Recent notable books by ÌìÃÀÓ°ÊÓ´«Ã½ faculty members explore the legal history of Indigenous nations and the mentoring benefits of fan fiction. Plus, a UW anthropologist’s book is honored, a former English faculty member is remembered in a biography, and UW Press brings out paperback editions of three popular titles.

Alexandra Harmon’s ‘Reclaiming the Reservation’ examines effects of 1978 Supreme Court decision on tribal sovereignty

A new book by , UW professor of , explores the legal history of Indigenous nations claiming regulatory power over their reserved homelands — and the “promises and perils” of relying on the U.S. legal system in such matters.

Harmon’s “” was published in July by ÌìÃÀÓ°ÊÓ´«Ã½ Press.

In the 1970s, Harmon writes, the Quinault and Suquamish tribes, among dozens of Indigenous nations across the United Stated, asserted their sovereignty by applying their laws to all people on their reservations, and this included arresting non-Indians for minor offenses.

“Tribal governments had long sought to manage affairs in their territories, and their bid for all-inclusive reservation jurisdiction was an important, bold move, driven by deeply rooted local histories as well as pan-Indian activism,” Harmon wrote. “They believed federal law supported their case.”

However, this effort ended with a 1978 that non-Indians were not subject to tribal prosecution for criminal offenses. “The court cited two centuries of U.S. legal history to justify their decision but relied solely on the interpretations of non-Indians,” Harmon writes.

In “Reclaiming the Reservation,” Harmon looks at the histories of Quinault, Suquamish and other tribes to explore the roots of their claims of regulatory power in their reserved homelands. She also shows how tribes have responded in the decades since 1978, “seeking and often finding new ways to protect their interests and assert their sovereignty.”

“Harmon brilliantly explains how tribal nations have sought to assert sovereignty through the extension of civil and criminal jurisdiction over non-Indians living within the boundaries of their nations,” wrote reviewer of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “‘Reclaiming the Reservation’ is precisely the kind of history that the field desperately needs.”

For more information, contact Harmon at aharmon@uw.edu.

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Katie Davis, Cecilia Aragon find mentoring lessons in the world of fan fiction

Fan fiction has exploded in popularity in recent years, with more than 1.5 million amateur writers — most in their teens or twenties — publishing 7 million stories and 176 million reviews on a single online site, Fanfiction.net, alone.

In their new book, “,” and examine fanfiction writers and repositories and the novel ways young people support and learn from each through participation in online fanfiction communities. Davis is an associate professor in the UW ; Aragon is a professor in the .

They find that “these sites are not shallow agglomerations and regurgitations of pop culture but rather online spaces for sophisticated and informal learning.”

Aragon and Davis call this novel system of interactive advice and instruction “distributed mentoring,” and describe its attributes — each supported, they write, by an aspect of networked technologies.

The two authors combine qualitative and quantitative analyses in a nine-month study of three fanfiction sites, and also analyze the “lexical diversity in the 61.5 billion words on the Fanfiction.net site.”

They consider how distributed mentoring could improve not only other online learning platforms but also formal writing instruction in schools.

“” was published this month by MIT Press.

For more information, contact Aragon at aragon@uw.edu or Davis at kdavis78@uw.edu.

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Seawomen and Seattle architects: Paperback editions coming from UW Press

ÌìÃÀÓ°ÊÓ´«Ã½ Press will release paperback editions of three popular UW-related books in September.

• “,” by . This is the paperback version of a second edition published in 2014. The book was first published in 1994. This edition includes four additional profiles. Ochsner, a UW professor of architecture, said the book seeks to show “the wide variety of kinds of architectural achievement and the extraordinary diversity of those who contributed to making Seattle’s built environment.”
• “” explores the career of the founder of the UW Department of Landscape Architecture, best known in Seattle for his . Author and UW architecture professor said Haag’s legacy is found in the places he designed, which “inspire students to think beyond what they know … they ignite civic engagement and public service, for Rich’s most important work was in the public realm.”
• “” uses extensive historical and field research to document the women who have withstood the trials of fishing in Iceland from the historic times of small open rowboats to today’s high-tech fisheries. A finalist for the 2017 Washington State Book Award in general nonfiction/history, the book is by , affiliate associate professor of anthropology, also with the Canadian Studies Arctic Program.

Other book notes:

Honor for Sareeta Amrute’s ‘Encoding Class’: The has given its top book honor in social sciences for 2019 to “,” by UW associate professor of anthropology. The group presented the award to Amrute at its annual conference, in Leiden, the Netherlands. “Encoding Class” was published in 2016 by Duke University Press.

Joanna Russ, who taught at UW, remembered in biography: “Experimental, strange, and unabashedly feminist, ‘s groundbreaking science fiction grew out of a belief that the genre was ideal for expressing radical thought,” states from fellow sci-fi writer . Russ was a Hugo and Nebula award-winning writer who from 1977 to 1991; her work is widely taught and studied. In 2006, editors of the UW alumni magazine Columns named Russ’s 1975 novel “” among the top .

The conference will be held Thursday through Saturday May 10 to 12, in the Samuel E. Kelly Ethnic Cultural Center. The event is organized by staff and faculty of the center, including , UW associate professor of communication, its founder and director. The full schedule is listed .

, professor of African American Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago, will give the keynote address at 7 p.m. Thursday, under the title “In These Dark Times: The (Re)Making of a Radical Black Public Sphere.”

“This conference is an opportunity for scholars to share their cutting-edge work on all aspects of race and media,” Joseph said. “Studying race and media is so important because in our starkly segregated lives, the media is one of the few places that people engage regularly with folks who are different races than themselves. But what happens when racialized difference only happens on our screens?  This is what we’ll be talking about.

“It will also focus on how the rhetoric of post-racialism — which Joseph called “the idea that racism, and maybe even race itself are figments of the past” — has combined with an increasing threat to ethnic studies and “weakened our ability to call attention to race.”

The conference will bring scholars to Seattle from about two dozen institutions nationwide. Several UW faculty will present or facilitate discussions. These will include:

• , associate professor of anthropology, will lead a discussion on “Producing Race Behind the Screens”
• , associate professor of American ethnic studies, will lead a discussion of “Sonic (Re)Collection: Memory and Resistance through Sound”
• , assistant professor in the Information School, will lead a discussion on “Racial and Spatial Signifiers: Negotiations of Self (Re)presentation”

Also, Joseph will host a lunchtime discussion Thursday on “Balance, Children, and Other Academic Juggling Acts” and , associate professor in the Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies Department, will host a discussion of “Race, Media, and Public Scholarship for Faculty of Color.”

Other presentations include:

• “The Lessons of Failure: The Networks and Latina/o Sitcoms of the ’80s and ’90s”
• “Black Women Showrunners’ Politics of Representation”
• “From Post-Race to Post-Truth? Media and the New Era of Overt Racism”
• “Because You Watched: Algorithmic Identities and What It Means To Be Latina/o According To Netflix”
• “Post-Race in HBO’s ‘Westworld'”

On the final afternoon, the conference will present several collaborative projects and video presentations from researchers in the School of Public Health, College of Education, UW Bothell’s Digital Futures Lab and the Information School.

Joseph said, “With this conference we hope to foster a space of dialogue and critique around the most important issues of race and media today.”

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For more information or for press access, contact Joseph at rljoseph@uw.edu.