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.
Spring EU Democracy & Security Symposium - From Monarchies to Constitutional Democracies
Join us for our Spring EU Democracy & Security Symposium - From Monarchies to Constitutional Democracies.
We'll hear presentations and discussions with the following experts. Drinks and cookies will be served. Raymond Jonas (UW History Dept), “France’s Five Republics and what they tell us about how republics are born and how they die” , Terje Leiren (Emeritus, UW Scandinavian Studies), "From Royal Absolutism to Parliamentary Government: Political Transition in Scandinavia (Denmark, Norway, and Sweden)." , James Felak (UW History Dept), "The Perils of a Problematic Constitution: the Cases of Interwar Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia.”.
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Student Union Building (HUB). Campus room: 238. Accessibility Contact: cereas@uw.edu. Event Types: Academics. Target Audience: Open to public.
Thursday, May 7, 2026, 3:30 PM – 5:00 PM.
Global Sports Lecture with Courtney M. Cox "Double Crossover: Gender, Media, and Politics in Global Basketball"
Move beyond the headlines and hot takes for a deeper conversation on labor and identity within women’s hoops with Dr. Courtney M. Cox, author of Double Crossover: Gender, Media, and Politics in Global Basketball (University of Illinois Press, 2025). In her book, she considers how athletes maneuver their lives and labor across leagues and borders, whether in the NCAA, WNBA, Athletes Unlimited, or overseas leagues. Cox is Associate Professor in the Department of Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies (IRES) at the University of Oregon. She previously worked for ESPN, Longhorn Network, NPR-affiliate KPCC, and the WNBA's Los Angeles Sparks.
This event is free and open to the public. Accommodation requests related to a disability or health condition should be made by April 23 to the Simpson Center, 206-543-3920, schadmin@uw.edu.
Generously made possible by the Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities.
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Communications Building (CMU). Campus room: 120. Accessibility Contact: Simpson Center for the Humanities, 206.543.3920, humanities@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Thursday, May 7, 2026, 4:00 PM – 5:30 PM.
Public Lecture | Artemis Leontis | Secrecy, Stutter, and Care: Eva Palmer’s Hidden Letters
Join us for an afternoon with scholar Artemis Leontis from the University of Michigan.
Hidden for decades in a locked cabinet at the Center for Asia Minor Studies in Athens, Eva Palmer Sikelianos’s love letters (1900-1910)—personal, creative, and revealing networks of desire and kinship—challenge expectations about what belongs in Greece’s archival record.
These scattered, stuttering papers sat uneasily within an institute dedicated to Orthodox Christian refugee history, raising new questions about whose lives and stories find a place in official memory.
What happens when a collection resists straightforward histories—when archiving itself becomes an act of negotiation, improvisation, and listening for what’s unsaid? What can these fragments teach us about the possibilities of cultural memory, and how listening to stutters and silences might open new ways of understanding the past?
In this talk, Leontis explores the process of archiving Palmer’s collection: the hurdles, improvisations, and acts of care…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Allen Library (ALB). Campus room: Peterson Room. Accessibility Contact: hellenic@uw.edu. Event Types: Academics. Target Audience: Open to public. Registration required.
Friday, May 8, 2026, 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM.
First Book Manuscript Panel with Bianca Dang, Ileana M. Rodríguez-Silva, and Walter Johnson: "Historical Approaches to Slavery, Abolition, and Imperialism"
This panel will focus on how historians have expanded our understanding of the hemispheric history of slavery and abolition by attending to issues of imperial power.
Bianca Dang (History, University of Washington) researches and teaches on the histories of Black freedom movements and state coercion in the Americas during the 19th century. Her current book project, Making Meaningful Freedom: Gendered Struggles for Autonomy in the U.S. and Haiti, 1780-1880, traces how Haitians and African Americans emphasized autonomy as they worked to make freedom more than a legal status. It focuses on Black women's legal, diplomatic, and religious strategies to combat racism and misogyny.
Ileana M. Rodríguez-Silva (History, University of Washington) teaches Latin American and Caribbean history. She researches race-making, racial identity formation, and post-emancipation racial politics. Her book, Silencing Race: Disentangling Blackness, Colonial Regimes, and National Struggles in Post-Emancipation Puerto Rico, 1850-1920…
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.
Monday, May 11, 2026, 3:30 PM – 5:00 PM.
Listening in Colonial India: Musical Emotions between Sound, Text, and Image by Richard David Williams (SOAS, London): Andrew L. Markus Memorial Lecture
This lecture explores the place of music in the history of the emotions, beginning in the early modern period. It considers theories of embodied response and systems for visualising music through painting and poetry. It explores how colonial-era authors writing in vernacular languages drew these older theories into conversation with modern ontologies of music and emotion, often inspired by developments in European understandings of the physics of sound and psychological models of emotion. Despite these developments, nineteenth and twentieth-century sources show that older concepts continued to shape the discourse in Indian music studies, and were not simply overwritten by new, European theories.
Richard David Williams is Reader (Associate Professor) in Music and South Asian Studies at SOAS University of London. A cultural historian of early modern and colonial South Asia, his research explores music, sound, and performance in literary, courtly, and religious contexts. He is the author of The Scattered…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Kane Hall (KNE). Campus room: Kane Hall 225 (Walker-Ames Room). Accessibility Contact: asianll@uw.edu or 206 543 4996. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars. Target Audience: For anyone interested in South Asian (Indian) music, painting, and poetry.
Monday, May 11, 2026, 5:30 PM – 7:00 PM.
For more info visit asian.washington.edu. Stroum Lectures 2026 with Rafael Neis: Did ‘Men’ and ‘Women’ Always Exist? What the Talmud Can Tell Us
Join us for the first lecture of the UW's annual Stroum Lectures in Jewish Studies. This year the series features University of Michigan scholar and artist Rafael Neis. Register Here. Registration Required. Lecture 1: Did ‘Men’ and ‘Women’ Always Exist? What the Talmud Can Tell Us
We often assume that the categories “man” and “woman” are timeless and self-evident. But what if they aren’t? In this talk, Professor Rafael Neis invites us to explore a surprising question: did “men” and “women,” as fixed and stable categories, always exist in the way we imagine them today? Turning to the Talmud, Neis shows how the rabbis wrestled with bodies, identity, and social roles in ways that don’t always fit neatly into modern assumptions. By setting aside what we think we already know about gender, we can discover fresh and unexpected ways of reading these ancient texts—and gain insight into how the rabbis themselves understood human difference. Along the way, Neis opens up intriguing new perspectives on rabbinic…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Kane Hall (KNE). Campus room: Kane 225, Walker-Ames Room. Accessibility Contact: jewishst@uw.edu. Event Types: Academics. Target Audience: Open to public. Registration required.
Tuesday, May 12, 2026, 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM.
Black Digital Humanities: State of the Field
Registration required.
Join the Black Digital Humanities in the Age of Technofascism research cluster at the University of Washington for a symposium and conversation on the racialized perils of digital technologies, led by scholars in the field of Black Digital Humanities alongside community-led organization Wa Na Wari and its Black Spatial Histories Institute.
From AI’s impact on ecosystems and scarce water resources to the use of surveillance technologies to suppress dissent and social movements, Black populations in the US and abroad have historically been testing grounds for many of these rapid and far-reaching developments. Participants will address how digital technologies curtail freedoms and create unequal material impacts on everyday life while also highlighting the work of community-led organizations working toward a more just future. Presenters will briefly introduce their work using an object that they have chosen to represent their academic research.
Part 1: Digital Labor + Memory…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Henry Art Gallery (HAG). Campus room: Auditorium. Accessibility Contact: Simpson Center for the Humanities, 206.543.3920, humanities@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Thursday, May 14, 2026, 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM.
Stroum Lectures 2026 with Rafael Neis: Monsters, Hybrids, and Holy Images - Rethinking Bodies in Ancient Jewish Art
Join us for the first lecture of UW's annual Stroum Lectures in Jewish Studies. This year the series features University of Michigan scholar and artist Rafael Neis. Registration link coming soon. Read about the first lecture here. Lecture 2. Monsters, Hybrids, and Holy Images: Rethinking Bodies in Ancient Jewish Art
Walk through the ancient world and you would have been surrounded by images of all kinds of beings—human figures, animals, hybrids, and creatures that blur the line between the familiar and the fantastic. These images appeared everywhere: in streets and homes, bathhouses and synagogues, public buildings and sacred spaces. In this talk, Professor Rafael Neis explores a handful of striking examples from ancient Jewish art and asks what happens when we look at them with fresh eyes. Instead of sorting these figures into modern boxes about “human,” “animal,” “male,” or “female,” Neis invites us to step back and see how ancient artists and communities imagined bodies more broadly. By letting go of…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Student Union Building (HUB). Campus room: HUB 214. Accessibility Contact: jewishst@uw.edu. Event Types: Academics. Target Audience: Open to public. Registration required.
Thursday, May 14, 2026, 4:00 PM – 5:30 PM.
Humanities Network Analysis
This workshop will explore foundational techniques in humanities network analysis: the study of links and connections between people, books, events, artworks, and more. You’ll learn how to… · Collect, organize, and maintain network data for humanities research, · Create network visualizations and animations using popular network analysis software, · Analyze network data describing social relationships, correspondence, and copublication, Participants should bring a laptop but don’t need to have anything pre-installed. No prior experience with digital humanities or data science is necessary, and all are welcome!
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Suzzallo Library (SUZ). Campus room: Open Scholarship Commons Presentation Space. Accessibility Contact: mundtm@uw.edu. Event Types: Special Events. Student Activities. Workshops.
Friday, May 15, 2026, 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM.
Cultural Analytics Praxis Lightning Talks
Cultural Analytics (CA) has recently emerged as a convergent, multidisciplinary field focused on the use of data-driven and computational methods to study contemporary and historical cultural materials. The Cultural Analytics Research and Teaching Initiative (CARTi) is a network of early career scholars whose aim is to promote sustainability in CA research and teaching and to provide new models for scholarship in the field. In this symposium, CARTi members will share short papers focused on cultural analytics praxis, bringing together technical methodologies with critical theory to illuminate the challenges and possibilities of using computational methods in humanistic fields. John R. Ladd
Assistant Professor of Computing & Information Studies
Washington & Jefferson College, Matthew Lavin
Associate Professor of Data Analytics
Bard College, Zoe LeBlanc
Assistant Professor
School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Anna Preus
Assistant Professor, English Department
University…
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. Target Audience: Open to the public.
Monday, May 18, 2026, 2:30 PM – 4:00 PM.
Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism
Will green capitalism save us from the climate crisis? "Clean" technologies and renewable energy are certainly growing sites of capitalist investment, with government policies playing a key role in making these sectors profitable. But the supply chains that produce the technologies pose vexing dilemmas for the energy transition. These dilemmas are most dramatic at the extractive frontiers of green capitalism: where the natural resources needed to manufacture electric vehicles and build windmills are extracted. In this talk, Thea Riofrancos (Providence College) will unpack these challenges through the lens of lithium, a so-called "critical mineral" essential for its role in decarbonizing one of the most polluting sectors: transportation.
With forecasters predicting an enormous surge in lithium demand, exceeding existing supplies, Global North governments and downstream firms scramble to "secure" lithium, resulting in a new state-corporate alliance and the return of vertical integration. Meanwhile, Global Sou…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Allen Library (ALB). Campus room: Petersen Room. Accessibility Contact: lasuw@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars. Target Audience: Free and open to the public.
Tuesday, May 19, 2026, 3:30 PM – 5:00 PM.
Public Lecture | Jacob Daniels | The Jews of Edirne: The End of Ottoman Europe and the Arrival of Borders
Join us in welcoming visiting author and scholar Jacob Daniels, discussing his new book, The Jews of Edirne: The End of the Ottoman Europe and the Arrival of Borders.
At the turn of the twentieth century, the city of Edirne was a bustling center linking Istanbul to Ottoman Europe. It was also the capital of Edirne Province—among the most religiously diverse regions of the Ottoman Empire. But by 1923, the city had become a Turkish border town, and the province had lost much of its non-Muslim population. With this book, Jacob Daniels explores how one of the world's largest Sephardi communities dealt with the encroachment of modern borders.
Jacob Daniels is Assistant Professor of Instruction and Assistant Director of the Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. He received his Ph.D. in History at Stanford University in 2022.
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Student Union Building (HUB). Campus room: HUB 145. Accessibility Contact: jewishst@uw.edu. Event Types: Academics. Target Audience: Open to public. Registration required.
Tuesday, May 19, 2026, 4:30 PM – 6:00 PM.
Sacred Breath: Indigenous Writing and Storytelling Series
Save the Date!
Thrusday, May 21st, 5:00-7:00pm at wǝɫǝbʔaltxʷ Intellectual House
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.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
BETH PIATOTE (Nimi:pu, Colville)
Beth Piatote is an associat…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Intellectual House (INT). Campus room: Gathering Hall. Accessibility Contact: dso@uw.edu. Event Types: Performances. Special Events. Lectures/Seminars.
Thursday, May 21, 2026, 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM.
For more info visit ais.washington.edu. Lecture: Simone Stirner, “Haunting, Quilting, Melting: Shapes of Queer Memory”
What happens to our understanding of relational memory when viewed through queer histories? In this talk, Stirner examines memory art dedicated to often neglected queer and trans histories after National Socialism, from translucent quilts to an installation that melts a concentration camp gate and rewelds it into new forms. Beyond arguing for the inclusion of queer histories in relational frameworks of remembrance, the talk proposes that attending to the distinct shapes and textures of queer relationality reshapes the concept itself, showing how queer memory practices expand and transform what it means to think memory relationally.
Simone Stirner (Assistant Professor, Germanic Languages & Literatures, Harvard University) works on poetry and poetics, memory studies, and the intersections of critical and creative practices. Stirner's first book Poetic Grief: Form and Remembrance after National Socialism (Fordham University Press, forthcoming) develops a new framework for understanding the relationship between…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Denny Hall (DEN). Campus room: 359. Accessibility Contact: Simpson Center for the Humanities, 206-543-3920, humanities@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Tuesday, June 2, 2026, 3:30 PM – 5:00 PM.
Workshop with Simone Stirner: "Intertextuality as Relational Memory: Paul Celan’s ‘Death Fugue’ in the Poetry of Almadhoun, Clark, Dzukogi”
Paul Celan’s poem “Death Fugue” is one of the most famous poems to commemorate the Holocaust. Celan himself refused to publicly read the poem in the decades after its publication. But the poem and its key figure of “black milk” also developed their own life, and up until today they reappear in the writings of a range of contemporary poets: Tiana Clark cites it when remembering the history of the Civil War; Ghayath Almadhoun invokes it in the context of the Syrian migration to Europe in the 2010s; and Saddiq Dzukogi turns to Celan’s words in mourning the death of his infant daughter. In this workshop, Stirner discusses the intertextual relations around the figure “black milk,” proposing that they offer a basis for a theory of relational memory. The citational economy around “black milk” provides an understanding of intertextuality as cultural memory that shifts the focus to the ways texts participate in each other’s histories and in a shared structure of feeling of grief.
Simone Stirner (Assistant Professor,…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Denny Hall (DEN). Campus room: 359. Accessibility Contact: Simpson Center for the Humanities, 206-543-3920, humanities@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Wednesday, June 3, 2026, 1:00 PM – 3:30 PM.