Graduate Student Coffee & Conversation: Making Connections Across Departments & Disciplines in the Humanities
Register to attend.
The Simpson Center for the Humanities invites current graduate students at the master's and doctoral levels to a morning meet-and-greet event to make connections across the many departments and disciplines of the humanities, social sciences, and arts at the University of Washington. The Simpson Center offers UW scholars varied opportunities for intellectual community, professional development, and financial support that advance crossdisciplinary understanding, collaboration, and research.
Brief remarks and an introduction to Simpson Center programming will begin at 10:30am.
Stop by to learn more about our fellowships, events, and graduate research clusters, and to talk about shared interests over a cup of coffee or tea with colleagues beyond your program. All graduate students are welcome.
Questions? Contact Rachel Arteaga, Simpson Center Associate Director, at rarteaga@uw.edu. To stay updated on Simpson Center events and opportunities, subscribe to our email newsletter.
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Communications Building (CMU). Campus room: 202. Accessibility Contact: Simpson Center for the Humanities, 206-543-3920, schadmin@uw.edu. Event Types: Not Specified.
Thursday, October 22, 2026, 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM.
Digital & Data Humanities Showcase
RSVP Requested.
This event will highlight the innovative work of the Simpson Center’s 2026 Digital & Data Humanities Summer Fellowship recipients. The eight funded projects span a variety of disciplines and technological approaches – ranging from the use of tactile recording to capture the hand movements of artists, to an online community dictionary for the endangered Mixtec language of Mexico, to large-scale analysis of religious nationalist Facebook posts in the country of Georgia. The principal researchers for each project will discuss how they’ve applied technology over the course of the summer to help answer their research questions and expand their public impact.
Session 1: Innovative Approaches (2-3pm)
- Mal Ahern & Rey Yan, "An Encyclopedia of Media Toys"
- Zhifan Sheng, "Enveloping Affect: Epistolary Networks of Early Chinese Feminism"
- Meichun Liu, "Touching Tacit Knowledge: Preserving the Embodied Practices of Artists"
- Nikoloz Nadirashvili, "Blessed by the Feed: Digital Strategies of…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Student Union Building (HUB). Campus room: 214. Accessibility Contact: Simpson Center for the Humanities, 206.543.3920, humanities@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars. Target Audience: Open to UW Faculty, Students, and Staff.
Friday, October 23, 2026, 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM.
Persian–Arabic Calligraphy Workshop
Please join us for a hands-on Persian–Arabic Calligraphy Workshop on Friday, October 23, from 2:30–4:30 pm in Denny Hall 303. Featuring artists Elinor Holland and Reza Abbasi, the event will include live demonstrations and a chance to try calligraphy.
Please help spread the word by sharing it with your students and colleagues. We hope to see you there!
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Denny Hall (DEN). Campus room: 303. Accessibility Contact: melc@uw.edu. Event Types: Workshops. Target Audience: Undergraduates and Graduate Students.
Friday, October 23, 2026, 2:30 PM – 4:30 PM.
Daniel R. Smith (Swinomish): Artist Talk on "Spot Reservation" Public Art Project
Free artist talk by Daniel R. Smith (Swinomish) to accompany Spot Reservation, Smith’s newest participatory public art project, which he describes as an “Indigenous, celebratory occupation of the University of Washington.” Taking place the day before Halloween, Friday, October 30, from 11:00am – 3:00pm, the project transforms the lower level of the Padelford Parking Garage into an unexpected gathering place centered around participatory art making in a tiny forest, or “nanoforest,” of native plants growing from industrial oil barrels.
Related events in Seattle and Bothell: October 30 — Spot Reservation, Seattle, November 2 — Daniel R. Smith Artist Talk, Bothell, November 5 — Spot Reservation, Bothell.
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Intellectual House (INT). Accessibility Contact: Indigenous Arts Sawyer Seminar, indigenousarts@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Monday, October 26, 2026, 10:30 AM – 12:30 PM.
For more info visit simpsoncenter.org. What Haven’t We Asked Quantum Computers to Do? Jeff Henshaw Senior VP, Quantum Compute Products at IonQ
When people talk about quantum computing, the focus is usually on a small set of well-known applications. But an equally interesting question is whether we’re asking the right questions in the first place. What kinds of problems might benefit from quantum approaches that we simply haven’t recognized yet?
This talk offers a brief introduction to the ideas behind quantum computing and a snapshot of where the field stands today. It then explores a broader challenge: discovering new applications by bringing together people who approach problems from very different perspectives. Researchers in fields ranging from chemistry and biology to public policy, history, literature, and religious studies may see opportunities that physicists and computer scientists overlook.
Not every problem will be a good fit for quantum computing. But expanding the conversation beyond the traditional quantum community may be one of the best ways to discover what these technologies will ultimately be useful for.
All disciplines welcome…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Student Union Building (HUB). Campus room: 250. Accessibility Contact: casevents@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars. Target Audience: Open to all UW faculty, students, and staff.
Wednesday, October 28, 2026, 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM.
Dean Daryl Maeda Lecture, "Martial Arts in Pacific Currents: Bruce Lee and the World"
Registration required.
How did the martial artist and actor Bruce Lee vault to global stardom? In this lecture, Daryl Joji Maeda describes how transpacific contacts and migrations created the world in which a singular individual encountered, absorbed, and synthesized multiple philosophical and aesthetic influences to create a hybrid form all his own. Tracing Lee’s evolution as a fighter and performer reveals how macroeconomic and geopolitical forces can manifest new forms of culture and resistance.
Daryl Joji Maeda is Professor of American Ethnic Studies and the Katherine and John Simpson Endowed Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington. He has published widely on Asian American political activism of the 1960s and 1970s. His latest book is Like Water: A Cultural History of Bruce Lee (NYU Press, 2022).
This event is free and open to current and retired UW leadership, faculty, and staff. Accommodation requests related to a disability or health condition should be made by…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus room: Thomson 101. Accessibility Contact: schadmin@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Wednesday, October 28, 2026, 4:00 PM – 5:30 PM.
In/Humanizing Generative AI in Place and Space: A Roundtable Conversation
Register to attend. In/Humanizing Generative AI in Place and Space: A Roundtable Conversation brings together faculty, staff, and graduate students across the University of Washington to examine how generative AI reshapes questions of intelligence, authorship, equity, belonging, and humanness. Grounded in Liberatory Landscape Literacies, the roundtable connects humanities, urban studies, education, writing pedagogy, philosophy, and computational design. We ask how place-based learning can support ethical engagement with technologies operating across physical, linguistic, and digital environments. Rather than framing GenAI as either savior or threat, we consider how computational systems of reasoning compare with human cognition, reproduce or challenge inequities, and might support more democratic forms of AI literacy.
The conversation will engage an abridged recording by Davide Fucci, Assistant Professor of Software Engineering at the Blekinge Institute of Technology, whose research explores empirical…
Event interval: Single day event. Accessibility Contact: Tabitha Espina, tespina@uw.edu. Event Types: Not Specified.
Thursday, October 29, 2026, 12:30 PM – 2:00 PM.
Jane Russell Commons at UW Tacoma (1918 Pacific Avenue, Tacoma, WA 98402).
"Spot Reservation" Public Art Project by Daniel R. Smith (Swinomish)
Spot Reservation, Swinomish artist Daniel R. Smith’s newest participatory public art project, is a free event he describes as an “Indigenous, celebratory occupation of the University of Washington.” Taking place the day before Halloween, Friday, October 30, from 11:00am – 3:00pm, the project transforms the lower level of the Padelford Parking Garage into an unexpected gathering place centered around participatory art making in a tiny forest, or “nanoforest,” of native plants growing from industrial oil barrels. Featuring photo portraits with costumes and wearable taxidermy in a tiny post-apocalyptic forest, fry bread tacos, live birds of prey demonstrations, and an open mic; all free and open to the public.
Related events in Seattle and Bothell: October 26 — Daniel R. Smith Artist Talk, Seattle, November 2 — Daniel R. Smith Artist Talk, Bothell, November 5 — Spot Reservation, Bothell.
Event interval: Single day event. Campus room: Padelford Garage Level N21; 4110 NE Mason Rd, Seattle, WA 98105. Accessibility Contact: Indigenous Arts Sawyer Seminar, indigenousarts@uw.edu. Event Types: Performances. Special Events. Exhibits.
Friday, October 30, 2026, 11:00 AM – 3:00 PM.
For more info visit simpsoncenter.org. Daniel R. Smith (Swinomish): Artist Talk on "Spot Reservation" Public Art Project
Spot Reservation, Swinomish artist Daniel R. Smith’s newest participatory public art project, is a free event he describes as an “Indigenous, celebratory occupation of the University of Washington.” Taking place Thursday, November 5, from 11:00am – 3:00pm, the project transforms UW Bothell's central plaza into an unexpected gathering place centered around participatory art making in a tiny forest, or “nanoforest,” of native plants growing from industrial oil barrels. Featuring photo portraits with costumes and wearable taxidermy in a tiny post-apocalyptic forest, fry bread tacos, live birds of prey demonstrations, and an open mic; all free and open to the public.
Related events in Seattle and Bothell: October 26 — Daniel R. Smith Artist Talk, Seattle, October 30 — Spot Reservation, Seattle, November 5 — Spot Reservation, Bothell.
Event interval: Single day event. Campus room: UW Bothell Library. Accessibility Contact: Indigenous Arts Sawyer Seminar, indigenousarts@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Monday, November 2, 2026, 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM.
For more info visit simpsoncenter.org. Virtual Public Lecture | Helen Hardacre | Shinto Shrines in Prewar and Wartime Japan
Join us for an afternoon online lecture with Dr. Helen Hardacre, "Shinto Shrines in Prewar and Wartime Japan," a discussion of the social position of Shinto shrines in prewar and wartime Japan, with a study of the activities of a wartime priest.
Register in advance for this meeting: https://washington.zoom.us/meeting/register/XUWl-vxRQqOZvHTF0W-QFw
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
Helen Hardacre is Reischauer Institute Research Professor of Japanese Religions and Society, Harvard University. Her publications include The Religion of Japan's Korean Minority (1984), Lay Buddhism in Contemporary Japan: Reiyukai Kyodan (1984), Kurozumikyo and the New Religions of Japan (1986), Shinto and the State, 1868-1988 (1989), Marketing the Menacing Fetus in Japan (1997), Religion and Society in Nineteenth-Century Japan (2002), Shinto, A History (2016), Constitutional Revision and Civic Activism in Japan (lead editor and contributor, 2021), and…
Event interval: Single day event. Accessibility Contact: relig@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars. Target Audience: Open to public. Registration required.
Monday, November 2, 2026, 4:30 PM – 6:00 PM.
Register for Zoom link.
Cloud Drawing with Incendiary Traces Visiting Artist Hillary Mushkin - Burke Museum
In these gatherings for plein air drawing, participants look to the sky and give themselves over to the fluid flows of clouds. Mushkin will provide simple but specific drawing instructions at locations chosen for their connection to nuclear histories at UW. These “draw-ins” serve as a hands-on way to think together about what’s in a cloud and the atmospheric commons. Open to all. Please register for each session you will attend so we can plan accordingly. Materials provided. Dress to spend time outside; we have a plan in place in case of rain!
Wednesday, November 4, 2026, 3:00 – 4:30 pm, Meeting point: Burke Museum Artist Studio (museum admission free with Husky Card)
Registration Link
Thursday, November 5, 2026, 4:00 pm – 5:30 pm, Meeting point: Sakuma Viewpoint
As the sky darkens, all attendees are invited to move inside to hang their drawings together for an “in conversation” session with artist Hillary Mushkin and students from Wastelanding: Place, Value, and Visuality, who will be participating as…
Event interval: Ongoing event. Campus location: Burke Memorial-Washington State Museum (BRK). Campus room: Burke Museum Artist Studio. Accessibility Contact: burkevis@uw.edu. Event Types: Workshops. Special Events. Target Audience: students, faculty, community members.
Wednesday, November 4, 2026, 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM.
For more info visit simpsoncenter.org. "Spot Reservation" Public Art Project by Daniel R. Smith (Swinomish)
Spot Reservation, Swinomish artist Daniel R. Smith’s newest participatory public art project, is a free event he describes as an “Indigenous, celebratory occupation of the University of Washington.” Taking place Thursday, November 5, from 11:00am – 3:00pm, the project transforms UW Bothell's central plaza into an unexpected gathering place centered around participatory art making in a tiny forest, or “nanoforest,” of native plants growing from industrial oil barrels. Featuring photo portraits with costumes and wearable taxidermy in a tiny post-apocalyptic forest, fry bread tacos, live birds of prey demonstrations, and an open mic; all free and open to the public.
Related events in Seattle and Bothell: October 26 — Daniel R. Smith Artist Talk, Seattle, October 30 — Spot Reservation, Seattle, November 2 — Daniel R. Smith Artist Talk, Bothell.
Event interval: Single day event. Campus room: UW Bothell Central Plaza. Accessibility Contact: Indigenous Arts Sawyer Seminar, indigenousarts@uw.edu. Event Types: Performances. Special Events. Exhibits.
Thursday, November 5, 2026, 11:00 AM – 3:00 PM.
For more info visit simpsoncenter.org. Cloud Drawing with Incendiary Traces Visiting Artist Hillary Mushkin - Sakuma Viewpoint
In these gatherings for plein air drawing, participants look to the sky and give themselves over to the fluid flows of clouds. Mushkin will provide simple but specific drawing instructions at locations chosen for their connection to nuclear histories at UW. These “draw-ins” serve as a hands-on way to think together about what’s in a cloud and the atmospheric commons. Open to all. Please register for each session you will attend so we can plan accordingly. Materials provided. Dress to spend time outside; we have a plan in place in case of rain!
Wednesday, November 4, 2026, 3:00 – 4:30 pm, Meeting point: Burke Museum Artist Studio (museum admission free with Husky Card)
Registration Link
Thursday, November 5, 2026, 4:00 pm – 5:30 pm, Meeting point: Sakuma Viewpoint
As the sky darkens, all attendees are invited to move inside to hang their drawings together for an “in conversation” session with artist Hillary Mushkin and students from Wastelanding: Place, Value, and Visuality, who will be participating as…
Event interval: Ongoing event. Campus room: Sakuma Viewpoint. Accessibility Contact: burkevis@uw.edu. Event Types: Workshops. Special Events. Target Audience: students, faculty, community members.
Thursday, November 5, 2026, 4:00 PM – 5:30 PM.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Sakuma+Viewpoint,+Seattle,+WA+98105/@47.6516668,-122.3174027,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m6!3m5!1s0x549014ee19b97509:0x8c2999fcbd6e66cd!8m2!3d47.6516729!4d-122.3148894!16s%2Fg%2F11bytf3m2b?entry=tts&g_ep=EgoyMDI2MDkzMC4wIPu8ASoAS.
For more info visit simpsoncenter.org. Environmental, Indigenous, and Pacific Northwest Studies Meet & Greet
Registration recommended.
The Simpson Center invites current UW faculty, students, and staff working in the fields of environmental studies, Indigenous studies, and Pacific Northwest studies to a fall meet & greet to make connections and learn about upcoming events, workshops, and ongoing projects. Attendees are welcome to bring event flyers, brochures, and listserv signup sheets to display. Refreshments provided.
Featured projects and organizations include:
Not Apart: Indigenous Knowledges and the Art of University-Community Repair , Fire Humanities – Climate Futures Initiative Award from the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes
Arts of Atomic Accountability – Simpson Center Collaborative Research Award
Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture
Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest
EarthLab
Program on the Environment.
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Communications Building (CMU). Campus room: 206. Accessibility Contact: Simpson Center for the Humanities, 206-543-3920, humanities@uw.edu. Event Types: Information Sessions.
Friday, November 6, 2026, 3:30 PM – 5:00 PM.
Global Antiquities & Early Modernisms Lightning Talks
RSVP Required.
Join us for an informal meet-and-greet and lightning talk roundtable featuring scholars from across the University of Washington and Washington state whose research engages the ancient, medieval, and early modern worlds.
Designed to spark conversation and new collaborations across disciplines, regions, and traditional period boundaries, the event will feature short presentations on current and emerging research in literature, history, religion, performance, material texts, and cultural exchange. Topics range from Sanskrit court and temple poetry, Roman slavery and emotional labor, Dante and the manuscript roots of print culture, and medieval German and Yiddish literature to premodern Scandinavia in global perspective, shipboard Shakespeare, classical reception, and East Asia in the Renaissance world.
Featuring scholars from Asian Languages & Literature, Classics, English, French & Italian Studies, German Studies, Scandinavian Studies, and Central Washington University, the roundtable will…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Communications Building (CMU). Accessibility Contact: Simpson Center for the Humanities, 206-543-3920, humanities@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Monday, November 9, 2026, 3:30 PM – 5:00 PM.
Mother Tongue in Other Tongues: Life in Translation; Public talk by translator Aron Aji
Aron Aji cannot recall a time when he was not translating. Growing up in Turkey among Ladino, Hebrew, and French used at home and then, from elementary school on, in Turkish—and studying in English later—he learned to move between languages long before he began translating Turkish literature. In this talk, Aji asks what that lifelong experience brings to the page. What happens when English meets a Turkish text on its own terms? How might the text stretch English’s rhythms and expressive habits, rather than simply fit into them? Aji calls his approach “acoustic translation”: an act of close listening that draws on memory, sound, and the senses to recreate the experience of a work in another language. Translation, in this account, is a way of hearing a text—and of finding one’s way back to the languages of one’s life.
About the speaker: Aron Aji has published ten book-length translations of modern and contemporary Turkish literature, alongside numerous translations of poetry and prose. His translation of Bilge…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Communications Building (CMU). Campus room: 120. Accessibility Contact: UW Accessibility. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars. Target Audience: General public, undergrads, grad students, faculty.
Tuesday, November 10, 2026, 4:30 PM – 6:00 PM.
Safia Aidid Lecture — The Unruly Frontier: Mapping the British Somaliland-Ethiopia Border
Registration required. Safia Aidid is an interdisciplinary historian of modern Africa and Assistant Professor in the Department of History and the African Studies Centre at University of Toronto. She holds a PhD from Harvard University. Her research addresses anticolonial nationalism, territorial imaginations, borders, and state formation in the Horn of Africa, with a particular focus on modern Somalia and Ethiopia. She is currently working on a book manuscript entitled "Pan-Somali Dreams: Ethiopia, Greater Somalia, and the Somali Nationalist Imagination."
Made possible by the Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities. This event is free and open to the public . Accommodation requests related to a disability or health condition should be made by October 29, 2026 to the Simpson Center, 206.543.3920, schadmin@uw.edu.
Event interval: Single day event. Accessibility Contact: Simpson Center for the Humanities, 206-543-3920, humanities@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Thursday, November 12, 2026, 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM.
Zoom.
Joy Connolly Lecture "Parable of the Scholar: The Humanities in Conditions of Abundance"
Registration recommended.
We humanists are hoping for, and many of us are fighting for, a new day in the United States when the production and circulation of knowledge are understood as keystones of democracy and of human thriving – and thus as deserving of substantial public investment. Having worked so long in the spirit of doing a lot with a little, how do we envision the humanities in conditions of abundance? What shifts in traditional academic culture and policy will help us meet those conditions? In the spirit of Octavia Butler’s future-oriented thinking, this talk draws together many threads of contemporary thinking to sketch a future where American universities center the values and practices of liberal arts-grounded humanistic inquiry.
Joy Connolly has served as President of the American Council of Learned Societies since 2019. Previously, she was Provost and Interim President of The Graduate Center at the City University of New York and Dean for the Humanities at New York University. She has a…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Communications Building (CMU). Campus room: 202. Accessibility Contact: Simpson Center for the Humanities, 206-543-3920, humanities@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Tuesday, November 17, 2026, 4:00 PM – 5:15 PM.
First Book Manuscript Panel: Diana Flores Ruiz
Details TBA.
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Communications Building (CMU). Campus room: 202. Accessibility Contact: Simpson Center for the Humanities, 206-543-3920, humanities@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Friday, November 20, 2026, 3:30 PM – 5:00 PM.