News from the School of IAS
Category: Cultural Studies
Frances Lee writes on the pitfalls of empathy and the commodification of suffering
Frances Lee’s article, “Seeking change without the commodification of pain and suffering,” was published in The Seattle Globalist on Dec 10. The Cultural Studies alum discusses how social movements rely on emotion and the dead end this creates. “If you don’t care about someone or a group of people until the media has made it abundantly clear that they are suffering, then your concern and engagement is not laudable, but ordinary, expected, and unremarkable.”
December 13, 2018
Queer and Trans POC sex worker perspectives
IAS faculty member Kari Lerum, in collaboration with the Seattle LGBTQ Commission, the Seattle Commission for People with DisAbilities, SWOP-Seattle, and the Coalition for the Rights and Safety for People in the Sex Trade, led a public forum at Seattle City Hall featuring the voices of Queer and Trans POC in the sex industry. The event, which attracted approximately 70 community members, focused on the crisis caused by recent federal legislation (SESTA/FOSTA) on the lives of the minoritized ...
December 5, 2018
Dan Berger on What the Latest Bipartisan Prison Reform Gets Wrong and Why It Matters
IAS faculty member Dan Berger published an op-ed in Truthout on the First Step Act, a bipartisan reform measure now supported by the Trump administration. In reviewing the proposed law, Berger highlights the bipartisan failure to attend to the policies that would meaningfully reduce the number of people in prison. Berger also delivered two recent talks on similar topics ...
November 19, 2018
Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies (GWSS) faculty present at the annual National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) Conference
GWSS faculty organized sessions, presented papers, and celebrated their new book at the annual NWSA conference in Atlanta, Georgia. GWSS faculty coordinator Julie Shayne organized a session called “The Permanence of the Feminist Classroom: Murals, Archives, and Films.” On this panel she presented a paper called “Feminist Pedagogy + Feminist Knowledge Production = Feminist Archives” about the Feminist Community Archive of WA (FCA-WA) project she co-created and grows through her class “Histories and Movements of Gender and Sexuality” (BISGWS 302), offered this winter. Alka Kurian was also ...
November 15, 2018
Yolanda Padilla presents on “Latinx Modernist Field Imaginaries”
IAS faculty member Yolanda Padilla presented her work on a panel titled "Latinx Modernist Field Imaginaries" at the Modernist Studies Association conference in Columbus, Ohio. The panel explored Latinx modernisms as a set of challenges both to modernist studies broadly construed and to Latinx studies internally. Padilla argued for the importance of the Spanish-language press in ...
November 14, 2018
Ali, Murr, and Goldstein present work at Race & Pedagogy Conference
IAS faculty members Anida Yoeu Ali, Jed Murr, and David Goldstein presented their work at the quadrennial Race & Pedagogy Conference at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma. Ali and Murr shared their perspectives on the purpose, advantages, and limits of public art in “Public Art and Expression on Our Campuses: Context, Content, and Controversy.” Goldstein presented on his use of ...
October 11, 2018
Yolanda Padilla publishes “Borderland Letrados: La Crónica, the Mexican Revolution, and Transnational Critique on the U.S.-Mexico Border”
IAS faculty member Yolanda Padilla published an essay in a special issue of the journal English Language Notes on "Latinx Lives in Hemispheric Context." Titled "Borderland Letrados: La Crónica, the Mexican Revolution, and Transnational Critique on the U.S.-Mexico Border," the essay examines the contributions of border Mexicans to La Crónica, an influential Laredo, Texas newspaper. These writers engaged the Mexican nation from positions of opposition during the Mexican Revolution, while also contending with Anglo American nativist imperatives, which ...
October 10, 2018
Priya Frank co-facilitates workshop: Storytelling Strategies for Dismantling Racism
In September, alum Priya Frank (’11, Cultural Studies) co-facilitated the workshop “Storytelling Strategies for Dismantling Racism,” a training hosted by NonWhiteWorks for individuals and organizations working to interrupt structural racism. The workshop examines the power of narratives and concrete strategies for dismantling racist structures through storytelling...
October 2, 2018
Berliner and Krabill publish Feminist Interventions in Participatory Media: Pedagogy, Publics, Practice
IAS faculty members Lauren S. Berliner and Ron Krabill published Feminist Interventions in Participatory Media: Pedagogy, Publics, Practice, an edited collection that brings together feminist theory and participatory media pedagogy. It asks what, if anything, is inherently feminist about participatory media? Can participatory media practices and pedagogies be used to reanimate or enact feminist futures? And finally, what reimagined feminist pedagogies are opened up (or closed down) by participatory media across various platforms, spaces, scales, and ...
October 1, 2018
Suzanne Cohen directs Expand Upon: Incarceration
Master of Arts in Cultural Studies alum Suzanne Cohen (’15), Managing Artistic Director of Mirror Stage, presents Expand Upon: Incarceration, featuring David Drummond, Rick Dupree, Adria LaMorticella, Pablo Lopez, Corey Spruill, and Benjamin Symons. Additionally, IAS faculty member Dan Berger will deliver pre-show lectures on the History of Mass Incarceration in the United States on ...
September 24, 2018