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.
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.
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.