Sovereign Bodies, Sovereign Spaces
Since the mid-20th century, health activism has become increasingly central to expressions of Indigenous sovereignty and survivance. In this innovative comparative study, Maria John assesses urban Indigenous health activism in the United States and Australia and how it has sought to counter the medical mistreatment and neglect that Indigenous people have historically faced in these nations. John illustrates how Indigenous community-controlled health clinics have also created a new kind of political space where Indigenous people from different tribal nations and geographies can develop and practice new ideas of nonterritorial sovereignty and pan-Indigenous solidarities across regions and nations.
Maria John is an associate professor of history and the director of the Native American and Indigenous Studies program at UMass Boston. She received her PhD in history from Columbia University and was an Indigenous Studies Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the American Studies Department at Wesleyan University. Her resea…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Allen Library (ALB). Campus room: Petersen Room. Accessibility Contact: cspn@uw.edu. Event Types: Academics. Lectures/Seminars.
Monday, November 3, 2025, 3:30 PM – 5:30 PM.
Katz Distinguished Lecture: Michael Rothberg, "Comparison Controversies: Historical Analogy and the Politics of Holocaust Memory"
Comparison Controversies: Historical Analogy and the Politics of Holocaust Memory, Why do we turn to the past in order to confront the crises of the present? Michael Rothberg approaches this question from the perspective of “comparison controversies,” which occur when impassioned public debates emerge from provocative historical comparisons. Since October 7, 2023, political speeches, protests, magazine articles, and social media posts have generated controversy by connecting recent events in Israel and Gaza to the Holocaust. In this talk, Rothberg will consider post-October 7 examples in relation to a larger context of comparison controversies and a longer trajectory of Holocaust memory to reflect more generally on the possibilities and pitfalls of historical analogy. Michael Rothberg (1939 Society Samuel Goetz Chair in Holocaust Studies and Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of California, Los Angeles) researches the social and cultural implications of political violence and its…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Kane Hall (KNE). Campus room: 210. Accessibility Contact: Simpson Center, 206.543.3920, humanities@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Tuesday, November 4, 2025, 6:30 PM – 8:00 PM.
Soft Services Workshop with Chloë Bass
Students are invited to a semi-formal workshop with Chloë Bass dedicated to reflecting on Soft Services and its themes of community, care, and resilience. Building from the Field Trip and Bass’s prompts, the session invites participants to think, write, and create through and around the work.
Participants should visit Soft Services—either during the Field Trip on Oct. 24 or independently—before attending the workshop. All Audio Guide developers are required to attend. RSVP Deadline: Tuesday, October 28, 2025,
The University of Washington is committed to providing access, equal opportunity and reasonable accommodation in its services, programs, activities, education and employment for individuals with disabilities. To request disability accommodation contact the Disability Services Office at least ten days in advance at: 206.543.6450/V, 206.543.6452/TTY, 206.685.7264 (FAX), or e-mail at dso@u.washington.edu.
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Student Union Building (HUB). Campus room: HUB 307. Accessibility Contact: gwssadvs@uw.edu. Event Types: Workshops. Student Activities. Special Events.
Wednesday, November 5, 2025, 3:30 PM – 5:00 PM.
Swim Parallel to the Shore: A Lecture Performance by Chloë Bass
Working from poet Tan Lin’s idea of “general feelings”—the notion that emotions are not our own (individually held or private) but shared as a kind of communal recipe—Chloë Bass will discuss the production of artistic work in the contemporary public realm using two conceits:
First, what it means to think of objects through the scale of the human body, and thus as a stand-in for potential emotional action; and
Second, what happens when we consider the presentation of static artworks as a form of rehearsal, which in turn provokes the co-creation of a world.
Registration Required
This talk complements GWSS x Henry student engagements around Bass’s public art project Soft Services (Field Trip on Oct 24; Student Workshop on Nov 4).
Chloë Bass (b. 1984, New York, NY) is a multiform conceptual artist working in performance, situation, conversation, publication, and installation. Her work uses daily life as a site of deep research to address scales of intimacy: where patterns hold and break as group sizes…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Henry Art Gallery and Allen Center for The Visual Arts (HAG). Accessibility Contact: mailto:museumservices@henryart.org. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Thursday, November 6, 2025, 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM.
GWSS RSO Visual Media Workshop
Join the GWSS RSO to discuss the importance of visual information in the history of feminist organizing. After looking at historical informative methods, you will workshop visual infographics about queer/feminist leaders and historical events, which can be used to educate peers online.
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Savery Hall (SAV). Campus room: SAV 130. Accessibility Contact: gwssadvs@uw.edu. Event Types: Workshops.
Thursday, November 6, 2025, 7:30 PM – 9:00 PM.
4th Sam Dubal Memorial Lecture: Tracie Canada, "How Black College Football Players Tackle their Everyday"
College football, with its prestige, drama, media, and money, is a core feature of the sporting landscape in the US. However, the promises of an “amateur” system that offers a “free” education contradict the reality. Based on long-term ethnographic research, Dr. Canada describes how this system particularly harms, disadvantages, and exploits the Black men who are demographically overrepresented on gridirons across the country. In this talk, she highlights how she engages multiple audiences in her ethnographic writing, which details how Black college football players tackle the systems that structure their everyday lives, and who helps them do it.
Tracie Canada is the Andrew W. Mellon Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology and director of the HEARTS (Health, Ethnography, and Race through Sports) Lab at Duke University. She is a Black feminist anthropologist and ethnographer whose research uses sport to theorize race, kinship and care, gender, and the performing body.
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Miller Hall (MLR). Campus room: Miller 301. Accessibility Contact: Simpson Center for the Humanities, 206-543-3920, schadmin@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Friday, November 7, 2025, 10:30 AM – 11:50 AM.
For more info visit washington.zoom.us. 4th Sam Dubal Memorial Lecture: Tracie Canada, "How Black College Football Players Tackle their Everyday"
College football, with its prestige, drama, media, and money, is a core feature of the sporting landscape in the US. However, the promises of an “amateur” system that offers a “free” education contradict the reality. Based on long-term ethnographic research, Canada describes how this system particularly harms, disadvantages, and exploits the Black men who are demographically overrepresented on gridirons across the country. In this talk, she highlights how she engages multiple audiences in her ethnographic writing, which details how Black college football players tackle the systems that structure their everyday lives, and who helps them do it.
Tracie Canada is the Andrew W. Mellon Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology and director of the HEARTS (Health, Ethnography, and Race through Sports) Lab at Duke University. She is a Black feminist anthropologist and ethnographer whose research uses sport to theorize race, kinship and care, gender, and the performing body.
Co-sponsored by the Henry M. Jackson…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Miller Hall (MLR). Online Meeting Link: https://washington.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Ibc1du9_TsmWfwb7nufUQw. Campus room: 301. Accessibility Contact: Simpson Center for the Humanities, 206-543-3920, schadmin@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Friday, November 7, 2025, 10:30 AM – 11:50 AM.
GWSS AUT Colloquium: Graduate Student Webpage & Research Pitch
Please come to this working session to revise and update your departmental webpage profile; and to draft a snappy 2-3 sentence “elevator pitch” about your research and why it matters. We need your help with this especially to support GWSS advancement/fundraising/visibility efforts to communicate the broad relevance of the amazing work you all do. Snacks provided!).
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Padelford Hall (PDL). Campus room: PDL B110 G. Accessibility Contact: gwss@uw.edu. Event Types: Workshops. Target Audience: GWSS Graduate Students.
Friday, November 7, 2025, 2:30 PM – 3:30 PM.
Veterans Day
Holidays
No classes. Most University offices and buildings are closed. Check with specific offices to confirm.
Event interval: Single day event. Year: 2025. Quarter: Autumn. Event Types: Academics.
Tuesday, November 11, 2025.
For more info visit www.washington.edu. 2025 National Women's Studies Association Conference: "An Honour Song: Feminist Struggles, Feminist Victories"
The National Women’s Studies Association leads the field of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies. Established in 1977, NWSA has more than 2,000 members worldwide. The annual conference regularly draws more than 2,300 attendees and is the only annual meeting in the continental United States of America and its colonies that is exclusively dedicated to showcasing the latest feminist scholarship.
The National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) 45th Annual Conference, An Honour Song: Feminist Struggles, Feminist Victories will be held in San Juan, Puerto Rico, at the Puerto Rican Convention Center from November 13th - 16th, 2025. Each year, NWSA hosts upwards of 2,000 feminists, scholars, activists, and publishers from around the world at our annual convening. To learn more about the Annual Conference, visit the 2025 Annual Conference page, as well as the associated resources we’ve developed to support our members and attendees.
Event interval: Ongoing event. Accessibility Contact: nwsa@nwsa.org. Event Types: Diversity Equity Inclusion. Conferences. Special Events.
Thursday, November 13, 2025 – Sunday, November 16, 2025.
San Juan, Puerto Rico.
For more info visit www.nwsa.org. Digital & Data Humanities Meet & Greet
RSVP Encouraged: bit.ly/dhmg
The Simpson Center invites current UW faculty, students, and staff working in the digital and data humanities, broadly defined, to a fall meet-and-greet to make connections and learn about upcoming events, workshops, and ongoing projects. RSVP encouraged. Refreshments provided. Featured Projects & Resources, Black Digital Studies in the Age of Techno-Fascism, Cultural Analytics Praxis, Digital Humanities Reading & Research Cluster, Graduate Certificate in Textual and Digital Studies, Humanities Data Lab , Minor in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities, Society + Technology at UW, Free and open to UW faculty, students, and staff; RSVP encouraged. Accommodation requests related to a disability or health condition should be made by November 4, 2025 to the Simpson Center, 206.543.3920, schadmin@uw.edu.
Generously made possible by the Digital Humanities Commons Endowed Fund.
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Communications Building (CMU). Campus room: 204 (enter through CMU 206). Accessibility Contact: Simpson Center for the Humanities, 206-543-3920, schadmin@uw.edu. Event Types: Information Sessions. Target Audience: UW Faculty, Students, & Staff.
Friday, November 14, 2025, 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM.
Panel: Pathways to Faculty Positions in Two-Year Colleges
This panel will feature the voices of two-year college faculty from the Seattle District Colleges who will describe their paths to these teaching-intensive institutions and offer advice to graduate students who are considering community college careers. Panelists will discuss effective approaches to the job search and application materials, the classroom experience, service expectations, and the unique rewards of working in this critically important part of the higher education sector. Panelist remarks will be followed by Q&A with the audience.
Panelists
Deepa Bhandaru, PhD (Humanities, North Seattle College)
Cristóbal A. Borges, PhD (History, North Seattle College)
Steph Hankinson, PhD (Humanities, Drama, & English, South Seattle College)
Free and open to graduate students. Accommodation requests related to a disability or health condition should be made by November 9 to the Simpson Center: 206.543.3920, schadmin@uw.edu.
Generously made possible by the Walter Chapin Simpson Center Endowment for the…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Allen Library (ALB). Campus room: Allen Auditorium. Accessibility Contact: Simpson Center for the Humanities, 206-543-3920, schadmin@uw.edu. Event Types: Information Sessions.
Wednesday, November 19, 2025, 3:30 PM – 5:00 PM.
Thanksgiving Day
Holidays
No classes. Most University offices and buildings are closed. Check with specific offices to confirm.
Event interval: Single day event. Year: 2025. Quarter: Autumn. Event Types: Academics.
Thursday, November 27, 2025.
For more info visit www.washington.edu. Native American Heritage Day
Holidays
No classes. Most University offices and buildings are closed. Check with specific offices to confirm.
Event interval: Single day event. Year: 2025. Quarter: Autumn. Event Types: Academics.
Friday, November 28, 2025.
For more info visit www.washington.edu. Good Luck Rabbits EP Release and Multilingual Reading
Join GWSS alum and affiliate faculty member Shuxuan Zhou (PhD 2017) for the Good Luck Rabbits EP release show, featuring a multilingual reading and live performance in collaboration with musician Joshua Hou.
This event celebrates the release of Good Luck Rabbits’ first EPs and showcases Zhou’s interdisciplinary creative practice bridging writing, sound, and performance.
💡 Additional Info Open to the public , All ages welcome , Tickets available through The Royal Room.
Event interval: Single day event. Accessibility Contact: 206-906-9920. Event Types: Performances.
Sunday, November 30, 2025, 1:30 PM – 4:00 PM.
The Royal Room.
For more info visit theroyalroomseattle.com. Christmas Day
Holidays
No classes. Most University offices and buildings are closed. Check with specific offices to confirm.
Event interval: Single day event. Year: 2026. Quarter: Winter. Event Types: Academics.
Thursday, December 25, 2025.
For more info visit www.washington.edu. New Year's Day
Holidays
No classes. Most University offices and buildings are closed. Check with specific offices to confirm.
Event interval: Single day event. Year: 2026. Quarter: Winter. Event Types: Academics.
Thursday, January 1, 2026.
For more info visit www.washington.edu. Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Holidays
No classes. Most University offices and buildings are closed. Check with specific offices to confirm.
Event interval: Single day event. Year: 2026. Quarter: Winter. Event Types: Academics.
Monday, January 19, 2026.
For more info visit www.washington.edu. Book Talk: 'Cruisy, Sleepy, Melancholy: Sexual Disorientation in the Films of Tsai Ming-Lian' with Nicholas de Villiers
In Cruisy, Sleepy, Melancholy: Sexual Disorientation in the Films of Tsai Ming-liang (University of Minnesota Press, 2022), Nicholas de Villiers contends that we need to theorize both queer time and space to understand Taiwan-based director Tsai Ming-liang's cinematic explorations of feeling melancholy, cruisy, and sleepy. Building on those arguments, this presentation starts with a reading of Tsai’s short film It’s a Dream (2007)—set in a movie theater in Malaysia—as a microcosm of Tsai’s themes and motifs of sleep/dreaming, cruising, nostalgia, and the space of the cinema. It then addresses Tsai’s “post-retirement” (after 2013) films and museum installations, including the queer Teddy award-winning digital feature film Days (Rizi, 2020) shot in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Thailand, and the short film The Night (2021) shot in Hong Kong in 2019. Both were featured in the solo exhibition Tsai Ming-liang’s Days at the Museum of National Taipei University of Education (MoNTUE) in 2023, experimenting with "expanded…
Event interval: Single day event. Online Meeting Link: https://www.youtube.com/@UWTaiwanStudies. Campus room: Thomson Hall 317 and online. Accessibility Contact: Taiwan Studies (taiwanst@uw.edu). Event Types: Lectures/Seminars. Target Audience: Free and open to the public. Registration COMING SOON.
Thursday, January 22, 2026, 3:30 PM – 5:00 PM.