Frances Lee and Maisha Manson perform at Common AREA Maintenance

On October 6th, second year Master of Arts in Cultural Studies students Frances Lee and Maisha Manson, with Jordan Alam and Eli Steffen performed at Common AREA Maintenance in Belltown. The event was the first of a community experimental lecture series on “Embodied Utopias: Expansive Potentialities in the Here and Now.” Framing questions included: Can our bodies become sights of utopian expression today? How does our longing and desire for non-normative expressions of self and connection project possibilities into the future?

October 10, 2017

micha cárdenas and Frances Lee screen #Stronger videos

IAS faculty member micha cárdenas and Master of Arts in Cultural Studies student Frances Lee screened their #Stronger videos at the contemptorary fundraiser in LA held on Sept 24. #Stronger is a project of the Poetic Operations Collaborative that aims to develop a decolonial vision of futures of health, fitness and strength for trans and gender non-conforming people. ...

October 9, 2017

Frances Lee appears on CBC’s The Sunday Edition and KUOW’s The Round

Continuing the conversation about dogmatic activist culture first raised in their essay, Kin Aesthetics: Excommunicate Me from the Church of Social Justice, 2nd year Master of Arts in Cultural Studies graduate student Frances Lee had two radio appearances this fall. Lee worked with a seasoned producer and voice coach to ...

October 6, 2017

Mona Halcomb celebrates win for native curriculum in Oregon public schools

M.A. in Cultural Studies alum Mona Halcomb (’11) was thrilled to witness Oregon Governor Kate Brown sign Senate Bill 13: Tribal History & Sovereignty Curriculum into law on September 18, 2017. SB 13 requires school districts statewide to implement American Indian/ Alaskan Native curricula covering tribal history and sovereignty. SB 13 fills a critical gap for Oregon’s K-12 children: by the 2019-2020 academic year, all districts must teach the Essential Understandings of Oregon Indians curriculum. As a member of the SB 13 coalition and Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, Mona testified in support of the bill back in February. ...

September 22, 2017

Dan Berger publishes op-ed about Charlottesville tragedy

IAS faculty member Dan Berger published an op-ed in the Washington Post about the Charlottesville tragedy. The op-ed, “When white supremacists strike, police don’t always strike back,” connects the killing of an antiracist protestor in Charlottesville to the 1979 Ku Klux Klan murders of five antifascist demonstrators in Greensboro, North Carolina. One of those killed was Cesar Cauce, brother of UW President Ana Mari Cauce. In his op-ed, Berger notes ...

August 18, 2017

Alumni Shout Out!

Jennifer Clarke Caruso (’08, Policy Studies) has joined ELEVATE Global as Director of their Supplier Ownership program. Jennifer began her career as a social responsibility specialist at Nordstrom, and then spent nine years at the Fair Labor Association (FLA) supporting licensees and other leading companies in building ethical sourcing programs that promote and protect workers’ rights and improve working conditions. Heidi Hannah (16, Global Studies) is a Humanitarian Action Fellow with ...

August 3, 2017

Frances Lee Essay on Culture of Activism Strikes a Chord

A personal essay by second-year Cultural Studies student Frances Lee has struck a cultural chord and gone viral. Entitled “Kin Aesthetics: Excommunicate Me from the Church of Social Justice,” Lee’s essay explores the culture and climate of current activism.

July 25, 2017

Frances Lee accepts 2017-18 PAGE Fellowship

Master of Arts in Cultural Studies student Frances Lee has been awarded a fellowship with the 2017-18 Publicly Active Graduate Education (PAGE) fellows cohort. PAGE is Imagining America’s network for publicly engaged graduate students in humanities, arts, and design. Fellows participate in ...

July 18, 2017

IAS faculty and students speak at Allied Media Conference in Detroit

IAS faculty member Scott Kurashige will speak in the Opening Ceremony of the 2017 Allied Media Conference. Kurashige, author of The Fifty Year Rebellion, will ground the work of AMC in the context of Detroit as an international model for survival, resistance, and solidarity.

June 21, 2017

Bruce Burgett and Miriam Bartha publish “Lateral Moves – Across Disciplines”

IAS dean Bruce Burgett and director of graduate programs and strategic operations Miriam Bartha published a revised and expanded version of “Lateral Moves – Across Disciplines” in Public: A Journal of Imagining America. Originally published in Lateral, the essay-exchange-intervention is based on an interview conducted with Randy Martin, along with two members of the Cultural Studies Praxis Collective: Kanta Kochhar-Lindgren and Diane Douglass. The publication is part of ...

June 8, 2017