Book Tea with Olivia Banner and Nassim Parvin
A conversation about media technologies and disability studies with Dr. Olivia Banner.
Event interval: Single day event. Accessibility Contact: mmjones@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Tuesday, October 21, 2025, 1:00 PM – 2:15 PM.
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.
Healing Heart of Lushootseed Speaker Series
A series to prepare for the UW Symphony performance of Healing Heart of the First People of This Land (February 2026)
Open to the public – doors open at 10:30am for coffee & pastries
Featuring
10/9 łuutiis Charlotte Coté (Nuu-chah-nulth) with Dian Million (Tanana) as discussant.
10/16 Tami Hohn (Puyallup) with McKenna Sweet Dorman (Snoqualmie) as discussant
10/23 Laurel Sercombe with John Vallier as discussant
10/30 John LaPointe (Swinomish)
11/6 Jill tsisqʷux̌ʷaʔł LaPointe (Upper Skagit/Nooksack) with Janet Yoder
11/13 Composer Bruce Ruddell, Musicians Adia tsi sʔuyuʔaɫ Bowen (Upper Skagit) and
Ben Workman Smith (Tolowa), Conductors Ryan Dudenbostel and David Rahbee,
with John-Carlos Perea (Mescalero Apache/German/Irish/Chicano) as discussant
11/20 Sasha taqwšəblu LaPointe (Upper Skagit/Nooksack)
For more information on this series: https://healingheartproject.org/
For more information on the Feb. 2026 performance: https://music.washington.edu/upcoming.
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Intellectual House (INT). Campus room: Gathering Hall. Accessibility Contact: jbperea@uw.edu. Event Types: Academics. Lectures/Seminars. Performances. Target Audience: students, faculty. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/1664BnEscg/.
Thursday, October 23, 2025, 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM.
For more info visit healingheartproject.org. 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.
Book Launch - Gilah Kletenik's "Sovereignty Disrupted: Spinoza and the Disparity of Reality"
Please join the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies as we celebrate the recent publication of Hazel D. Cole Fellow Gilah Kletenik’s new book, "Sovereignty Disrupted: Spinoza and the Disparity of Reality."
In it, Kletenik takes a dazzlingly fresh reading of Spinoza’s Ethics, thinking with Spinoza to present an alternative to dominant “Western” theories about the nature of reality, the promise of reason, and the status of humans.
Kletenik will be joined by Stroum Center Director Noam Pianko to discuss the book, share how Jewish philosophy can be applied in this moment, and answer questions. Light refreshments will be provided before the talk and the book will be available for purchase.
"It is rare to find a thorough and compelling reading of a great philosophical classic, Spinoza's Ethics, that upends some of the central presumptions about sovereignty that have populated standard readings for many years. Kletenik shows that sovereign rule functions neither as a political form nor as a model of conceptual maste…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Kane Hall (KNE). Campus room: KNE 225. Accessibility Contact: jewishst@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars. Special Events. Target Audience: Free and open to the public. Registration Required.
Wednesday, October 29, 2025, 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM.
Healing Heart of Lushootseed Speaker Series
A series to prepare for the UW Symphony performance of Healing Heart of the First People of This Land (February 2026)
Open to the public – doors open at 10:30am for coffee & pastries
Featuring
10/9 łuutiis Charlotte Coté (Nuu-chah-nulth) with Dian Million (Tanana) as discussant.
10/16 Tami Hohn (Puyallup) with McKenna Sweet Dorman (Snoqualmie) as discussant
10/23 Laurel Sercombe with John Vallier as discussant
10/30 John LaPointe (Swinomish)
11/6 Jill tsisqʷux̌ʷaʔł LaPointe (Upper Skagit/Nooksack) with Janet Yoder
11/13 Composer Bruce Ruddell, Musicians Adia tsi sʔuyuʔaɫ Bowen (Upper Skagit) and
Ben Workman Smith (Tolowa), Conductors Ryan Dudenbostel and David Rahbee,
with John-Carlos Perea (Mescalero Apache/German/Irish/Chicano) as discussant
11/20 Sasha taqwšəblu LaPointe (Upper Skagit/Nooksack)
For more information on this series: https://healingheartproject.org/
For more information on the Feb. 2026 performance: https://music.washington.edu/upcoming.
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Intellectual House (INT). Campus room: Gathering Hall. Accessibility Contact: jbperea@uw.edu. Event Types: Academics. Lectures/Seminars. Performances. Target Audience: students, faculty. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/1664BnEscg/.
Thursday, October 30, 2025, 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM.
For more info visit healingheartproject.org. BOOK LAUNCH: Slavic Horror Across Media: Cursed Zones (MUP, 2025)
Let’s get spooky! On Halloween Eve, we would like to invite you to a book promotion and panel discussion for "Slavic Horror Across Media: Cursed Zones," published by Manchester University Press in June 2025. The editor Agnieszka Jeżyk, author José Alaniz, and scholar and writer Stevi Costa will talk about the publication and use it as a starting point for a broader discussion on the role of horror and horror studies in contemporary global culture. The event is open to the public. Coffee, cookies, and, most importantly, Halloween candy will be provided.
Event interval: Single day event. Accessibility Contact: The Slavic Department, slavoffice@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Thursday, October 30, 2025, 12:30 PM – 2:00 PM.
TBD.
Long Table Conversation on “NonAligned Modernism”
Note room change: now Architecture Hall 250
The objective of this Long Table is to discuss NonAligned Modernism as a concept in contemporary academic discourse, particularly with respect to modern architecture, and its value as a critical ideology in the world today.
Moderator: Adair Rounthwaite (ArtHistory)
Table Conversationalists: Ken Oshima (HHF), Maristella Casciato (Getty), Martino
Stierli (MoMA), Swagato Chakravorty (The Henry), Vikram Prakash (HHF), Manish Chalana (HHF)
Introduction by Vikram Prakash (HHF/Architecture)
Short (6-8 minutes max.) presentations on relevant case studies and frameworks of
Conversation.
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Architecture Hall (ARC). Campus room: 250. Accessibility Contact: vprakash@uw.edu. Event Types: Academics. Lectures/Seminars. Workshops.
Friday, October 31, 2025, 9:00 AM – 1:00 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.
Truths and Narratives of Indonesia’s Tragedi 1965 | Hybrid Event
What does it mean to commemorate a genocide? This is the overarching question governing this academic panel as its presenters ruminate over the mass killings that transpired in Indonesia between 1965 and 1966 which saw an estimated deaths of at least 500,000 alleged communists and their sympathizers, among others. We will be gathering in-person with historian Baskara T. Wardaya (PRAKSIS Jesuit Center for Research and Advocacy), cultural theorist Rachmi Diyah Larasati (University of Minnesota Twin Cities) and literary scholar Sylvia Tiwon (University of California, Berkeley) joining us over Zoom to cast a critical eye on the deluge of truths and narratives that have emerged sixty years after the massacre. This panel is part of the University of Washington course ‘Decolonizing Authenticity in Southeast Asian Translation’ convened by Nazry Bahrawi, who will moderate the panel. Members of the public are welcome to attend. Please register below.
In-Person Reception, 3pm--Please register…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Thomson Hall (THO). Campus room: 317. Accessibility Contact: csead@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars. Target Audience: General.
Wednesday, November 5, 2025, 3:00 PM – 5:00 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.
Healing Heart of Lushootseed Speaker Series
A series to prepare for the UW Symphony performance of Healing Heart of the First People of This Land (February 2026)
Open to the public – doors open at 10:30am for coffee & pastries
Featuring
10/9 łuutiis Charlotte Coté (Nuu-chah-nulth) with Dian Million (Tanana) as discussant.
10/16 Tami Hohn (Puyallup) with McKenna Sweet Dorman (Snoqualmie) as discussant
10/23 Laurel Sercombe with John Vallier as discussant
10/30 John LaPointe (Swinomish)
11/6 Jill tsisqʷux̌ʷaʔł LaPointe (Upper Skagit/Nooksack) with Janet Yoder
11/13 Composer Bruce Ruddell, Musicians Adia tsi sʔuyuʔaɫ Bowen (Upper Skagit) and
Ben Workman Smith (Tolowa), Conductors Ryan Dudenbostel and David Rahbee,
with John-Carlos Perea (Mescalero Apache/German/Irish/Chicano) as discussant
11/20 Sasha taqwšəblu LaPointe (Upper Skagit/Nooksack)
For more information on this series: https://healingheartproject.org/
For more information on the Feb. 2026 performance: https://music.washington.edu/upcoming.
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Intellectual House (INT). Campus room: Gathering Hall. Accessibility Contact: jbperea@uw.edu. Event Types: Academics. Lectures/Seminars. Performances. Target Audience: students, faculty. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/1664BnEscg/.
Thursday, November 6, 2025, 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM.
For more info visit healingheartproject.org. TEAL Digital Scholarship Series 2025-26: Dating the Undated: Unlocking the Chronology of Premodern Japanese Publications through AI and Microscopic Imaging
The Tateuchi East Asia Library (TEAL) is proud to present the 2025-2026 TEAL Digital Scholarship Series, a dynamic program showcasing cutting-edge research by scholars in the fields of Chinese, Japanese and Korean studies. This series highlights how innovative digital tools and methodologies are transforming East Asian scholarship, fostering interdisciplinary dialogue, and broadening the impact of research within and beyond academia.
Dating the Undated: Unlocking the Chronology of Premodern Japanese Publications through AI and Microscopic Imaging
Azusa Tanaka, Japan Studies Librarian at the University of Washington
Determining the publication date of a book is essential for research across various disciplines. However, many pre-Meiji (pre-1868) Japanese publications lack clear publication dates, making the task of dating these works particularly challenging. Traditional methods, such as analyzing authorship or binding, often pose risks to delicate archival materials and can be subjective.
In this talk, a…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Gowen Hall (GWN). Campus room: Tateuchi East Asia Library (Gowen 3rd) Seminar Room. Accessibility Contact: hkyi@uw.edu. Event Types: Academics. Lectures/Seminars. Workshops.
Thursday, November 6, 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.
"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.
Translating Enchantment: Journeys of Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s (d. 1210) Book of the Hidden Secret
UW MELC Lecturer Dr. Lillian McCabe's talk is entitled "Translating Enchantment: Journeys of Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s (d. 1210) Book of the Hidden Secret"
The Book of the Hidden Secret was an immensely popular text of theoretical and practical magic written by the famed Muslim theologian and philosopher Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 1210).
This talk shows how this text was a site where an Islamic theory of comparative religion was developed, and explores what this work, and translations of it, can tell us about the relationship between religion and magic in Islamic thought, and between enchantment and disenchantment more broadly.
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Thomson Hall (THO). Campus room: 317. Accessibility Contact: limccabe@uw.edu. Event Types: Academics. Lectures/Seminars.
Friday, November 7, 2025, 6:00 PM – 7:00 PM.
Healing Heart of Lushootseed Speaker Series
A series to prepare for the UW Symphony performance of Healing Heart of the First People of This Land (February 2026)
Open to the public – doors open at 10:30am for coffee & pastries
Featuring
10/9 łuutiis Charlotte Coté (Nuu-chah-nulth) with Dian Million (Tanana) as discussant.
10/16 Tami Hohn (Puyallup) with McKenna Sweet Dorman (Snoqualmie) as discussant
10/23 Laurel Sercombe with John Vallier as discussant
10/30 John LaPointe (Swinomish)
11/6 Jill tsisqʷux̌ʷaʔł LaPointe (Upper Skagit/Nooksack) with Janet Yoder
11/13 Composer Bruce Ruddell, Musicians Adia tsi sʔuyuʔaɫ Bowen (Upper Skagit) and
Ben Workman Smith (Tolowa), Conductors Ryan Dudenbostel and David Rahbee,
with John-Carlos Perea (Mescalero Apache/German/Irish/Chicano) as discussant
11/20 Sasha taqwšəblu LaPointe (Upper Skagit/Nooksack)
For more information on this series: https://healingheartproject.org/
For more information on the Feb. 2026 performance: https://music.washington.edu/upcoming.
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Intellectual House (INT). Campus room: Gathering Hall. Accessibility Contact: jbperea@uw.edu. Event Types: Academics. Lectures/Seminars. Performances. Target Audience: students, faculty. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/1664BnEscg/.
Thursday, November 13, 2025, 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM.
For more info visit healingheartproject.org. Evo-Hub Lecture: Marshall Abrams, "The Uniqueness of Organisms in Evolution"
If natural selection is “the survival of the fittest” and being fittest means having more offspring, then survival of the fittest is just the survival of those that survive. In this talk, Abrams explains how evolutionary biology avoids this puzzling conclusion, and why research practices motivate the idea that evolution takes place in “population-environment systems”—complex analogs of dice-tossing. But traditional research practices have been criticized as focusing too much on populations, and not enough on each individual organism’s unique dance with its environment. Abrams argues that his approach allows us to see what is right about each perspective.
Marshall Abrams is a Professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He has a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Chicago. Abrams’ book Evolution and the Machinery of Chance is the basis of ongoing research
This event is free and open to the public. Accommodation requests related to a disability or health condition should be made by November…
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.
Thursday, November 13, 2025, 4:00 PM – 5:30 PM.
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.
Ghazal Celebration: Poetry Readings Across Languages
This event brings together colleagues and students for a collective celebration of the ghazal, a poetic form that has flourished in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Urdu, and many other languages. Each participant will read one of their favorite ghazals in its original language, followed by a translation into English.
By foregrounding oral recitation and the experience of listening across languages, the gathering highlights the ghazal’s role as a transregional and transhistorical form of poetic expression. Together, we will reflect on the pleasures of sound, the challenges of translation, and the enduring vitality of the ghazal across literary traditions.
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Denny Hall (DEN). Campus room: Denny 211. Accessibility Contact: ariafani@uw.edu. Event Types: Academics. Lectures/Seminars.
Friday, November 14, 2025, 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM.
Ladino Day 2025: Sephardic Homelands: Spanish and Portuguese Citizenship and the Question of Belonging Today
Join us for Ladino Day 2025, featuring speakers Rina Benmayor, Dalia Kandiyoti, Devin Naar, and Isaac Alhadeff for a conversation on “Sephardic Homelands: Spanish and Portuguese Citizenship and the Question of Belonging Today.” The program will be followed by a modest reception featuring Sephardic foods.
Event will be live-streamed. Registration is only required for in-person attendance. View the live-stream here.
This year’s program critically examines the significance of the decision of the Spanish and Portuguese governments–exactly ten years ago in 2015–to offer citizenship to descendants of Sephardic Jews expelled five centuries ago. The discussion will situate Spain and Portugal’s offers within broader debates about the homelands that Sephardic Jews have claimed as their own over the generations, while also recognizing that millions of people in the world remain stateless today.
Isaac Alhadeff Professor in Sephardic Studies and program Chair, Devin E. Naar, will host Professor Emerita Rina…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Kane Hall (KNE). Campus room: Kane Hall 210. Accessibility Contact: jewishst@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars. Information Sessions. Special Events. Target Audience: Free and open to the public. Registration required.
Sunday, November 16, 2025, 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM.
Film Screening and Discussion | Vietnamerica
Join the Center for Southeast Asia and Its Diasporas (CSEAD) and Graduate Education and Training in Southeast Asia (GETSEA) for a simulcast screening of Vietnamerica. Forty years after the US pulled out of South Vietnam, a Vietnamese martial arts master returns to the waters that claimed his wife and children during their escape in hopes of finding their grave. The screening will be followed by a virtual discussion with members of the GETSEA consortium.
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Thomson Hall (THO). Campus room: 317. Accessibility Contact: csead@uw.edu. Event Types: Screenings.
Tuesday, November 18, 2025, 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM.
Exquisite Corpus. A Practical Workshop on Natural Language Processing for Creative Expression
This workshop, led by Laura Luna Castillo (UW, DX Arts), merges computational linguistics and creative experimentation. We will use Python’s Natural Language Toolkit (NTLK) to analyze, deconstruct and algorithmically expand text corpora in a Dadaist spirit. Participants will be guided through hands-on code examples to learn techniques for data augmentation and synthetic data generation. We will explore grammatical patterns, linguistic visualizations and randomization as meaning-making tools that introduce surreal linguistic styles into a corpus, generating endless variations of source texts. This process provides insight into how Large Language Models learn and adapt to linguistic styles, albeit on a much larger scale. Time allowing, we will use our augmented corpus to fine-tune our own, rustic, language model. A laptop is required for this hands-on session.
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Suzzallo Library (SUZ). Campus room: Open Scholarship Commons. Accessibility Contact: text@uw.edu. Event Types: Workshops. Target Audience: Faculty and students.
Tuesday, November 18, 2025, 2:00 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.
ROK Consul General Lecture: Consul-General Eunji Seo, "Towards the New Chapter of US-ROK Partnership and Korea's Smart Power"
TOWARDS THE NEW CHAPTER OF US-ROK PARTNERSHIP AND KOREA’S SMART POWER
A lecture by Ms. Eunji Seo, Consul-General of the Republic of Korea in Seattle
The US-ROK relationship has evolved from a military alliance forged during the Korean War into a comprehensive strategic partnership grounded in shared values such as democracy, innovation, and cultural exchange. Korea has emerged as a global leader in technology, economy, and culture—demonstrating smart power, which blends hard power like economic and military strength with the soft power of cultural influence. From K-pop and K-content to advancements in AI and global diplomacy, Korea’s growing role on the world stage reflects the dynamic potential of this modern partnership.
19 November 2025
4:00–5:00PM
Communications 120 | University of Washington
Lecture open to the public. Reception to follow at the Simpson Center for the Humanities (CMU 204), 5:00 – 6:00pm. Reception restricted to UW students, faculty, and staff. Consul-General Eunji Seo joined the…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Communications Building (CMU). Campus room: 120. Accessibility Contact: asianll@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Wednesday, November 19, 2025, 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM.
Healing Heart of Lushootseed Speaker Series
A series to prepare for the UW Symphony performance of Healing Heart of the First People of This Land (February 2026)
Open to the public – doors open at 10:30am for coffee & pastries
Featuring
10/9 łuutiis Charlotte Coté (Nuu-chah-nulth) with Dian Million (Tanana) as discussant.
10/16 Tami Hohn (Puyallup) with McKenna Sweet Dorman (Snoqualmie) as discussant
10/23 Laurel Sercombe with John Vallier as discussant
10/30 John LaPointe (Swinomish)
11/6 Jill tsisqʷux̌ʷaʔł LaPointe (Upper Skagit/Nooksack) with Janet Yoder
11/13 Composer Bruce Ruddell, Musicians Adia tsi sʔuyuʔaɫ Bowen (Upper Skagit) and
Ben Workman Smith (Tolowa), Conductors Ryan Dudenbostel and David Rahbee,
with John-Carlos Perea (Mescalero Apache/German/Irish/Chicano) as discussant
11/20 Sasha taqwšəblu LaPointe (Upper Skagit/Nooksack)
For more information on this series: https://healingheartproject.org/
For more information on the Feb. 2026 performance: https://music.washington.edu/upcoming.
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Intellectual House (INT). Campus room: Gathering Hall. Accessibility Contact: jbperea@uw.edu. Event Types: Academics. Lectures/Seminars. Performances. Target Audience: students, faculty. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/1664BnEscg/.
Thursday, November 20, 2025, 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM.
For more info visit healingheartproject.org. Pilgrimage in Mexico: A Dynamic Tradition: a Talk by Edward Wright-Ríos
From a distance nearly all of us misunderstand pilgrimage. Influenced by movies, memoirs, and travel influencers we tend to think of the practice as a personal reboot, a self-imposed extended, sweaty therapy session that leads to the authentic and better self. Alternatively, we conjure notions of stoic devotees preserving ancient traditions. But in Mexico a small subset of Catholics numbering the millions embrace pilgrimage as a lifelong practice knit into the complexities of their hectic modern lives. Why and how do they sustain this mode to religious devotion at considerable cost and effort? Why does pilgrimage endure, and why is it experiencing something of a renaissance? Edward Wright-Rios (Professor of History, Vanderbilt University) will explore these questions in his talk.
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Communications Building (CMU). Campus room: 202. Accessibility Contact: jsisevents@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Thursday, November 20, 2025, 3:30 PM – 5:00 PM.
Wetlandia!: Analytics for a Global Terraqueous Humanities
Wetlandia! reframes the wetland as an analytic constituted by far more than nature. Situated in terraqueous terrains where land meets rivers, oceans, and other bodies of water, wetlands serve as homes to a rich collection of flora, fauna, and people. At the intersection of this physical and social geography, we will rethink and reclaim the wetland from a conservationist and statist paradigm, to a political, social, economic, and historical frame.
RSVP Requested: bit.ly/Wetlandia
9:00 am – Coffee & light refreshments
9:30 am – Opening remarks
9:45-11:00 am – Panel 1
Malini Ranganathan (Associate Professor, International Studies, American University)
Camelia Dewan (Associate Professor, Cultural Anthropology & Ethnology, Uppsala University)
Morgan P. Vickers (Assistant Professor, Law, Societies & Justice, UW)
Moderated by Patrick Trent Greiner (Assistant Professor, Sociology, UW)
11:15 am-12:30 pm – Panel 2
Molly Roy (Designer and Guerilla Cartographer)
Rozalinda Borcilă (Independent Scholar, Activist,…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Allen Library (ALB). Campus room: Petersen Room. Accessibility Contact: Simpson Center, 206.543.3920, schadmin@uw.edu. Event Types: Conferences.
Friday, November 21, 2025, 9:00 AM – 3:30 PM.
Sacred Breath: Indigenous Writing and Storytelling Series
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.
As the days grow shorter, we gather in for a gathering with friends, family, and community to appreciate some long-form storytelling.
3:00pm Weaving Workshop
4:00pm Storytelling Session 1 with Roger Fernandes and youth storytellers
5:00pm Dinner served
6:00pm Storytelling Session 2 with a special…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Intellectual House (INT). Campus room: Gathering Hall. Accessibility Contact: jedge18@uw.edu. Event Types: Performances. Special Events.
Friday, November 21, 2025, 3:00 PM – 8:00 PM.
For more info visit ais.washington.edu. A Celebration of 25 Years of the Simpson Center and a Legacy of Leadership
Please join us in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities. Over the past quarter century, the Simpson Center has established itself as an internationally recognized model for leading-edge humanities research. Its work—from scholarly gatherings to fellowship programs to publications—has been transformative for faculty, students, and staff at the University of Washington. The new faculty director of the Simpson Center, Professor Lynn M. Thomas, invites you to join us from 3:30 – 5:00 pm in the Walker-Ames Room, Kane Hall 225. Brief remarks will begin at 4:00 pm, after which we will raise a glass to honor Professor Kathleen Woodward’s legacy of leadership at the Simpson Center.
RSVP here: https://simpsoncenter.org/form/dec4-simpson-center-celebration.
Accommodation requests related to a disability or health condition should be made by November 20, 2025 to the Simpson Center, 206.543.3920, schadmin@uw.edu.
Generously made possible by the Walter Chapin Simpson…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Kane Hall (KNE). Campus room: 225. Accessibility Contact: Simpson Center for the Humanities, 206-543-3920, schadmin@uw.edu. Event Types: Special Events.
Thursday, December 4, 2025, 3:30 PM – 5:00 PM.