Maya Angela Smith – UW News

New faculty books: Artificial intelligence, 1990s Russia, song interpretation, and more

Lauren Kirschman — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 19:02:27 +0000

Recent faculty books from the ��Ӱ�Ӵ�ý include those about artificial intelligence, 1990s Russia and song interpretation.

Recent faculty books from the ��Ӱ�Ӵ�ý include those from linguistics, Slavic languages and literature and French. UW News spoke with the authors of four publications to learn more about their work.

Scrutinizing and confronting AI hype

, UW professor of linguistics, co-authored “” with Alex Hanna, the director of research at the Distributed AI Research Institute.

The book looks at the the drawbacks of technologies sold under the banner of artificial intelligence. Bender and Hanna offer a resounding no to pressing questions: Is AI going to take over the world? Have big tech scientists created an artificial lifeform that can think on its own?

This kind of thinking is a symptom of a phenomenon known as AI hype, they write, which twists words and helps the rich get richer by justifying data theft and motivating surveillance capitalism. In “The AI Con,” Bender and Hanna explain how to spot AI hype, deconstruct it and expose the power grabs it aims to hide.

The book grew out of podcast co-hosted by Bender and Hanna called “.”

“The podcast uses ridicule as praxis to cope with and deflate the hype around AI,” Bender said. “Our goal with both the podcast and book is to both take on the current hype cycle and empower our audience to deploy the same strategies with the hype they are encountering. The book is an interdisciplinary project, blending Alex’s expertise in sociology with mine in linguistics, to look at why certain language technologies in particular pose risks and how the use of these technologies can do damage in various contexts.”

For more information, contact Bender at ebender@uw.edu.

Two recent books explore translation, Russia in the 1990s

, professor of Slavic languages and literature, published two novels in March: “” and “.”

“Tales of Bart” follows the exploits of “evil” translator Fruitvale Bart as the setting shifts from Republic-era Texas to 19th-century Czarist Russia to far-future Atalanta to 1990s Los Angeles.

Each of the vignettes was purportedly translated by Bart himself. But, the book asks, what is translation: subservience to a pre-existing text or a creative act? Both? Neither? “Tales of Bart” explores these questions as well as the nature of art, the legacies of colonialist violence, the alienation of postmodern life and the horrors of the self.

“I was intrigued with the position of the translator, the tremendous power they have to shape communication between cultures,” Alaniz said. “And the ways translation is therefore about power, which one can use for good or evil ends.”

The second book, “Moscow 93,” takes place in 1990s Russia, where 20-something Chicano journalist José Alonzo is looking to make a name for himself. But things are never what they seem in this new post-Soviet country striving for freedom and democracy — and falling short. At the opening of a New York-style night club on Red Square, partygoers will have a life-or-death national crisis erupt in their faces.

“Moscow 93” is an auto-fictional account of Alaniz’s experiences before, during and after the 1993 , when a violent revolt against President Boris Yeltsin erupted in the capital. By the time it ended, army tanks shelled the parliament building. The book blends horror and farce, presenting Russia in the first decade after communism through the lens of a sordid expat scene.

“The mini-civil war that erupted in Moscow in fall of 1993, which I experienced as a journalist, seemed to be a good lens through which to view the whole of early post-Soviet Russia,” Alaniz said. “I decided to write an auto-fictional account of that era, which plays fast and loose with some of the facts but nonetheless delivers an incisive portrait of what it was like to live and work there then as an ex-pat.”

For more information, contact Alaniz at jos23@uw.edu.

Following the journey of ‘Ne me quitte pas’

, UW professor of French, published “” in February. The book follows the long and varied journey of the classic song, “Ne me quitte pas.”

Brel, a Belgian singer-songwriter, debuted the song in 1959 as a haunting plea for his lover to return.��In the mid 1990s, Nina Simone’s��1965��cover so captivated a teenage��Smith��that it inspired her future profession. In her book,��Smith��shows how the song travels across languages, geographies, genres and generations while accumulating shifting artistic and cultural significance.

Smith��said the book emerged from��“Reclaiming Venus,”��a memoir she wrote about Alvenia Bridges, a woman who worked behind the scenes in the music industry.

“When this project was accepted, I realized I needed to hone my musical analysis skills,”��Smith��said. “I decided to take songwriting courses through Berklee College of Music online so I could do the close reading of the song justice. Because of UW’s RRF and Simpson Center’s Society of Scholars, I had the resources and feedback necessary to write what has turned out to be my favorite book project so far.”

For more information, contact Smith at mayaas@uw.edu.

“Ways of Knowing” Episode 8: Translation

UW News staff — Tue, 10 Oct 2023 16:27:16 +0000

When you hear a cover of a favorite song, comparisons are inevitable. There are obvious similarities – the lyrics, the melody – but there are also enough differences to make each version unique. Those deviations say more than you might expect.

Ways of Knowing��

The World According to Sound��

Episode Eight��

Translation��

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[Nina Simone sings “Ne Me Quitte Pas”]��

��

Ne me quitte pas
Il faut oublier
Tout peut s’oublier
Qui s’enfuit déjà
Oublier le temps
Des malentendus
Et le temps perdu
À savoir comment��

��

Chris Hoff: This is Nina Simone singing “Ne Me Quitte Pas” in 1965.��

��

[Nina Simone continues to sing]��

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CH: It’s a cover. The original was written by Belgian songwriter Jacques Brel in 1959.��

��

[Jacques Brel sings “Ne Me Quitte Pas”]��

��

CH: Two versions of the same song, made at different times by different people in different cultures. The versions are similar, but clearly not the same. And it’s in that space between the two where interesting things start to emerge.��

��

[Nina Simone and Jacques Brel sing “Ne Me Quitte Pas” simultaneously]��

��

Maya Angela Smith: So, I love comparing Jacques Brel and Nina Simone because you have this French-speaking Belgian man and this English-speaking American woman. One is white, one is Black. So, they bring so many different identity markers to this, which in turn gets read differently by the audience.��

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CH: Maya Angela Smith is an Italian and French professor at the ��Ӱ�Ӵ�ý.��

She’s writing a book that follows the journey of “Ne Me Quitte Pas” from the original through many covers and adaptations. She’s interested in showing how different versions of the same piece of art, in this case a song, can bring into focus cultural, social, and political narratives.  There’s this one performance by Nina Simone where the difference between her version and the original is particularly insightful.��

��

[Nina Simone sings “Ne Me Quitte Pas”]��

��

CH: It’s December of 1971. Nina Simone is performing in Paris. She’s left the U.S. after getting blowback over her protest songs and role in the Civil Rights movement. She’s been studying French for years, in part to sing this song, which was written by one of her idols. Simone really wanted her French to be perfect, especially in front of this French crowd. But it wasn’t.��

��

[Nina Simone sings]��

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MAS: So right there she says, “où il ne pleut pas,” where it doesn’t rain. But in fact she says, “il ne plus pas,” which is not standard French. Many people would say this is a mistake in her pronunciation.��

��

[singing continues]��

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CH: Throughout the song, you can hear Simone trying to prevent these tiny mistakes, trying to sound like a native French speaker, to pass.��

��

[singing continues]��

��

MAS: So you might have noticed a hesitation there where she says, “l’amour sera loi” and she pauses before the “loi” … probably because the lw sound in English is really hard to do, so it seems like she is thinking really hard before she pronounces it.��

��

[singing continues]��

��

CH: These are small details. But they reflect Nina Simone’s culture and history, which are being refracted through a song written in a different language by a songwriter from a different culture.��

��

[singing continues]��

��

Oh, lord��

Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas
��

MAS: This is one of my favorite lines in this whole thing. Her voice breaks before the “oh,” and there is this drawn out “oh” before she says “lord.” This is real evidence of code switching. It’s jarring. It reminds us she is an English speaker, a non-native speaker of French. It also evokes a different musical tradition, to me Black spirituals, the mix of sorrow and hope that genre gives you. By code switching, she’s bringing in a whole other world into this song. ��

��

[singing continues]��

��

CH: These differences aren’t just markers of Simone’s culture and history, but an expression of her individual identity, which she clearly imprints on Jacques Brel’s song.��

��

[piano plays and singing continues]��

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MAS: I love her piano playing. … She’s so breathy there. It’s on the verge of speaking. … There I love the intonation of, “Tu comprendras” — you’ll understand. There’s this lilt there of the question.��

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CH: This is an iconic live performance, in part because Nina Simone doesn’t finish the song. Before the final verse, she apologizes to the Parisian crowd for her language mistakes and stops the song abruptly.��

��

[Nina Simone sings then speaks]��

��

Ne me quitte pas��

��

Sorry about the words, ya’ll��

��

Ne me quitte pas��

��

[song ends]��

 ��

CH: These subtle observations—the imperfections in Nina Simone’s French, the way she performs the song, her decision to stop abruptly—they reflect larger racial, cultural and political forces.��

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MAS: By doing this close reading, you get to these larger issues, which is something we do in the humanities. It’s supposed to sort of better understand the human condition by looking at various kinds of cultural production.��

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CH: This kind of translational analysis can be applied to much more than different versions of a song. It is an entire framework for considering culture and society.��

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MAS: Everything is a translation. This notion that people have original ideas? That’s not really true, right? You’re borrowing from someone else. You’re translating something you experienced into a different medium.��

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CH: The examples are endless. “Ne Me Quitte Pas” alone has some 1,600 covers and adaptations — 1,600 other versions that could be analyzed to gain insight into the people who made them, the audiences that received them and the cultures they came from.��

��

[music plays]��

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CH: Maya’s work on “Ne Me Quitte Pas” is an analysis of translation in the broadest possible sense…comparing not just languages, but everything from the form and content, to the author, reception, context, history, and legacy. This wide-ranging consideration of similarities and differences is the essence of translation studies, an academic field focused on the theory, description, and application of translation. It is a helpful framework for considering the relationship between multiple versions of the same thing, as Maya has done with “Ne Me Quitte Pas.” But it can be applied more broadly to gain insight on the way different things and ideas spread. As Maya said, one can argue that everything is a translation of something.��

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Maya Angela Smith – UW News

New faculty books: Artificial intelligence, 1990s Russia, song interpretation, and more

Scrutinizing and confronting AI hype

Two recent books explore translation, Russia in the 1990s

Following the journey of ‘Ne me quitte pas’

“Ways of Knowing” Episode 8: Translation

Click to see the full transcript of the episode