Katz Distinguished Lecture: Emily M. Bender, "Resisting Dehumanization in the Age of "AI": The View from the Humanities"
The production and promotion of so-called "AI" technology involves dehumanization on many fronts: the computational metaphor valorizes one kind of cognitive activity as “intelligence,” devaluing many other aspects of human experience while taking an isolating, individualistic view of agency, ignoring the importance of communities and webs of relationships. Meanwhile, the purpose of humans is framed as being labelers of data or interchangeable machine components. Data collected about people is understood as "ground truth" even while it lies about those people, especially marginalized people. In this talk, Bender will explore these processes of dehumanization and the vital role that the humanities have in resisting these trends by painting a deeper and richer picture of what it is to be human.
Emily M. Bender is the Thomas L. and Margo G. Wyckoff Endowed Professor in Linguistics and an Adjunct Professor in the School of Computer Science and the Information School at the University of Washington, where she has…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Kane Hall (KNE). Campus room: 210. Accessibility Contact: Simpson Center, 206.543.3920, schadmin@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Tuesday, February 10, 2026, 6:30 PM – 8:00 PM.
Treasuring All the Knowledges: Writing Abundance in Academia
Please join us for a conversation- and creativity-centered gathering celebrating the book launch of Navigating Academia as a Transnational Scholar from the Global South: Treasuring All the Knowledges. Date: February 11, 2026
Time: 3:30–5:00 PM (panel discussion followed by a reception)
Location: Samuel E. Kelly Ethnic Cultural Center (ECC)
Room: Unity Suite
This edited collection brings together the voices of 16 women and non-binary scholars who began their postgraduate journeys as non-elite international students and (un)documented migrants in countries positioned as economically more powerful than their places of origin. Inspired by the book’s creative and relational approach to knowledge, this event will also open a collective space for poetry and storytelling. Participants are invited to write and share short poetic or narrative reflections that speak to their own experiences of abundance, survival, care, and knowledge-making within academic spaces.
Panelists: Roxana Chiappa, Assistant Professor at…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Samuel E. Kelly Ethnic Cultural Center (ECC). Campus room: ECC Unity Suite. Accessibility Contact: GWSS, gwss@uw.edu, 206-593-6900. Event Types: Special Events. Lectures/Seminars.
Wednesday, February 11, 2026, 3:30 PM – 5:00 PM.
TEAL Digital Scholarship Series 2025-26: Detecting Shifts in Linguistic Register in Late Imperial Chinese Fiction
The Tateuchi East Asia Library (TEAL) is proud to present the 2025-2026 TEAL Digital Scholarship Series, a dynamic program showcasing cutting-edge research by scholars in the fields of Chinese, Japanese and Korean studies. This series highlights how innovative digital tools and methodologies are transforming East Asian scholarship, fostering interdisciplinary dialogue, and broadening the impact of research within and beyond academia.
Detecting shifts in linguistic register in late imperial Chinese fiction: Fine-tuning language models to detect fictionalized memorials to the emperor
Paul Vierthaler, Assistant Professor at the Princeton University
Abstract: It is common in late imperial Chinese literature for novels to appropriate the voice of officialdom for a variety of purposes, often as a means of bolstering historical credibility. While this appropriation can manifest in a variety of ways, it often comes in the form of verbatim quotations from memorials that officials wrote to the emperor. Some such…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Gowen Hall (GWN). Campus room: Tateuchi East Asia Library (Gowen 3rd) Seminar Room. Accessibility Contact: hkyi@uw.edu. Event Types: Academics. Lectures/Seminars. Workshops.
Wednesday, February 11, 2026, 3:30 PM – 5:00 PM.
Workshop: Paul Vierthaler, "Fine-Tuning Language Models for Humanities Research"
Paul Vierthaler will provide a hands-on workshop introducing how to fine-tune language models and how such approaches may be leveraged in the humanities, in particular in Chinese Studies. Fine-tuning language models consists of adapting pretrained models to specialized tasks instead of training models from scratch, hence using far less data and computing power. This workshop builds on experiments Vierthaler has been conducting in leveraging the fundamentally distinct linguistic registers of fiction and memorials to fine-tune language models that can flexibly identify memorial-like language across hundreds of novels.
Paul Vierthaler (Assistant Professor, Princeton University) is a scholar of late Imperial Chinese literature and print history. His current research primarily focuses on historical narratives written in unofficial and fictive genres (e.g. novels, dramas, and unofficial histories). He is also a specialist in the digital humanities, particularly as they apply to Chinese Studies (including natural…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Communications Building (CMU). Campus room: Communications 202. Accessibility Contact: Simpson Center for the Humanities, 206-543-3920, schadmin@uw.edu. Event Types: Workshops.
Thursday, February 12, 2026, 1:30 PM – 3:00 PM.
Book Talk: 'Ghost Nation: the Story of Taiwan and its Struggle for Survival' with Chris Horton
In Ghost Nation: the Story of Taiwan and its Struggle for Survival, Chris Horton compares Beijing's claim that Taiwan has been Chinese territory "since time immemorial" with Taiwan's actual history. Several different groups have controlled some or all of Taiwan over the last 400 years -- the Dutch, Spanish, Tungning, Manchu, Japanese, Chinese, and now, Taiwanese. By looking at those who have ruled Taiwan, Horton also tells the story of the Taiwanese people, highlighting their intergenerational quest for self-determination -- and the existential threat posed by an expansionist Chinese Communist Party.
, Chris Horton is a freelance journalist and author who has been based in Taipei, Taiwan for the past decade. He previously spent 13 years in China and two in Hong Kong. He has written extensively for The New York Times, Bloomberg News, Nikkei Asia, The Atlantic and elsewhere, covering Taiwan's national security, diplomacy, economy, culture and more. His new book, Ghost Nation: The Story of Taiwan and its …
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Thomson Hall (THO). Online Meeting Link: https://www.youtube.com/@UWTaiwanStudies. Campus room: Thomson Hall 317 and Online. Accessibility Contact: Taiwan Studies (taiwanst@uw.edu). At the Jackson School, opportunities and events are open to all eligible persons regardless of race, sex or other identity. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars. Target Audience: Free and open to the public. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/UWTaiwanStudies#.
Thursday, February 12, 2026, 3:30 PM – 5:00 PM.
Lecture: Lisa Uperesa, "Embodied Racialization, Mobility, and Cultural Expression: Tracing the Roots of the Modern Polynesian Sports Diaspora"
Athletes with ancestral ties to the Pacific Islands are dominant fixtures in some of the world’s most visible sports and over several generations have produced a modern sports diaspora. Tracing Samoan transnational and diasporic movement along divergent colonial pathways, this talk examines the relationship between embodied experiences of racialization and the emergence of Pacific sports excellence in three settler colonial countries (United States, Aotearoa New Zealand, and Australia). It then considers what recent efforts to mobilize Indigenous practice inside and outside sport tell us about the uses and importance of culture in contemporary sport.
Lisa Uperesa (Associate Professor, Asian American Studies, UCLA) works with Pacific communities to understand movement and mobility, and how they shape lives, identities, families, cultures, and futures. Her past research focused on the rise of American football in Samoan communities and the navigation of sport as both labor and tautua (service). Current researc…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus room: Communications 120. Accessibility Contact: Simpson Center for the Humanities, 206-543-3920, schadmin@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Thursday, February 12, 2026, 4:00 PM – 5:30 PM.
Douglass Day Transcribe-a-thon
Douglass Day is an annual transcribe-a-thon program that marks the birth of Frederick Douglass. Each year, sites across the country gather thousands of people to help create new & freely available resources for learning about Black history. A transcribe-a-thon is an event in which a group of people work together to transcribe a collection of digitized historical materials. The primary goal of a transcribe-a-thon is to make the materials more easily accessible, but these events also serve to promote awareness of parts of Black history – and especially Black women’s history – that remain too-little-known.
Douglass Day invites people from all backgrounds to join in this effort to make these histories more widely accessible and searchable. No previous experience with transcription is required to join us. During this event, we will stream national Douglass Day celebrations including speakers, songs, and more. The experience of taking part in a transcribe-a-thon can transform us from consumers of history into kn…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Suzzallo Library (SUZ). Campus room: Open Scholarship Commons, Presentation Space. Accessibility Contact: osctech@uw.edu. Event Types: Special Events. Target Audience: students, faculty, researcher, community.
Friday, February 13, 2026, 9:00 AM – 12:00 PM.
Love Data Week: Accessible Data Visualization Workshop (online)
Data visualization best practices and tools do not always discuss accessibility, which can exclude many groups of people. This workshop will review ways to make your visualizations more accessible. We will work through a visualization together and add features to make it more accessible. You are encouraged to follow along, but no active participation is necessary. Data visualization experience is not required, though some familiarity with accessing and using spreadsheet software may be helpful. This workshop will not be recorded.
Event interval: Single day event. Accessibility Contact: Negeen Aghassibake. Event Types: Workshops. Target Audience: UW students, researchers, faculty.
Friday, February 13, 2026, 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM.
Online.
Digital History Colloquium - Navigating Spatial Narratives and Collections with Humap
The Digital History Colloquium series is pleased to present Aubrey Williams from UW Libraries, leading an information session of note to anyone interested in mapping and spatial analysis, both within research and educational contexts.
Humap is an up-and-coming digital humanities platform, recently added to the Library's software portfolio, which is ideal for building collaborative, spatially-oriented digital history projects. As such, it is potentially relevant not only to historical research undertaken by faculty and graduate students, but also to incorporating into undergraduate courses.
In this session, participants will learn about Humap's features and how it can support teaching, archival collections, and public-facing scholarship. The session includes hands-on experience contributing to a shared project, offering faculty and graduate researchers practical insight into how Humap can be used in courses and research.
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Smith Hall (SMI). Online Meeting Link: https://washington.zoom.us/j/91253982076. Campus room: Smith Hall, Room 320. Accessibility Contact: ejred@uw.edu. Event Types: Academics. Information Sessions.
Tuesday, February 17, 2026, 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM.
“Empty Tourist Spaces: Staged Geographies and the Evolution of Global Tourism along Spain’s Mediterranean Coasts”
In his latest work, The Paradox of Paradise: Creative Destruction and the Rise of Urban Coastal Tourism in Contemporary Spanish Culture, Nichols delves into the evolution of urban coastal tourism in Spain, revealing how destinations like Torremolinos and Benidorm transformed from sleepy fishing villages into international tourist hotspots. In his talk, Nichols will explore the trajectory of urban coastal tourism in Spain from the late Franco years to the present through the lens of Spanish Cultural Studies. He will discuss the role of visual culture, especially the ubiquitous tourist postcard, that propelled the narrative of development underlying Spain’s Economic Miracle. The visual imagery of postcards, he argues, sought to attract and engage the foreigner’s gaze with the promise of a Spain that was folkloric, rustic, and exotic yet also luxurious, modern, and sexualized. Nichols’ study of these cultural artifacts, then, offers insight into the forces behind Spain’s economic and cultural transformations as…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Allen Library (ALB). Campus room: Allen Auditorium. Accessibility Contact: Contact: Sarah Stroup, Chair / scstroup@uw.edu / 206 819 2406. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars. Target Audience: People interested: Spain; effects of urban cultural tourism; visual studies; cultural studies.
Friday, February 20, 2026, 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM.
Can You Bring It: Bill T. Jones and D-Man in the Waters + post-screening discussion with Bill T. Jones and Berette S Macaulay
Can You Bring It: Bill T. Jones and D-Man in the Waters is a feature documentary that traces the remarkable history and legacy of one of the most important works of art to come out of the age of AIDS –choreographer Bill T. Jones’s tour de force ballet “D-Man in the Waters.” In 1989, D-Man in the Waters gave physical manifestation to the fear, anger, grief, and hope for salvation that the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company felt as they were embattled by the AIDS pandemic. As a group of young dancers reconstructs the dance, they learn about this oft forgotten history and deepen their understanding of the power of art in a time of plague.
RSVP for Can You Bring It Film Screening.
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Communications Building (CMU). Campus room: 120 Lecture Hall. Accessibility Contact: Alycia Zollinger alyzolli@uw.edu. Event Types: Screenings. Target Audience: UW.
Tuesday, February 24, 2026, 5:30 PM – 7:30 PM.
For more info visit meanycenter.org. Sacred Breath: Indigenous Writing and Storytelling Series
The Department of American Indian Studies at the University of Washington hosts an annual literary and storytelling series. Sacred Breath features Indigenous writers and storytellers sharing their craft at the beautiful wǝɫǝbʔaltxʷ Intellectual House on the UW Seattle campus. Storytelling offers a spiritual connection, a sharing of sacred breath. Literature, similarly, preserves human experience and ideals. Both forms are durable and transmit power that teaches us how to live. Both storytelling and reading aloud can impact audiences through the power of presence, allowing for the experience of the transfer of sacred breath as audiences are immersed in the experience of being inside stories and works of literature.
Free and open to the public. Doors open at 4:30pm with light refreshments. Books available for purchase with author signing after the event. RSVP appreciated.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
OSCAR HOKEAH (Cherokee Nation and Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma)
Oscar Hokeah is a citizen of Cherokee Nation and the Kiowa Tri…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Intellectual House (INT). Campus room: Gathering Hall. Accessibility Contact: jedge18@uw.edu. Event Types: Special Events. Performances. Lectures/Seminars.
Wednesday, February 25, 2026, 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM.
For more info visit events.uw.edu. Lecture: Heng-hao Chang, "Post-Colonial Reflections on International Disability Rights: Adaptation and Localization in Taiwan"
Taiwan is a unique site of innovation in disability rights. Despite being barred from becoming a States Party to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) according to the diplomatic exclusion faced by Taiwan, it has become a model for the localization of the CRPD through its use “domestic review mechanisms.” Furthermore, Taiwan demonstrates the ways in which fundamental divides within human rights discourse, such as Western individualism and East Asian familialism, can be bridged using strategic adaptation that reimagine disability rights as a post-colonial hybrid.
Heng-hao Chang is a Professor of Sociology and former Dean of the College of Social Sciences at National Taipei University. A dedicated advocate for disability studies and the disability rights movement, Chang is a co-founder and past Chairman of the Taiwan Society for Disability Studies and currently serves as the Executive Editor of the International Journal of Disability and Social Justice.
Event made pos…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Communications Building (CMU). Campus room: 120. Accessibility Contact: Simpson Center for the Humanities, 206-543-3920, schadmin@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Thursday, February 26, 2026, 4:00 PM – 5:30 PM.
Public Lecture: Seeing Like a Merchant – Jews and Greeks from Ottoman to Greek Rule
Join us for a talk with Paris Papamichos Chronakis on his new book The Business of Transition – Jewish and Greek Merchants of Salonica from Ottoman to Greek Rule.
This event is co-sponsored by UW's Hellenic Studies Program.
How did the cosmopolitan bourgeoisie of the Eastern Mediterranean navigate the transition from empire to nation-state in the early twentieth century? In this talk, Paris Papamichos Chronakis shows how the Jewish and Greek merchants of Salonica (present-day Thessaloniki) skillfully managed the tumultuous shift from Ottoman to Greek rule amidst rising ethnic tensions and heightened class conflict. Bringing their once powerful voices back into the historical narrative, he traces their entangled trajectories as businessmen, community members, and civic leaders to illustrate how the self-reinvention of a Jewish-led bourgeoisie made a city Greek. Salonica’s merchants were present in their own—and their city’s—remaking.
Paris Papamichos Chronakis is Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Modern…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Student Union Building (HUB). Campus room: HUB 145. Accessibility Contact: jewishst@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars. Target Audience: Open to the public. Registration Required.
Thursday, February 26, 2026, 4:30 PM – 6:00 PM.
Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Lecture: Michael Pruett, "Why Classical Chinese Philosophy Still Matters"
What is the best way to live a flourishing life? How does one make ethical choices? And what should we concretely do to live in a fuller and more inspiring way? Questions such as these were at the heart of philosophical debates in China. The answers that classical Chinese thinkers developed in response to these questions are among the most powerful in human history. The goal of this talk is to ask what we can learn if we take some of these ideas seriously.
Michael Puett is the Walter C. Klein Professor of Chinese History and Anthropology and the Victor and William Fung Director of the Asia Center at Harvard University. He is a 2025-2026 Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar.
Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholars travel to more than 100 colleges and universities each year, spending two days on each campus and taking full part in the academic life of the institution. They meet informally with students and faculty members, participate in classroom discussions and seminars, and give a public lecture open to the academic c…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Communications Building (CMU). Campus room: CMU 120. Accessibility Contact: Caitlin Palo, cpalo@uw.edu, 206-685-5260. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Monday, March 2, 2026, 4:00 PM – 5:30 PM.
TALK | Trump in the World 2.0: What Was Intelligence What Was Intelligence and What Comes Next?
Join us for a free livestream talk and discussion on What Was Intelligence What Was Intelligence and What Comes Next? as part of our Trump in the World 2.0 Winter Lecture Series on the international impact of the second Trump presidency. RSVP here for the online link, Featured speakers: Ambassador (ret.) Jeff Hovenier and Kelly McGannon
Moderator: Danny Hoffman, Director of the Jackson School of International Studies and Stanley D. Golub Chair of International Studies
This event is free and open to the public. At the Jackson School, opportunities and events are open to all eligible persons regardless of race, sex or other identity. Questions? Email jsisevents@uw.edu.
Event interval: Single day event. Online Meeting Link: https://bit.ly/Trump-in-World-2026. Campus room: Online. Accessibility Contact: jsisevents@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars. Special Events.
Monday, March 2, 2026, 5:00 PM – 6:20 PM.
For more info visit bit.ly. Evo-Hub Lecture: Gregory Radick, "Nurturing Science: An Enhanced Role for the Humanities"
The traditional role of history and philosophy of science (HPS) in the science classroom is to stir some “human interest” into the pedagogic mix. HPS has been the stuff of the sidebar, where textbook authors put information that they regard as interesting, yet non-essential. Radick will advocate for the potential of HPS to enliven the creative critical thinking from which science benefits. He will describe how his HPS research has opened up a new option for teaching introductory genetics, more in line with present-day emphases on the modifying roles of internal and external environments than the standard start-with-Mendel curriculum. Radick will leave us with a sketch of how to broadly extend this more radical integration of HPS perspectives into science education.
Gregory Radick is Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Leeds, Editor-in-Chief of the journal Metascience, and a Trustee of the Science Museum. In 2025, he became the first humanities scholar to win the J. B. S.…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Communications Building (CMU). Campus room: CMU 120. Accessibility Contact: Simpson Center for the Humanities, 206-543-3920, schadmin@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Thursday, March 5, 2026, 4:00 PM – 5:30 PM.
Partition & Solidarity: Anticolonial Struggles in the Colonial Present Symposium
Over the past five centuries, empires have used partition and division to justify and advance colonialialism. We can see that ongoing history of colonial rule and racial violence exploding around the world today—from Palestine to Minnesota and beyond.
How might we forge diasporic imaginaries and solidarity movements to contest that colonial world order toward collective liberation?
Join us on this one-day symposium where scholars and activists will gather to engage in conversations about anticolonial struggles of the past and the present.
RSVP here: https://events.uw.edu/partition-solidarity.
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Student Union Building (HUB). Campus room: HUB Lyceum. Accessibility Contact: hbcls@uw.edu. Event Types: Conferences.
Friday, March 6, 2026, 9:30 AM – 5:30 PM.
For more info visit events.uw.edu. Book Launch - Sasha Senderovich - In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Short Fiction by Jewish Writers from the Soviet Union
Please join the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies in celebrating a new book edited and translated by SCJS faculty member Sasha Senderovich, In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Short Fiction by Jewish Writers from the Soviet Union.
The short fiction collected in In the Shadow of the Holocaust, translated by Senderovich and Harriet Murav, recovers a range of compelling voices that had been scarcely known or translated, with particular emphasis on the work of women writers. Jewish authors from Ukraine, Lithuania, Russia, and Belarus—some writing in Yiddish and others in Russian—tell stories of ordinary people living on after the massive devastation of the Holocaust on Soviet territory, depicting memory, conflict, love, and loss. Writers in this collection offer especially powerful perspectives on survival in the aftermath of genocide. These are not stories only about how people died, but about how they continued to live and make meaning.
Senderovich will be joined by Stroum Center faculty and iSchool professor Ben…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Kane Hall (KNE). Campus room: Walker Ames Room, Kane 225. Accessibility Contact: jewishst@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars. Target Audience: Open to public. Registration required.
Tuesday, March 10, 2026, 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM.
Digital/Data Humanities Lecture: Tonia Sutherland, "Resurrecting the Black Body: Race and the Digital Afterlife"
In this talk, Resurrecting the Black Body, Sutherland examines the consequences of digitally raising the dead. Attending to the violent deaths of Black Americans–and the records that document them–from slavery through the present, Sutherland explores media evidence, digital acts of remembering, and the rights and desires of humans to be forgotten.
Tonia Sutherland is an Associate Professor and Associate Dean for Faculty Development in the School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the author of Resurrecting the Black Body: Race and the Digital Afterlife (University of California Press, 2023). In addition to being the Founder and Director of PENDULUM and The Black Memory Collective. She also serves as Co-Director of the Community Archives Lab at UCLA and Co-Founder and Co-Director of AfterLab at the University of Washington Information School.
Event made possible by the Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities. This event is free and open to the…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Henry Art Gallery (HAG). Accessibility Contact: Simpson Center for the Humanities, 206-543-3920, schadmin@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Thursday, March 12, 2026, 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM.
'The Neighborhood: Space, State, and Daily Life in a Manchurian City' with Nianshen Song
What can one neighborhood reveal about the making of a modern nation? This talk deciphers the unexpected significance of Xita, a half-square-mile quarter in Shenyang, in Northeast China. It shows that over nearly four centuries, Xita has been shaped and reshaped by empire, war, migration, and urban transformation. The history of this small area mirrors large-scale changes, including and especially China’s metamorphosis from a multi-ethnic Eurasian empire to a postindustrial society. By studying how global and local forces play out in everyday spaces, the talk reveals a perspective for understanding China’s past—not from the top down, but through the streets and people who lived it. Nianshen Song is a historian and professor at Tsinghua Institute of Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences. His research and teaching focus on late imperial and modern East Asia, with special interest in frontiers, trans-regional networks and historical geography. His monographies in English include The Neighborhood:…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Thomson Hall (THO). Campus room: Thomson Hall 317. Accessibility Contact: Contact chinast@uw.edu. At the Jackson School, opportunities and events are open to all eligible persons regardless of race, sex or other identity. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars. Target Audience: Students encouraged to attend. REGISTRATION REQUIRED.
Monday, March 16, 2026, 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM.
Literary Translator Lecture: Tiffany Tsao, "Beyond Novelty and Exoticism: Taking the Long View in Translating Indonesian Literature "
Tiffany Tsao will discuss the challenges of translating Indonesian literature in the context of a publishing industry that has tended to value Indonesian works more for their “Indonesianness” than their literary value. Catering to a readership interested specifically in the history, culture, and living conditions of Indonesia has some near-term benefits, but does this approach do Indonesian writing a disservice over the long term? She will discuss, more specifically, how this state of affairs has shaped the decisions she has made as a translator – from the works she has chosen to translate, to her approach to the translation process itself.
Tiffany Tsao’s translations of Indonesian literature have received the PEN Translation Prize, the Republic of Consciousness Prize, and a longlisting for the International Booker Prize. She is also the author of The Majesties (2018) and But Won’t I Miss Me (2026), and Deputy Editor at the Sydney Review of Books.
*author photo by Joy Mei En Lai
Generously made possible by…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Student Union Building (HUB). Campus room: 332. Accessibility Contact: Simpson Center for the Humanities, humanities@uw.edu, 206.543.3920. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Tuesday, April 14, 2026, 4:30 PM – 6:30 PM.
Literary Translator Colloquium: Tiffany Tsao, "The Art of Reviewing Translations"
RSVP Required: https://simpsoncenter.org/form/tsao-colloquium
The past several years have seen an increase in the literary world’s appetite and appreciation for translated works. But what progress has been made when it comes to reviewing translations as translations? Speaking from both her current position as Deputy Editor at the Sydney Review of Books and as a literary translator who follows with great interest how translations are reviewed, Tiffany Tsao will discuss various patterns (and pitfalls) that reviewers of translated works tend to fall into, and share some ideas for how a reviewer might better engage with a translator’s labor and the “translatedness” of a text. Tiffany Tsao’s translations of Indonesian literature have received the PEN Translation Prize, the Republic of Consciousness Prize, and a longlisting for the International Booker Prize. She is also the author of The Majesties (2018) and But Won’t I Miss Me (2026), and Deputy Editor at the Sydney Review of Books.
*author photo by Joy Mei…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Communications Building (CMU). Campus room: 202. Accessibility Contact: Simpson Center for the Humanities, humanities@uw.edu, 206.543.3920. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Thursday, April 16, 2026, 11:30 AM – 1:00 PM.
For more info visit simpsoncenter.org. TEAL Digital Scholarship Series 2025-26: When NLP Meets Korean Language Education
The Tateuchi East Asia Library (TEAL) is proud to present the 2025-2026 TEAL Digital Scholarship Series, a dynamic program showcasing cutting-edge research by scholars in the fields of Chinese, Japanese and Korean studies. This series highlights how innovative digital tools and methodologies are transforming East Asian scholarship, fostering interdisciplinary dialogue, and broadening the impact of research within and beyond academia. When NLP Meets Korean Language Education, Dr. Sanghoun Song, Associate Professor, Korea University, Abstract:
As K-culture such as K-pop and K-drama continues to gain worldwide popularity, Korean has emerged as one of the most widely studied foreign languages across many countries. Meanwhile, Natural Language Processing has advanced rapidly, with AI-powered solutions achieving remarkable success in diverse fields. Yet these two developments have not fully converged. Leveraging NLP techniques can offer significant benefits for foreign language teaching and learning, particularly…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Gowen Hall (GWN). Campus room: Tateuchi East Asia Library (Gowen 3rd) Seminar Room. Accessibility Contact: hkyi@uw.edu. Event Types: Academics. Lectures/Seminars. Workshops.
Wednesday, April 22, 2026, 3:30 PM – 5:00 PM.
Katz Distinguished Lecture: Stephanie LeMenager
Stephanie LeMenager's work on climate change and the humanities has been featured in The New York Times, ClimateWire, Science Friday, NPR, the CBC, and other public venues. She is Barbara and Carlisle Moore Professor of English and Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Oregon, where she co-directs the Center for Environmental Futures with Professor Marsha Weisiger, an environmental historian. Her publications include the books Living Oil: Petroleum Culture in the American Century, which examines the 20th-century United States in terms of its aspirations toward petromodernity, Manifest and Other Destinies, a monograph about the alternatives to Manifest Destiny (i.e. settler colonialism) that might have developed in what is now the US West, Environmental Criticism for the Twenty-First Century, a co-authored essay collection for scholars, Teaching Climate Change in the Humanities, a co-edited collection for teachers interested in bringing climate change into humanities classrooms, and the…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Kane Hall (KNE). Campus room: 210. Accessibility Contact: Simpson Center, 206.543.3920, schadmin@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Tuesday, April 28, 2026, 6:30 PM – 8:00 PM.
CAMP LECTURE | “Against the North as well as the South, Abraham Lincoln as well as Jefferson Davis”: The Civil Wars of Lucy Broaddus, Frederick Douglass, and Franz Sigel | Angela Zimmerman, George Washington University
“If we fight, we must fight against the North as well as the South, Abraham Lincoln as well as Jefferson Davis,” Frederick Douglass declared in May 1861, just a few weeks after the Civil War began. His statement suggests a very different Civil War than the we usually hear about, centered on Abraham Lincoln: a war for the Union giving way to a tentative emancipation within the bounds of the law, the constitution, and private property. Occluded in such conventional narratives are struggles over white supremacy, the extent of Black freedom, capitalism, and patriotic nationalism. We get an entirely different war – not just a different interpretation of that war -- if we center radical perspectives that aimed for freedoms anathema to Union and Confederacy alike. In this talk I will look at the Civil War as it was understood by Lucy Broaddus, a woman born into slavery in Missouri in 1862, Frederick Douglass, and Franz Sigel, a communist German refugee who served as a general in the Union Army. Each presents a…
Event interval: Single day event. Accessibility Contact: histmain@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Wednesday, May 6, 2026, 4:00 PM – 5:30 PM.