Graduate Student Coffee & Conversation at the Simpson Center
The Simpson Center for the Humanities invites current graduate students at the masters and doctoral levels to a morning meet-and-greet event to make connections across the many departments and disciplines of the humanities and social sciences 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. 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 department.
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.
Free and open to UW graduate students. Accommodation requests related to a disability or health condition should be made by…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Communications Building (CMU). Campus room: 202. Accessibility Contact: Simpson Center, 206.543.3920, humanities@uw.edu. Event Types: Information Sessions. Student Activities. Target Audience: UW Graduate Students.
Wednesday, October 22, 2025, 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM.
WISIR and PT Colloqium Present Dr. Shatema Threadcraft: "Black Femicide and Morrisonian Democracy"
Dr. Shatema Threadcraft, "Black Femicide and Morrisonian Democracy"
Vanderbilt University
Associate Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies.
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Gowen Hall (GWN). Campus room: The Olson Room, Gowen Hall 1A. Accessibility Contact: yvenegas@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Friday, October 24, 2025, 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM.
For more info visit depts.washington.edu. "International Reactions to Proposing Peace Talks in Interstate War" Professor Jessica Weeks
Jessica Weeks
University of Wisconsin—Madison
Professor and H. Douglas Weaver Chair in Diplomacy and International Relations.
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Gowen Hall (GWN). Campus room: The Olson Room, Gowen Hall 1A, 1:30-3:00pm. Accessibility Contact: jihyeonc@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Friday, October 24, 2025, 1:30 PM – 3:00 PM.
For more info visit sites.uw.edu. Latinx Studies Meet & Greet
RSVP required: bit.ly/LatinxUW
Are you a faculty member or graduate student who is interested in Latinx Studies? If so, please join us for a meet and greet at the Simpson Center.
Though there are many graduate students and faculty working in Latinx Studies across UW and in the Seattle area, we are often siloed in separate departments. The aim of this gathering is for us to get to know one another and build community across departments and campuses. This is an informal event and will feature light refreshments from a local Latinx-owned caterer. All are welcome–if you are interested in Latinx Studies, we hope to see you there!
Organized by: Alexandria Ramos (Assistant Professor, English, UW), Angélica Amezcua (Assistant Professor, Spanish & Portuguese Studies, UW).
This event is free and open to all grad students and faculty, at any UW campus or other local college or university, with research interests in Latinx Studies.
Questions? Email Alexandria Ramos (anramos@uw.edu) or Angélica Amezcua (aamezcua@uw.e…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Communications Building (CMU). Campus room: 204. Accessibility Contact: Simpson Center for the Humanities, 206-543-3920, schadmin@uw.edu. Event Types: Not Specified.
Wednesday, October 29, 2025, 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM.
PE Forum Seminar: “The Gendered Lens of Care: How Communication Expectations Shape Patient Satisfaction”
Sebawit Bishu, “The Gendered Lens of Care: How Communication Expectations Shape Patient Satisfaction” (Peterson Room, Allen Library).
Event interval: Single day event. Campus room: The Petersen Room, Allen Library. Accessibility Contact: polisci@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Friday, October 31, 2025, 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM.
Severyns Ravenholt Seminar in Comparative Politics: "Political Change, Legal Continuity: How Lawyers Can Leverage Democratization and the Rule of Law to Derail Transitional Justice"
Egor Lazarev, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Yale University.
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Gowen Hall (GWN). Campus room: The Olson Room, Gowen Hall 1A. Accessibility Contact: polisci@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Friday, October 31, 2025, 1:30 PM – 3:00 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.
Katz Colloquium: Michael Rothberg, "Restitution, Repair, and Implication: Afterlives of Colonialism and the Holocaust in the Humboldt Forum"
Registration requested: bit.ly/michael-rothberg
What does it mean for individuals and institutions to be ‘implicated’ in past violence? This is an urgent question across nations and continents, but it has a particular force in Germany. In recent years, the German public sphere has been agitated by debates that concern the relationship between the Holocaust and colonialism, antisemitism and racism, and Holocaust memory and violence in Israel/Palestine. These debates have intersected with a longer-standing dispute about colonial legacies that has centered on the reconstruction of Berlin’s imperial palace and the creation of the Humboldt Forum. The Humboldt Forum debate involves the afterlives of colonial structures, stolen artifacts, and human remains. In this lecture, Michael Rothberg will address the stakes of these different debates. Much of the controversy about the relationship between the Holocaust and colonialism concerns the past, but Rothberg’s approach also foregrounds what it means to live in the…
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.
Wednesday, November 5, 2025, 4:00 PM – 5:30 PM.
Prof. Bart Wilson, Chapman University: "Restoring Adam Smith to the Principles of Economics"
Modern economics begins with the axiom that “scarcity is the great economic problem.” If
scarcity provides the starting point and choice is the conclusion, then economics reduces
to asking how and how much to achieve our ends with means that have alternative uses.
But to answer how and how much, economists must also ask: how do people choose? However,
modern economic science does not meet that question with an answer, but with an assumption
that people maximize material benefit in their own self interest. Adam Smith, by contrast, begins
somewhere else in The Wealth of Nations — with the human propensity to truck, barter, and
exchange. Furthermore, in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith develops a thicker version of
why and how individuals choose based upon prudence, propriety and the impartial spectator.
Prof. Wilson presents a case for restoring Smith’s view of human action to modern economics.
Bart Wilson is the Kennedy Endowed Chair in Economics & Law and the director of the Smith Institute for Polit…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Gowen Hall (GWN). Campus room: Gowen Hall, Room 301. Accessibility Contact: polisci@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars. Special Events.
Thursday, November 6, 2025, 5:00 PM – 6:30 PM.
"Ten Thousand Things" at the Wing Luke Museum
Registration required: bit.ly/ShinYuPai
Join curator Shin Yu Pai at the Wing Luke Museum’s Ten Thousand Things exhibit. The exhibit is an exploration of the objects that shape identities, histories, and cultural narratives. Inspired by her experience cataloging artifacts at the Wing Luke Museum as a Museology graduate student, Pai has long been fascinated by the way objects function as vessels of memory, meaning, and storytelling. This exhibition expands upon Pai’s acclaimed public radio podcast Ten Thousand Things. Through four seasons of storytelling, Pai has explored the intimate connections people have with everyday and extraordinary items—objects that hold deep personal significance, evoke generational ties, or serve as cultural touchstones.
Shin Yu Pai is an award-winning writer, photographer, podcast host and editor based in the Pacific Northwest. She is author of numerous collections of poetry, including No Neutral (Empty Bowl Press, 2023), and was Seattle’s 2023-2024 Civic Poet. Her literary papers…
Event interval: Single day event. Accessibility Contact: Simpson Center for the Humanities, 206-543-3920, schadmin@uw.edu. Event Types: Exhibits.
Friday, November 7, 2025, 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM.
Wing Luke Museum, 719 S. King Street.
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.
“Deploying Science in Post-Disaster Decision Making: Lessons from the 2025 Los Angeles Fires”
Megan Mullin
Faculty Director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation
Luskin Endowed Chair in Innovation and Sustainability
University of California, Los Angeles.
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Gowen Hall (GWN). Campus room: Olsen Room (GWN 1A). Accessibility Contact: polisci@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Friday, November 7, 2025, 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM.
“Structurally Induced Anxiety and Anti-War Voting: Military Social Networks and Presidential Elections”
Ryan Reynolds, PhD student
University of Washington
“Structurally Induced Anxiety and Anti-War Voting: Military Social Networks and Presidential Elections”.
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Smith Hall (SMI). Campus room: Smith 40A, Smith Hall. Accessibility Contact: jihyeonc@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Friday, November 14, 2025, 1:30 PM – 3:00 PM.
For more info visit sites.uw.edu. 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.
PE Forum Seminar
TBD.
Event interval: Single day event. Campus room: HUB 238. Accessibility Contact: polisci@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Friday, November 21, 2025, 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM.
RSVP to Lunch Workshop Series with Josh Sturman
Josh Sturman, UW PHD Student\
The paper and RSVP link will be circulated in advance.
Questions? Reach out to
yvenegas@uw.edu.
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Gowen Hall (GWN). Online Meeting Link: https://depts.washington.edu/wisir/events/lunch-workshare-series/. Campus room: The Olson Room, Gowen Hall 1A. Accessibility Contact: yvenegas@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Friday, November 21, 2025, 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM.
RSVP to Lunch Workshop Series with Dr. Noga Rotem
Dr. Noga Rotem, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Washington
Our Lunch Workshare Series (formerly known as our Brown Bag Series) consists of discussions of work in progress by University of Washington graduate students and faculty.
The paper and RSVP link will be circulated in advance.
Questions? Reach out to yvenegas@uw.edu.
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Gowen Hall (GWN). Campus room: The Olson Room, Gowen Hall 1A. Accessibility Contact: yvenegas@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Friday, December 5, 2025, 1:45 PM – 2:45 PM.
For more info visit depts.washington.edu. Severyns Ravenholt Seminar in Comparative Politics: "Does Authoritarian International Law Shape Public Preferences?"
Jihyeon Bae, UW Ph.D. Student, University of Washington.
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Gowen Hall (GWN). Campus room: The Olson Room, Gowen Hall 1A. Accessibility Contact: polisci@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Friday, January 16, 2026, 1:30 PM – 3:00 PM.