News from the School of IAS
After the MFA: Sun, moon, wind, ocean – Talena Lachelle Queen and the poetry of art in community
By Natalie Singer (’16) As a student who preceded me in the UW Bothell MFA in Creative Writing & Poetics, Talena Lachelle Queen was someone I heard about often during my time in the program but didn’t have the chance to meet until after we both had graduated. I was excited to interview Talena because to me, she represents the real-world successful example of how one can realize a practice and career in art-making and community leadership and advocacy. While writing poetry, teaching, and mothering, a juggle I also seek to balance, Talena has figured out how to activate the conversation around art, its purpose and potential, in her community. While she advances her own practice, she is driven by the motivation to make art a civic venture and the belief that communities need art to thrive. Here is an edited version of our interview ...
July 17, 2018
Dan Jacoby discusses the Janus decision’s implications for labor unions
IAS faculty member Dan Jacoby wrote a commentary for The Herald on the Supreme Court’s Janus decision, which put an end to public agency unions requiring non-union member to pay “agency fees” toward collective bargaining expenses. Jacoby argues that the Janus decision will weaker unions and put workers at risk. “…this ruling will push public policy further down the discredited path of private contracting agencies. Private contractors do bargain the terms of employment, but ...
July 16, 2018
Rob Turner and Justin Felder work to return Kokanee salmon to local creeks
The Lake Forest Park (LFP) Stewardship Foundation is partnering with IAS faculty member Rob Turner and Biology faculty member Jeff Jensen on the “Return Kokanee to Our Streams” project. Turner has undertaken the testing of catch basin filters to determine their effectiveness in removing pollutants (heavy metals and polycarbons) in stormwater runoff from local roads. Environmental Studies major Justin Felder is assisting Turner by taking samples and gathering data and has completed the project’s second scientific report. ...
July 13, 2018
Poetry and Persistence: Belonging and Expression for First-Gen Students of Color
“I want to help minoritized students flourish and thrive in higher education. As a Cultural Studies student who wishes to go into Student Affairs, it is important for me to think of the best ways to serve and support diverse populations of students. I am very interested in using poetry as a way to cope, to heal, to create communities, and to make meaning. Being accepted into a university and going to class is not enough to help students succeed in college. All students are knowledge creators, and poetry is just one of the ways in which minoritized students can resist the restrictions of academic institutions.” ...
July 9, 2018
Kristin Gustafson publishes two new columns in Clio: Among The Media
IAS faculty member Kristin Gustafson published two new columns in Clio: Among The Media. The most recent column, “Using History to Draw Student Attention to the ‘Difficult and Dangerous’ Work of Journalism, Over Time, Around World,” describes her classroom lesson on Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s resistance against attacks meant to shut down her journalistic voice and her resiliency to find new pathways to campaign against lynching. Gustafson identifies histories like that of Wells-Barnett and historical understanding as valuable teaching tools. They can frame moments such as with the recent news of five U.S. journalists killed ...
July 9, 2018
Alumni Shout Out!
Sandra (Brewer) Hengen (’00, Liberal Studies) was chosen to represent Boeing at the 2018 Women in Aviation conference in Reno, Nevada. Neil Low (’03, Liberal Studies) has retired from the Seattle Police Department after almost 50 years on the force. Jared Mead (’15, Global Studies) is a city councilmember in Mill Creek and current candidate for the State House of Representatives in Washington’s 44th Legislative District. Amy (Felch) Panther (’06, Culture, Literature & the Arts) is a senior executive assistant in administration at Seattle Children’s Hospital. Aaron Thacker (’98, Liberal Studies) served two years as Commander of the 856 Military Police Company and ..
July 5, 2018
Becca Price publishes “Songwriting to learn”
IAS faculty member Becca Price, along with Sarah Ward (UW College of Education), Katie Davis (UW iSchool), and Greg Crowther (UW Bothell School of STEM and Everett Community College), recently published, "Songwriting to learn: how high school science fair participants use music to communicate personally relevant scientific concepts," a paper that describes the qualities of music that high school students wrote about scientific ideas. The students were all participating in the local BioExpo science fair. Their songs employed ...
July 5, 2018
Lauren Berliner publishes Producing Queer Youth: The Paradox of Digital Media Empowerment
IAS faculty member Lauren Berliner published Producing Queer Youth: The Paradox of Digital Media Empowerment. Based on over three years of participant action research with queer teen media-makers and textual analysis of hundreds of youth-produced videos and popular media campaigns, the book challenges popular ideas about online media culture as a platform for empowerment, cultural transformation, and social progress. It offers a nuanced picture of openings that emerge for youth media producers as they ...
June 29, 2018
Amaranth Borsuk Interviewed at the Los Angeles Review of Books Blog
The LARB Blog has just published an interview with IAS faculty member Amaranth Borsuk about her new MIT Press volume, The Book. Borsuk's wide-ranging conversation with writer Andy Fitch covers how she came to write this book, the many historical forms the book has taken over time and in different regions, the affordances of the familiar codex, and what artists' books have to teach us about ...
June 28, 2018
Amaranth Borsuk launches public project to define the book
To accompany her recently-published volume The Book (MIT Press, 2018), IAS faculty member Amaranth Borsuk has launched a web project to expand our definition of an object we think we know intimately. At t-h-e-b-o-o-k.com, Borsuk is compiling crowd-sourced answers to the question What is the/a book?, which she has posed to over 100 artists, writers, scholars, publishers, and librarians. In her MIT Press volume, Borsuk defines the book with ...
June 28, 2018