture Series presents “Power & Punishment – Histories of Incarceration,” exploring the practice of incarceration, tracing its change over time from antiquity to our modern world. Following the lectures, the recordings will be available online. Free.

February 4 | (School of Art + Art History + Design)
Death is a fundamental first step toward rebirth—but this transition can feel daunting without a compassionate guide. In The Book of Zero, our 2026 Jacob Lawrence Legacy Resident indira allegra presents a multimedia, meditative experience shaped by their research into doula work, death care, and the cyclical nature of bodies and environments. Free.

February 4 | (School of Music)
A free lunchtime performance featuring UW School of Music students in the North Allen Library lobby. Presented in partnership with UW Libraries. Free.

Online option – February 5 | 2026 University Faculty Lecture – A breath of fresh air: The science and policy saving lives from America’s deadliest cancer
Lung cancer kills nearly 125,000 Americans each year — more than breast, colon, and prostate cancers combined. UW Department of Surgery Professor and Chair Dr. Douglas Wood is out to change that and will discuss the many ways he and his colleagues are raising lung cancer awareness, increasing access to early detection, and ultimately, working to change lung cancer victims to lung cancer survivors. Free.

February 5 | ?(Asian Languages & Literature)
During the dark centuries between the fall of the Han dynasty in 220 CE and the golden age of reunified China under the Tang and Song dynasties (618–1279), the shi poetic form embraced new themes and structure. Using biography, social history, and literary analysis, Ping Wang demonstrates how the shi form came to dominate classical Chinese poetry, making possible the works of the great poets of later dynasties and influencing literary development in Korea and Japan. Free.

February 6 | (Jackson School of International Studies)
Since the early 2000s, literary scholarship has read Hebrew and Arabic literatures together to find moments of transgression or trespass, challenging logics of partition. In Static Forms: Writing the Present in the Modern Middle East, Shir Alon develops an alternative model for reading Arabic and Hebrew literatures, as two literary systems sharing a remarkably similar narrative of modernization and developing parallel literary forms to address it. In this talk, Alon will discuss the potential of a paradigm grounded in formal and affective analysis for new understandings of transnational modernism, Middle Eastern literatures, and comparative literary studies at large. She will also explore the limits of this approach, when parallel readings of Hebrew and Arabic literatures obfuscate rather than clarify the conditions of the present. Free.

February 6 | ?(Music and American Indian Studies)
UW Ethnomusicology, Department of American Indian Studies, and the UW Symphony collaborate with Lushootseed Research’s Healing Heart Project in presenting this special community event. Following a free screening of the documentary film The Healing Heart of Lushootseed, the UW Symphony (David Alexander Rahbee, director) and soprano Adia S. Bowen (tsi s?uyu?a?) perform Bruce Ruddell’s 50-minute symphony Healing Heart of the First People of This Land. This powerful work was commissioned by Upper Skagit elder Vi Hilbert (taq???blu) shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks as a vehicle for, in Hilbert’s words, “bringing healing to a sick world.” Premiered by The Seattle Symphony in 2006, the piece draws inspiration from two sacred Coast Salish songs Hilbert had entrusted to the composer and features a number of percussion instruments native to this region. The performance features soloist and Indigenous soprano Adia S. Bowen (tsi s?uyu?a?), a UW alumna who graduated in June 2025 with degrees in Voice Performance and American Indian Studies. Free.

February 6 | (Psychology)
Whether you’re married, dating, or flying solo, Dr. Nicole McNichols has some sex advice for you. And you may want to pay attention because McNichols is not only the professor of 天美影视传媒’s most sought-after class in its history, she’s one of social media’s most popular educators on the topic of sex. Pulling from her book, You Could Be Having Better Sex, McNichols shares the latest data that shows good sex is one of the most powerful and effective sources of joy.

Week of February 9

Online – February 9 | ?(Jackson School of International Studies)
Presented by Re?at Kasaba, Professor, International Studies, 天美影视传媒 and G?nül Tol, Director, Turkish Program, Middle East Institute. Trump in the World 2.0 is an online series of talks and discussions featuring guest speakers and faculty exploring global perspectives on a second Trump administration. Free.

February 10 | ?(Simpson Center for the Humanities)
The production and promotion of so-called “AI” technology involves dehumanization on many fronts: the computational metaphor valorizes one kind of cognitive activity as “intelligence,” devaluing many other aspects of human experience while taking an isolating, individualistic view of agency, ignoring the importance of communities and webs of relationships. Meanwhile, the purpose of humans is framed as being labelers of data or interchangeable machine components. Data collected about people is understood as “ground truth” even while it lies about those people, especially marginalized people. In this talk, Bender will explore these processes of dehumanization and the vital role that the humanities have in resisting these trends by painting a deeper and richer picture of what it is to be human. Free.

February 10 | (QuantumX)
Dr. Krysta Svore is Vice President of Applied Research for Quantum Computing at NVIDIA, joining the company after 19 years at Microsoft, where she served as Technical Fellow and VP of Advanced Quantum Development and pioneered reliable quantum computing through the co?design of hardware, software, and error correction. She began her career developing machine learning methods for web search before founding Microsoft’s quantum computing software, algorithms, and architecture program. Free.

February 11 | ?(Chemistry, Architecture, Mechanical Engineering, and Bioengineering)
Explore how cutting-edge research is driving material innovation in the built environment. Faculty whose work spans chemistry, engineering, and architecture examine how living systems can be integrated into material design to address pressing challenges related to sustainability, resilience, and the future of construction. Free.

February 11 | (History)
This lecture explores the wide variety of carceral practices in medieval Europe and examines how the recovery of Roman law and the concept of the state in the twelfth century began to transform those practices. Following the lectures, the recordings will be available online. Free.

February 11 | (Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies)
Navigating Academia as a Transnational Scholar from the Global South: Treasuring All the Knowledges brings together the voices of 16 women and non-binary scholars who began their postgraduate journeys as non-elite international students and (un)documented migrants in countries positioned as economically more powerful than their places of origin. Inspired by the book’s creative and relational approach to knowledge, this event will also open a collective space for poetry and storytelling. Participants are invited to write and share short poetic or narrative reflections that speak to their own experiences of abundance, survival, care, and knowledge-making within academic spaces. Free.

February 12 | (Sociology)
The future will be old; Europe, the Americas and Asia will soon have the oldest populations ever known to humanity. Can we cope? It will require major changes in the way we think about youth, women, immigration, and globalization to avoid disaster. Free.

February 12 | ?(Jackson School of International Studies)
In Ghost Nation: the Story of Taiwan and its Struggle for Survival, Chris Horton compares Beijing’s claim that Taiwan has been Chinese territory “since time immemorial” with Taiwan’s actual history. Several different groups have controlled some or all of Taiwan over the last 400 years — the Dutch, Spanish, Tungning, Manchu, Japanese, Chinese, and now, Taiwanese. By looking at those who have ruled Taiwan, Horton also tells the story of the Taiwanese people, highlighting their intergenerational quest for self-determination — and the existential threat posed by an expansionist Chinese Communist Party. Free.

February 12 | (Simpson Center for the Humanities)
Athletes with ancestral ties to the Pacific Islands are dominant fixtures in some of the world’s most visible sports and over several generations have produced a modern sports diaspora. Tracing Samoan transnational and diasporic movement along divergent colonial pathways, this talk examines the relationship between embodied experiences of racialization and the emergence of Pacific sports excellence in three settler colonial countries (United States, Aotearoa New Zealand, and Australia). It then considers what recent efforts to mobilize Indigenous practice inside and outside sport tell us about the uses and importance of culture in contemporary sport. Free.

February 12 | ?(School of Music)
Faculty pianist Robin McCabe joins forces with guest artist Maria Larionoff in an evening of high octane duos for violin and piano. On the launch pad: Stravinsky’s Suite Italienne, Beethoven’s Sonata in G major, Opus 96, and Faure’s impassioned Sonata in A Major.

Online – February 13 | 2026 Provost’s Town Hall
Join UW Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Tricia Serio as she discusses the state of the University from an academic perspective and the singular role that public research universities — and the UW in particular — play in our society. Featured speakers include Jodi Sandfort, dean of the Evans School, and Sarah Cusworth Walker, research professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. Ted Poor, associate professor in the School of Music, will introduce the provost.

February 13 | (Open Scholarship Commons)
Douglass Day is an annual transcribe-a-thon program that marks the birth of Frederick Douglass. Each year, sites across the country gather thousands of people to help create new & freely available resources for learning about Black history. A transcribe-a-thon is an event in which a group of people work together to transcribe a collection of digitized historical materials. The primary goal of a transcribe-a-thon is to make the materials more easily accessible, but these events also serve to promote awareness of parts of Black history – and especially Black women’s history – that remain too-little-known. Free.

February 14 | (Meany Center for the Performing Arts)
Celebrate Valentine’s Day with 8x Grammy nominee and NAACP Image Award winner The Baylor Project — featuring vocalist Jean Baylor and drummer Marcus Baylor. Steeped in the heart of jazz, with dynamic performances that are soulful to the core, their musical roots are deeply planted in gospel, blues and R&B. Their eclectic sound and infectious chemistry provide the perfect backdrop for a memorable evening filled with vibrant, spiritual, feel-good music.

Week of February 16

February 17 | (School of Art + Art History + Design)
Our question to consider: what does the work of indira allegra offer us when thinking about the project of liberation? This program is part of the year-long Liberation Book Club series exploring liberation through shared texts, art, film, music, and workshops. Free.

February 18 | (History)
In 1942, the U.S. government incarcerated more than 120,000 Japanese Americans in concentration camps based on the racist argument that they were likely “disloyal” to the United States. In the ensuing years of World War II, though, the U.S. government simultaneously sought to demonstrate the “loyalty” of Japanese Americans to American democracy. By placing U.S. wartime policies and Japanese American responses in different historical contexts, this lecture will interrogate the meanings of loyalty, democracy, and national security—during World War II and in our own time. Following the lectures, the recordings will be available online. Free.

February 18 | (Digital Arts & Experimental Media)
DXARTS presents an evening of 3D music, featuring recent work and world premieres by current staff and graduate students. Free.

February 18 & 19 | & (School of Music)
UW Jazz Studies students perform in small combos over two consecutive nights of original tunes, homage to the greats of jazz, and experiments in composing and arranging. Directed by Cuong Vu, Ted Poor, John-Carlos Perea, and Steve Rodby.?Free.

February 19 | ?(Henry Art Gallery)
Poet, musician, and scholar Rasheena Fountain presents Speculative Land Blues, a blues guitar, poetry, and DJ set. Developed in collaboration with Adeerya Johnson, Associate Curator at the Museum of Pop Culture, the Henry presents Speculative Landscapes. Free.

February 19 | (Burke Museum)
Read the book ahead of time, or join to learn more about the selection. The February book is Spirit Whales and Sloth Tales: Fossils of Washington State by Elizabeth A. Nesbitt and David B. Williams. Free.

February 19 | (Jackson School of International Studies)
John Johnson is a recently retired Senior Foreign Service Officer whose career included leadership roles in Brussels, Afghanistan, and with the U.S. Mission to NATO. Since joining the State Department in 2002, he has served in Europe, Asia, and Washington, D.C., earning multiple awards for his service. A Seattle native and UW graduate, John speaks several languages and lives with his family in the Pacific Northwest. Free.

February 20 | ?(Political Science)
The Center for Environmental Politics hosts Amanda Stronza, professor in Texas A&M University Department of Ecology and Conservation Biology, and co-founder of the Applied Biodiversity Science Program. Free.

February 21 | ?(Meany Center for the Performing Arts)
yMusic — named for Generation Y — is a genre-leading American chamber ensemble renowned for its innovative and collaborative spirit. yMusic has a unique mission: to work on both sides of the classical/popular music divide, without sacrificing rigor, virtuosity, charisma or style.

Week of February 23

Online – February 23 | ?(Jackson School of International Studies)
Presented by Ambassador Michelle Gavin who is currently Senior Fellow for Africa Policy Studies, Council on Foreign Relations. Trump in the World 2.0 is an online series of talks and discussions featuring guest speakers and faculty exploring global perspectives on a second Trump administration. Free.

February 23 | ?(Asian Languages & Literature)
UW Asian L&L and the Seattle International Film Festival co-host an award winning filmmaker Ash Mayfair at the SIFF Cinema Uptown for the screening of Skin of Youth (2025). A Q&A moderated by Assistant Professor Ungsan Kim will follow the screening.

February 23 | ?(School of Music)
UW music students perform music from the Baroque era under the direction of Tekla Cunningham. Free.

February 24 | (Meany Center for the Performing Arts)
Join us for a feature documentary that traces the remarkable history and legacy of one of the most important works of art to come out of the age of AIDS –choreographer Bill T. Jones’s tour de force ballet “D-Man in the Waters.” There will be a post-screening discussion with Bill T. Jones and Berette S Macaulay. Free.

February 24 | ?(Jackson School of International Studies)
Can political elites shape public opinion by influencing the tone of news coverage, even when they cannot dictate what gets covered? This study addresses that question using text analysis of more than five million Japanese news articles from 2004–2024, showing that rising negativity in legacy media closely corresponds with declines in cabinet approval. A newly compiled dataset of prime ministers’ daily schedules further reveals that periods of intensified elite engagement with journalists coincide with less negative coverage. Together, these findings suggest that incumbents may still temper media tone through proactive outreach, though this influence appears to weaken in the age of fragmented, digital media. Free.

February 25 | (History)
Prison is more than a place of punishment. It is also an archive. Yet the official story found in sentencing reports and conduct reviews is only part of the story. Incarcerated people generate a parallel counter-archive of resistance and transformation. The Washington Prison History Project is a multimedia digital effort to document this counter-archive at a local level. Across a series of publications, programs, and protests, incarcerated people have shown prison to be a central feature in the development of Washington State and the country. An examination of this archive tells a different history of our state—and its possible futures. Following the lectures, the recordings will be available online. Free.

February 25 | (American Indian Studies)
Featuring Oscar Hokea(Cherokee Nation and Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma). Storytelling offers a spiritual connection, a sharing of sacred breath. Literature, similarly, preserves human experience and ideals. Both forms are durable and transmit power that teaches us how to live. Both storytelling and reading aloud can impact audiences through the power of presence, allowing for the experience of the transfer of sacred breath as audiences are immersed in the experience of being inside stories and works of literature.?Free.

Online option – February 25 | The Office of Public Lectures presents: America’s Character and the Rule of Law with George Conway III?(Public Lectures)
This talk will explore the idea that the endurance of the rule of law in the United States relies not solely on the provisions of the Constitution—its structural framework, the institutions it established, or the rights it enshrines—but fundamentally on the character of its citizens. Qualities such as public-spiritedness, tolerance, moderation, empathy, mutual respect, a sense of fair play, and, ultimately, intelligence, honor, and decency form the foundation of constitutional democracy. Free.

February 26 | (School of Art + Art History + Design)
In this talk, Rachael Z. DeLue will share insights from her current research and teaching on the relationship between art and science in nineteenth-century Europe and North America, focusing on a suite of extraordinary chromolithographs created in the 1880s by the astronomer and illustrator ?tienne-Leopold Trouvelot. Based on his work at the Harvard Observatory and the United States Naval Observatory, the chromolithographs represent the cross-pollination of art and science in an attempt to generate knowledge about astronomical phenomena that eluded perception and resisted visualization. Prof. DeLue will consider Trouvelot’s prints in relation to other such attempts on the part of fine artists and scientific illustrators to picture the celestial sphere at a time when technology was limited and space travel was still the stuff of science fiction.?Free.

February 26 | ?(Stroum Center for Jewish Studies)
In this talk, Paris Papamichos Chronakis discuss his new book, The Business of Transition – Jewish and Greek Merchants of Salonica from Ottoman to Greek Rule, and shows how the Jewish and Greek merchants of Salonica (present-day Thessaloniki) skillfully managed the tumultuous shift from Ottoman to Greek rule amidst rising ethnic tensions and heightened class conflict. Bringing their once powerful voices back into the historical narrative, he traces their entangled trajectories as businessmen, community members, and civic leaders to illustrate how the self-reinvention of a Jewish-led bourgeoisie made a city Greek. Salonica’s merchants were present in their own—and their city’s—remaking. Free.

February 26 | ?(Simpson Center for the Humanities)
Taiwan is a unique site of innovation in disability rights. Despite being barred from becoming a States Party to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) according to the diplomatic exclusion faced by Taiwan, it has become a model for the localization of the CRPD through its use “domestic review mechanisms.” Furthermore, Taiwan demonstrates the ways in which fundamental divides within human rights discourse, such as Western individualism and East Asian familialism, can be bridged using strategic adaptation that reimagine disability rights as a post-colonial hybrid. Free.

February 26 – March 1 | (Dance)
Presenting seven original student-choreographed works. This platform gives students the opportunity to express their creative voices through choreography and costume design, as well as collaborating with lighting designers and mentors.

February 26 – 28 | (Meany Center for the Performing Arts)
Thirty years after its historic premiere, the groundbreaking dance theater work by Bill T. Jones returns to the stage. Still/Here shatters boundaries between the personal and the political, exemplifying a form of dance theater that is uniquely American. At the heart of the piece are “survival workshops” Jones conducted with people living with life-threatening illnesses.

ArtSci Roundup goes monthly!

The ArtSci Roundup is your guide to connecting with the UW—whether in person, on campus, or on your couch.

Previously shared on a quarterly basis, those who sign up for the Roundup email will receive them monthly, delivering timely updates and engaging content wherever you are. Check the roundup regularly, as events are added throughout the month. Make sure to check out the ArtSci On Your Own Time section for everything from podcasts to videos to exhibitions that can be enjoyed when it works for you!

In addition, if you like the ArtSci Roundup, sign up to receive a monthly notice when it’s been published.

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

Picture a bench. Maybe you imagine the wooden seat of a picnic table, the metal of a bus shelter, the plastic of a school cafeteria.

Different materials, different locations, same basic purpose: to welcome more than one person.

This spring quarter, in Architecture 231: Making and Meaning, that was the essential mission of the culminating project: Build a bench, create a social opportunity.

“Architecture is taking an idea and turning it into a reality that someone can experience,” said co-instructor .

And so, this month, there were some two dozen benches, scattered around both Gould Hall and Architecture Hall in a pop-up demonstration of student work. There were benches with backs, with ramps, with steps and shelves and swings. Benches in the shape of an L, or a C, or an ocean wave. Nicholls encouraged students to find places that were underused, or even overused, and “help them out with a bench.”

The class started with small, individual projects, made of reclaimed and found materials, such as cardboard and sticks, to teach scale and structure. Then came the bench project, a team endeavor that involved planning and sketching, trial and error, and use of the College of Built Environments’ Fabrication Lab to cut and assemble the lumber.

Sophomore Jasmine Madrigal was part of a group that constructed a bench with squared-off, V-shaped legs and a corner shelf.

“I’ve learned about the materials, that not everything will stay the same as you first conceptualize it, and we sometimes had to compromise our ideas in order to develop it further,” Madrigal said.

That’s the point of the class, co-instructor and Architecture alum said – to learn process, collaboration and attention to detail.

“Students come into the class having an idea and think it’s built automatically,” Leanos said with a smile.

While a few benches may find a permanent home at Gould or Architecture Hall, most will be taken apart, so the materials can be used again, in a future class.

April 18, 5:30 PM | Burke Museum

The UW Taiwan Studies Arts & Culture Program is honored to host a memorial film screening and lecture honoring Dr. HU Tai-Li.

In memory of Dr. HU Tai-Li, the evening features an in-person screening of the first locally made ethnographic film in Taiwan,?The Return of Gods and Ancestors, by Dr. HU Tai-Li, and a lecture by Professor Scott Simon about Dr. Hu’s work and the influence of her pioneering ethnographic documentary practice in Taiwan. There will also be a reception honoring and celebrating Dr. Hu’s contributions on the study of ethnic relations in Taiwan.

Free |

April 18, 6:30 PM | Kane Hall

Many countries around the world have looked to the public universities of the United States and Canada as best-case examples of high-quality mass education. This has become less true after the financial crisis. Why is the contemporary public university struggling both at home and abroad???discusses the external pressures and internal policy failures that have undermined North American public universities in the 21st century, and describes features of a reconstructed public university that would better serve the domestic and global needs of the next thirty years.

Christopher Newfield?is Director of Research at the Independent Social Research Foundation (London) and immediate past President of the Modern Language Association. He was Distinguished Professor of Literature and American Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he taught for thirty years. His areas of research are critical university studies, literary criticism, quantification studies, innovation studies, the intellectual and social effects of the humanities, and U.S. cultural history before the Civil War and after World War II. He has written a trilogy of books on the university as an intellectual and social institution, concluding with?The Great Mistake: How We Wrecked Public Universities and How We Can Fix Them (2016).

?(Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences) will introduce the lecture as part of the Dean’s initiative?.

Free |

April 19, 7:00 – 8:30 PM | Gowen Hall

This Washin Kai event will be a lecture by Professor Ken Oshima of 天美影视传媒’s Department of Architecture, with participation by Professor Paul Atkins (Department of Asian Languages and Literature) and Washin Kai member and architect, Hiroshi Matsubara.

The architecture and gardens of the Katsura Imperial Villa 桂離宮 live on today as a paradigm of Japanese arts and cultures. Commissioned by two generations of princes of the Hachijō Imperial Family in the seventeenth century, this Xanadu embodies the ideals of tea master and artist, Kobori Enshū (小堀 遠州) and stands as an emblematic expression of both sukiya-zukuri architecture and modern design. This talk and conversation with Professor Paul Atkins and architect Hiroshi Matsubara will unpack the many facets including its literary and photographic interpretations to consider its implications for the future of Japanese traditions in a global context.

Free |

April 20, 7:30 – 9:00 PM | Kane Hall?

Leaders from the Makah Nation in Washington State will discuss ways they continue to exercise sovereignty across ancestral homelands and waters, especially as related to the Olympic National Park, the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary, the international border, and treaty fishing and whaling rights.

Speakers will include?Timothy J. Greene?(Makah Tribal Council Chairman),?Janine Ledford?(Director, Makah Cultural and Research Center), and?Rebekah Monette?(Cultural Resource Manager). This session will be moderated by?Joshua L. Reid?(Snohomish), who is the John Calhoun Smith Memorial Endowed Associate Professor of History and American Indian Studies and Director of the Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest.

Free |

April 20 – 22, 8:00 PM | Meany Hall

The acclaimed Step Afrika! is the world’s first professional company dedicated to the tradition of stepping — a polyrhythmic, percussive dance form that uses the body as an instrument. The company presents its latest work,?Drumfolk, a powerful piece inspired by the Stono Rebellion of 1739. Step Afrika! blends songs, storytelling and dance to explore a little-known event in American history that led to some of our country’s most distinct performance traditions. New percussive forms took root when the beats found their way into the body of the people, the?Drumfolk, in a way that would forever transform African American life and culture.

$53 Tickets |

April 20, 3:30 PM | ?Husky Union Building

The English Department is proud to host the sixth annual Scheingold Lecture in Poetry and Poetics, featuring??and?. There will be a reception and book signing to follow.

Free |

April 22, 10:30 – 12:30 PM | Gowen Hall

Unlock the language and music of Korea: Learn Korean through K-Pop, K-Musical, and K-Opera, and discover the singer in you. Learning a language can be tough, but it can be more fun than most imagine. This exciting workshop will teach Korean through the catchy tune of K-Pop, the dramatic performances of musicals, and the beautiful aria of K-Opera. Knowledge of Korean is not required.

The workshop will be lead by Eun Ju Vivianna Oh, a Korean-American soprano with a dynamic career as a recording artist, music director, teacher, and mother. She is a Doctor of Musical Arts candidate in Voice Performance and holds both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the UW. She has an extensive background in the music industry, having worked as a music director in the foreign film department at the Educational Broadcasting Station in Seoul, Korea. Currently, Eun Ju Vivianna is a predoctoral instructor at the UW, where she teaches private voice lessons to both music majors and non-music majors and mentors young singers and pianists in Seattle. Her versatility and expertise as a singer, music director, and teacher are undoubtedly unparalleled, making her an invaluable member of the musical community.

Free |

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

Many of these online opportunities are streamed through Zoom. All UW faculty, staff, and students have access to?.?

Spring Concert: Percussion Ensemble and UW Steel Band

June 4, 7:30 PM |?

The UW Percussion Ensemble (Bonnie Whiting, Chair of Percussion Studies and an Assistant Professor of Music, director) and UW Steel Band (Shannon Dudley, Professor of Ethnomusicology, director) present?live-streamed and pre-recorded performances in their Spring 2021 virtual concert.

BOOK TALK | Vikram Prakash, “One Continuous Line: Art, Architecture and Urbanism of Aditya Prakash”

June 3, 3:30 – 5:00 PM |?

The South Asia Center will host Professor of Architecture?Vikramaditya Prakash?to speak on his new book,?One Continuous Line.

One Continuous Line?explores the life, work, art and philosophy of Aditya Prakash, one of India’s early Modernist architects. Aditya Prakash belonged to the first generation of Indian modernists, a lodestar group of civil servants under Jawaharlal Nehru’s leadership immediately after Independence, at a time when the connectivity between city, citizen and nation seemed vibrant and expanding. Ignoring disciplinary boundaries, Prakash viewed all aspects of his work as multiple dimensions of a single quest—to understand the purpose of life, enjoy it, and to keep the interests of the poorest at heart. This is the “continuous line” and it represents an insight into Prakash’s philosophy in life and design.?

Free |

Center for Communication, Difference, and Equity Annual Conference:?Quarantining While Black

June 1-2 |

This year, as a continuation of the Interrupting Privilege Radical Listening project, the Center for Communication, Difference, and Equity?has been recording stories of Black community care during our dual pandemics. Please join them on Tuesday, June 1 from 9am-noon PT and Wednesday, June 2 from 3-7pm PT to radically listen to Black graduate students, police officers, clergy, retirees, and folks from all walks of life. They will share stories of Black joy, grief, resistance, self-to-community care, gentrification, and more.

Short Talks: Power

June 3, 6:30 PM – 8:00 PM | Online

Looking for more?

Check out UWAA’s Stronger Together web page for?more digital engagement opportunities.

Climate change and adaptive restoration explored in ‘Anticipating Future Environments’

How do climate change and its symptoms — drought, wildfire, flooding, extreme weather — affect the daily work of scientists involved with ecological restoration?

, a research scientist with the 天美影视传媒 Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering, looks for answers to this in a new book published in July by UW Press. “” tells of past and present salmon habitat restoration science in the Columbia Basin.

“Ecological restoration is often premised on the idea of returning a region to an earlier, healthier state,” Hirsch writes. “Yet the effects of climate change undercut that premise and challenge the ways scientists can work, destabilizing the idea of ‘normalcy’ and revealing the politics that shape what scientists can do. How can the practice of ecological restoration shift to anticipate an increasingly dynamic future? And how does a scientific field itself adapt to climate change?”

David Montgomery, UW professor of Earth and space sciences and author of several books, praised the new work: “In this hard look at how to restore an ecosystem that is changing our from under you, Hirsch reinforces the message that good science is not enough.”

UW Notebook asked Hirsch a few questions about the book and its topic.

How did the book come about?

Shana Lee Hirsch: I was researching water management in the Columbia River Basin and I was really struck by the complex and overwhelming issues that people are facing in terms of, not only managing water, but in sustaining livelihoods,?and all of the life that depends on the river. When climate change is piled on top of that, the issues are magnified.

But what really stood out to me was the way that people didn’t give up — they just kept on working through all of these complexities, restoring the river and finding creative ways to adapt. I wanted to understand what people, and particularly restoration scientists and practitioners were doing differently in light of climate change. How were they adapting their science, and their work, to deal with a climate-changed river system?

Who is the book’s intended audience?

S.L.H: It is an academic book, but tried to write it in a way that is accessible to a broader audience of people who are generally interested in environmental management or restoration of salmon habitat, especially in the Pacific Northwest.

What do you hope readers take away from the book?

S.L.H: I hope that readers will be inspired by what the restorationist community is doing to ensure that salmon continue to survive in the Columbia River Basin. Despite all of the devastation that salmon populations have suffered from development, and now climate change, the salmon and the people are not giving up. There is simply too much to lose.

Climate change should not overwhelm and stifle us to inaction, it should spur us to action and hope. The restorationists in this book can serve as an inspiration in this regard.

For more information, contact Hirsch at slhirsch@uw.edu or visit her personal .

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In other UW book news:

Stay the wrecking ball: ‘Building Reuse’ out in paperback

UW associate professor of architecture argues for the environmental benefits of reusing buildings instead of tearing them down in her 2018 book “.” UW Press published a paperback edition of the book in August.

Tearing down buildings and “throwing away the energy and materials embodied in them” is contrary to the values of sustainable builders and environmental stewards, Merlino told UW News in 2018. “I’m not arguing that all buildings are worthy of preservation and reuse, but I think a change in discourse is necessary.”

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Anu Taranath’s ‘Beyond Guilt Trips’ a Washington State Book Award finalist

The Washington Center for the Book has named “” by a finalist for a 2020 Washington Book Award in the general nonfiction category. Taranath is a principal lecturer in the departments of English and the Comparative History of Ideas.

“Many of us want to connect with people unlike us, and we know that’s a good thing — it’s good for our democracy, good for our souls, good for our communities,” Taranath told UW News in 2019. “But we’re also not sure how to do so, because of the persistent inequities in race, economics and global positioning. And having good intentions and knowing how to connect are two different things.”

The book also was on Oprah Magazine’s and the Fodor’s Travel list of books to inspire travel, and received an from the booksellers’ publication Foreword Reviews.

The Washington Book Awards were announced on Aug. 21, and the winners will be named on Sept. 25.

Rick Mohler receives Architect magazine 2020 R+D award for housing access prototype ‘ADUniverse’

, UW associate professor of architecture, has won a from Architect magazine for a project designed with Seattle city planner Nick Welch to give local homeowners the information they need to plan and build on their property.

The two led a team?at the in creating a prototype app called?, that uses neighborhood-level demographics and GIS data to help homeowners determine the physical and financial feasibility, on a parcel by parcel basis, of building a self-contained cottage or apartment.

Mohler and Welch’s project was one of seven honored in the magazine’s , chosen from 90 submissions that, the magazine said, “are scalable, thought-provoking, and promising in achieving a more equitable and healthy built environment.”

Mohler is also a licensed architect with Mohler + Ghillino Architects and serves on the . Welch is senior planner with the Seattle Office of Planning and Community Development.

“The short-term goal is simply increasing the number of available housing units, but the longer-term goal is increasing equity,” Mohler said.

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UW Libraries 2017 video exhibit ‘The Age of the Kampuchea Picture’ wins Center for Research Libraries research award

A UW Libraries video installation based on the work of New York Times journalist Elizabeth Becker has won a 2020 in research from the , an international consortium of academic and independent research libraries.

“” was an interactive video installation created in 2017 by filmmaker — who has since earned a Master’s degree in Southeast Asia Studies from the Jackson School — in collaboration with the Southeast Asia Section of UW Libraries, and , UW assistant professor of anthropology. It was among events in conjunction with a visit to campus by and French Cambodian filmmaker .

The research award is for innovation in expanding research in the social sciences or humanities. The installation was based on notes, audio and photographs from Becker’s December 1978 visit to Democratic Kampuchea just before the Vietnamese overthrew the Khmer Rouge regime. Becker started donating her materials to UW Special Collections in 2007.

“The installation speaks to the question of what is allowed to be seen, what is hidden, and how we might seek the truth in that absence of seeing,” wrote Judith Henchy, UW Southeast Asia Section librarian, on the Southeast Asia Center website. . .

• .

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College of Environment’s Chelsea Wood named runner-up for 2020 APEC ASPIRE prize

, assistant professor in the UW College of the Environment’s School of Aquatic and Fisheries Sciences, has been named one of two runners-up for the national prize.

APEC, or , is a 21-country forum for governments in the Pacific Rim that promotes free trade throughout the Asia-Pacific region. The annual APEC Science Prize for Innovation, Research and Education — called ASPIRE — is awarded by the state departments of APEC-member countries. It recognizes young scientists committed to excellence in scientific research, based on scholarly publication and cooperation with scientists from other member economies.

As one of two runners-up for the prize, Wood will receive $1,200 from scholarly publishing firms Wiley and Elsevier, co-sponsors of the prize, and will be invited to a roundtable with senior government officials and to give a virtual public lecture along with the ASPIRE winner and fellow runner-up, probably in August. The United States, an APEC member, selects one grand prize winner and two runners-up each year from across the sciences.

Wood’s research studies the ecology of parasites and pathogens in a changing world. Watch .

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UW Medicine’s Dr. Gail Jarvik begins as president-elect of American Society of Human Genetics

UW Medicine’s in January began a three-year term as of the . She was elected to the position in June of 2019.

Jarvik, the Arno G. Motulsky Endowed Chair in Medicine, is a professor of medicine and genome sciences and adjunct professor of epidemiology who is also affiliated with the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

The American Society of Human Genetics, or ASHG, was founded in 1948; its nearly 8,000 members include researchers, academicians, clinicians, laboratory practice professionals, genetic counselors and nurses. Jarvik has served on several of its committees and was on its board of directors from 2015 to 2018.

This wasn’t how LaShawnDa Pittman expected to give her final exam review: At her kitchen table, laptop open, coffee cup at the ready, her 12-year-old Chihuahua named Espresso by her side.

But as the first week of the 天美影视传媒’s shift to online classes drew to a close, , an assistant professor of American Ethnic Studies, was talking with her students over the conferencing platform Zoom, first to answer logistical questions about the upcoming exam, then to provide a refresher of some of the themes of the course. For this class, African American Families, that meant revisiting some key historical developments and public policies from the Civil War to the post-civil rights era.

Navigating the technology effectively has been a learning opportunity for everyone, Pittman said afterward, but the university’s decision to cancel in-person classes for the remainder of winter quarter was the right thing to do “for the health and well-being of everyone on campus.”

“I’m trying to be as flexible as I can with all of this,” Pittman explained. “There’s a lot of anxiety among students. I’m trying to end the quarter in a powerful way for students, to try to be as compassionate and make this is as easy as possible for them.”

Around the UW, faculty in every department, school and college made a change in plans. School of Music instructors conducted lessons over FaceTime. In the Jackson School of International Studies, guest speakers visited over Zoom. A doctoral defense in the School of Oceanography was livestreamed, with audience members occupying every second seat. And School of Public Health Dean Hilary Godwin has been holding “town hall” webinars on all things COVID-19.

, an associate professor of architecture, wrapped up his winter-quarter Research Design Studio from an empty classroom in Gould Hall. On the wall-mounted monitor, his students presented, group by group, their proposals to revamp six Seattle neighborhoods. At quarter’s end, there was to be a celebratory event — a panel discussion with local officials and planning professionals — but that has been postponed indefinitely.

It’s been a challenge, Mohler said, to translate what is normally a hands-on class, in a room filled with posters of housing prototypes, scale models of city blocks, and the chatter of student groups. Viewing their digital models on a large-screen monitor — rather than a student laptop in class — is a definite plus, he said. But the shift to an all-online environment means continual adjustments.

“A potential silver lining in this crisis,” Mohler said, “is that we are being required to adopt remote conferencing tools we might otherwise ignore.”

Students have been adapting, too — concentrating on lectures via Zoom and Panopto, “visiting” instructors in online office hours and submitting questions to discussion boards. None of the technology is completely unfamiliar, students say, but the totality of it — every lecture, every assignment, every question, every test — has taken some getting used to.

“It’s been a big learning curve,” said freshman Hannah Lee as she studied in Odegaard Undergraduate Library last week. “There’s definitely been some limitation in not being able to work with other people on whiteboards, or to have them write things out. But Zoom meetings are nice, because we can share screens. My TA was able to pull up her screen and write out what she would have written out on paper for us.”

Freshman Zage Phillips likened the shift to online classes to a public health experiment.

“I’m glad that they’re doing this for people who are high-risk, but I think that it’s a good test to see if we can keep it contained,” Phillips said. “But I think that the results will only show us if it actually worked in the future. I think only time will kind of tell.”

The difference between them lies in the deadline: What should Washington aim for, right now?

On March 11, will highlight a goal, based on the state’s own policies and recommendations — “Washington State Can Decarbonize in a Decade” — and feature Schwartz, Simonen, and local youth activists Julia Barnett and Sarah Starman. The event will be broadcast live from the KUOW studios at 7 p.m. The event was originally scheduled before a live audience at Seattle University but was relocated due to public health guidance regarding large gatherings.

, upcoming chair of the 天美影视传媒 Department of Architecture and director of the , focuses on building materials and the carbon emissions of a building over its lifetime. The Carbon Leadership Forum brings together academics and building industry professionals working?to eliminate embodied carbon in buildings and infrastructure by inspiring innovation and spurring change through collective action.?Last fall they introduced the Embodied Carbon in Construction Calculator, or EC3 tool, which is a free?tool for architects, engineers, owners, construction companies, building material suppliers and policy makers to evaluate and reduce embodied carbon emissions from construction materials.

is a UW professor of chemical engineering and director of the , which supports development of next-generation solar energy and battery materials and devices, and integrating them with systems and the grid. Created by the state in 2013, the institute’s mission is to “accelerate the adoption of a scalable clean energy future that will improve the health and economy of our state, nation and world.”

So the irony is not lost on Schwartz that, in this debate, he’s arguing the “con” side of decarbonizing — or lowering greenhouse gas emissions to zero — in a decade. Simonen will argue the “pro.”

But for Schwartz, it’s not about whether lowering emissions is a good idea — that gets a resounding “yes.” It’s about setting what he sees as realistic targets and time frames.

“I am the most optimistic person about how we’re going to tackle this problem, but I want us to focus on the real challenges, and I believe Washington focusing its attention on 100% elimination of emissions from energy use in 10 years we take our eyes off the most important prize, which is decarbonizing the planet,” he said.

Schwartz said he supports goals that have realistic pathways to success, like the Clean Energy Transformation Act or a low-carbon fuel standard, because they provide wins along the way, reduce fear of change, and empower people to do more.

“When you start with a goal that’s unachievable, you don’t get started, And when you don’t get started, you don’t learn how to go faster,” Schwartz said.

Simonen, meanwhile, is enthusiastic about the chance to engage the public on the issue. She wants listeners to recognize the urgency of climate change and the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and that there are steps everyone can take to be part of that solution.

Simonen approaches the topic from a construction angle: the carbon impacts of buildings and infrastructure. Buildings, she pointed out, are responsible for over 40% of global carbon emissions.

“Science-based targets tell us that globally emissions must reduce by over 50% in the next decade,” she said. “While our work at the Carbon Leadership Forum at UW is keenly focused on building material impacts, we’ve been interacting with global organizations setting regional decarbonization targets, and I will bring knowledge about these initiatives to inform the debate.”

Both Simonen and Schwartz want listeners to come away with a sense of optimism and opportunity.

“We in Washington have an opportunity and responsibility to be global leaders,”?Simonen said.

The book, published in 2019 by 天美影视传媒 press, is a study of the life and work of the architect who designed Seattle’s , among many other structures.

UW Notebook is late in catching up with Sprague for a talk about the book, which The New York Times noted in a November story about books that “.”?

What drew you to study and write about the career of Jack Christiansen??

Tyler Sprague: Jack was an incredibly creative, Northwest structural engineer, and someone who blurred the lines between architecture and engineering in his work.? He designed primarily in concrete — a typically rather heavy material — but used it in extremely light and expressive ways.? This makes many of his designs, like , look simply impossible.

And Jack played an essential role in shaping the built environment of Seattle, from the 1950s through the 2000s.? Encompassing time of incredible change (from the post-war boom, to the Seattle World’s Fair, the Boeing Bust, and the rise of tech), Jack designed over 100 buildings — schools, office buildings, warehouses, stadiums, homes — each suited to their time and place.

A controversial project from the start, the Kingdome went through extreme economic and political hardship during its design, and yet, because of Jack’s tenacity and design creativity became not only a reality, but also the largest, free-standing concrete dome in the world. This was a monumental achievement of structural engineering and construction, and provided a single, multipurpose venue that brought the Seahawks, the Mariners and other professional sports to Seattle.? Because of the Kingdome, Seattle was never the same.?

What is thin-shelled concrete construction, and what are its perceived benefits???

T.S.: The way Jack attained this impossible lightness in his work was by designing structures not with flat beams and vertical columns, but by using curved surfaces to create “shells.” When you do this, and shape the shell correctly, the structure resists loads through membrane-like, or shell behavior (rather than through bending behavior in beams), and you need far less material to do it.? One needs to only think of the strength of an egg shell, and how strong it is when you try to squeeze it in your hand, compared to how thin the egg shell is.

By designing with shells, typically concrete shells, he was able to achieve incredible levels of material efficiency in his structures — for long-span roofs (like airplane hangars and auditoria).? The careful shaping of these shells became part of his creative expression.

So in your view, what brought the demise of the Kingdome — which Christiansen had planned to last a thousand years?

T.S.: When it was demolished [in 2000], the Kingdome had no structural deficiencies whatsoever.? It did not have luxury boxes, nor an inside environment based around a single sport or event layout.? As professional baseball and football became bigger and bigger businesses, team owners demanded new facilities to bring in more revenue, at the tax payer’s expense. One writer stated: “It wasn’t that the Kingdome had nothing left to offer Seattle, it was that Seattle no longer had anything to offer the Kingdome.”?

With the Kingdome gone, where can people see other work by Christiansen??

Right here at the UW, Jack designed the two pedestrian bridges that connect the campus to the Montlake parking lot.? While you may not notice them initially, the bridges span nearly 80 feet over the traffic, and 30 feet on either side, and yet are only 8 inches thick at the midspan.? If you compare this to how big the older, nearby bridge is (going to the Hec Edmundson Pavilion), you will get a sense of the material efficiency in Jack’s work. They are pretty impressive.

Also, the Pacific Science Center at the Seattle Center. Jack was the engineer with architect Minoru Yamasaki. You can hardly believe that the overhead arches are made of concrete! The Green Lake Pool [called the ] was an early work of his too. A simple barrel vault.

What seems the future for thin-shelled concrete construction?

T.S.: Thin shells are making a comeback! The technique was quite popular through the 1970s, but fell out of favor by the 1980s for a few reasons — material and labor markets shifted, aesthetic tastes changed. But, as a building technique, they still offer one of the most materially efficient ways to enclose space. Current work is exploring shells of different materials (like thin tiles, or wood), and using shells to lower the carbon footprint of construction today.??

To learn more, contact Sprague at tyler2@uw.edu.

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Rick Bonus documents Pacific Islander students building community against odds at the UW

In his new book, , UW associate professor of American Ethnic Studies, discusses how Pacific Islander students at the UW used the ocean as a metaphor to create community for themselves and change their university. “” was published by Duke University Press in February.

The book tells of Pacific Islander students and their allies as they “struggle to transform a university they believed did not value their presence” despite campus promotion of diversity and student success programs. Bonus interviewed dozens of students he taught and advised at the UW between 2004 and 2018 about their experiences.

“(T)hese students did not often find their education to be meaningful, leading some to leave the university. As these students note, they weren’t failing school, school was failing them.”

Bonus shows how the students used the ocean as a metaphor “to foster community and to transform the university into a space that valued meaningfulness, respect, and critical thinking.”

To learn more, contact Bonus at rbonus@uw.edu.

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Jackson School’s Yong-Chool Ha edits volume on colonial rule in Korea

, professor of Korean social science in the UW’s Jackson School of International Studies has edited a new volume in 天美影视传媒 Press’ Center for Korea Studies Publications . , professor and director of the center, is the series editor.

“” was published last October.

Recent discussions of Korea’s colonial period have focused mainly on exploitation or development that was domestic in nature, with international aspects relatively neglected, publishers notes state. But the colonization of Korea by Japan also changed Japan, and has had long-term geopolitical consequences.

The essays in this volume, edited by Ha, “show the broad influence of Japanese colonialism not simply on the Korean peninsula, but on how the world understood Japan and how Japan understood the world.”

To learn more, contact Ha at yongha5@uw.edu or Sorensen at sangok@uw.edu.

Here’s a look at three podcasts being created by UW departments or people, including a couple that have been underway for quite a while.

UW Notebook will occasionally report on campus podcasts and ask a few questions of one producer or host each time.

““

This podcast name plays in part on the word “podcast” linked with Tacoma’s Point Defiance and a Husky Dawg’s paws. The name also reflects a philosophy of telling interesting stories about people, research, initiatives, community partnerships and other issues related to UW Tacoma and higher education.

Launched in April 2019, the podcast is produced by , a writer for UW Tacoma communications and hosted by students. Maria Crisostimo hosted in the last school year, then Katherine Felts filled in over the summer and now the podcast is hosted by student Sarah Smith.

The first season’s 16 episodes discussed topics including the indigenous history of the Tacoma area, building connections from prison to college and the dangers of microplastics in Puget Sound waters — even two faculty members’ love for the movie “Jurassic Park.” A second season is underway. The theme song was written by , UWT senior lecturer. The podcast has been downloaded about 3,000 times.

How long does it take you to record and produce a single episode?

Wilson-Edge: ?We rent space in a small, locally owned recording studio called Moon Yard. Doug Mackey owns the studio and is one of the co-creators of the City of Tacoma’s . We book the space for an hour to conduct the interview. Most of the recordings take about 45 minutes. From there it takes about two to four hours to edit the show.?So,?anywhere from three to five hours per episode.

Who is your audience? Is the podcast finding its audience?

W-E: Given our focus on external communication, our audience includes alumni, donors, future students and their parents, community leaders, UW folks outside of the Tacoma campus — and, of course, our own faculty, staff and students. We aim to reach parts of these audiences that may not engage with us via our website or social media.

We do think we are reaching that audience, although we’ve learned it takes time to grow the listener base. A key to that is consistent quality and a broad range of topics so that if someone doesn’t care much for one episode, they might be really drawn to another.

What episode might be the best for a newcomer to listen to first?

W-E: “” is technically the first episode.?It’s with (social and historical studies) and her dad, Puyallup Tribe Vice Chairman (he was chairman at the time of the recording) Bill Sterud. UW Tacoma sits on traditional Puyallup land so we thought the first episode should be about the Puyallup and the indigenous history of the area. .

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Other ongoing UW podcasts:

““

Hosted by

Rosenthal is a doctoral student of electrical and computer engineering and Kelly a doctoral student in aeronautics and astronautics. In each episode of this podcast the two friends battle science misinformation by “unraveling” research papers behind the latest headlines in science. Topics over 77 episodes include “” and “” In each episode, one host studies a paper in depth and explains it to the other, who asks questions, and they alternate roles. For those new to the podcast, the two suggest episode 16: “” About 22,000 downloads. Read more on the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics .

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““

Hosted by , professor of architecture

Prakash is an architectural historian and practicing architect and as well as a professor. “ArchitectureTalk,” now with almost 61 episodes, takes up cross-disciplinary questions of the built environment with architects and UW faculty members. His wide variety of topics includes architecture in global history, urban development, the Islamic world, Seattle and its history and more, as well as considerations of famous architects. There is an episode featuring UW Dance Department chair discussing “.” Over 75,000 downloads. Read more at UW News.

• In the next podcast roundup: “Crossing North” from the Department of Scandinavian Studies.

UW Notebook is a section of the UW News site dedicated to telling stories of the good work done by faculty and staff at the 天美影视传媒. Read all posts here.