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The Faustian Pact: Spectacles of Modernity (An introduction to Murnau's Faust with live music and a reception)

Before you experience Faust (1926) at the Paramount Theatre on April 27, you're invited to historic Denny Hall at the University of Washington on April 24 for a special presentation and discussion about Faust featuring German Studies Chair, Ellwood Wiggins, and Professor Andre Schuetze. Discover what to look out for in Murnau’s revolutionary cinematic masterpiece and learn about the Faust story as a parable of modernity--and of German history--in its adaptations across the ages. What is the price of your soul? Following the discussion, please stick around as the community—students, alumni, faculty, and staff—gather over refreshments to celebrate German Studies’ own 21st Century learning. Date: Friday, April 24th, 2026 Time: 5 – 7 pm Location: Denny Hall, Room 303 for the presentation | Denny Hall, Room 359 for the reception Free and open to the public. Light snacks and refreshments will be served. Please register here: https://events.uw.edu/event/TheFaustianPact/summary?… Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Denny Hall (DEN). Campus room: 303. Accessibility Contact: We strive to host inclusive, accessible events that enable all individuals to engage fully. Accessible parking information: for additional questions/accommodations, contact the Transportation Services Events Office via email or at 206.616.8710. For general accessibility accommodation requests: contact the Disability Services Office via email or at 206.543.6450, 206.543.6452 (TTY), preferably at least 10 days in advance of the event. Event Types: Special Events. Lectures/Seminars. Event sponsors: Department of German Studies, Prof. Ellwood Wiggins, wiggins1@uw.edu. Friday, April 24, 2026, 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM. For more info visit events.uw.edu.

Research and Relationality in the Peruvian Amazon

Free and open to all. At the Jackson School, opportunities and events are open to all eligible persons regardless of race, sex or other identity. THIS IS A HYBRID EVENT. ZOOM REGISTRATION HERE: https://washington.zoom.us/meeting/register/jQSegZVzQFu9Sq-3hhRivg IN-PERSON LOCATION: HUB 145 This panel features talks on conducting research in the Peruvian Amazon by Justin Perez (UCSC) and Amanda Smith (UCSC). Perez will present “Queer Emergent: Scandalous Stories from the Twilight of AIDS in Peru.” Amidst growing enthusiasm over the 2010s around the possibility of ending AIDS as a threat to global public by 2030, communities of gay men and transgender women in Peru’s Amazonian region paradoxically experienced an intensifying epidemic at the same time. Queer Emergent is an ethnography that explores how they experienced this contradiction. In Peru, efforts to “end AIDS” brought demands that communities denounce homo- and trans-phobic discrimination, embrace egalitarian sexual practices, and re-orient social… Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Student Union Building (HUB). Online Meeting Link: https://washington.zoom.us/meeting/register/jQSegZVzQFu9Sq-3hhRivg. Campus room: HUB 145. Accessibility Contact: lasuw@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars. Event sponsors: This event is hosted by Latin American and Caribbean Studies as part of the Peru Education, Action, and Research network, and it is co-sponsored by the Simpson Center in the Humanities, Jackson School of International Studies, Comparative History of Ideas, the Department of History, and the Department of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies. Target Audience: Free and open to the public. Tuesday, April 28, 2026, 3:30 PM – 5:00 PM.

Katz Distinguished Lecture: Stephanie LeMenager, "Fiction and Lies in the Shadow of Climate Change"

Free and open to the public. Doors open at 6:00 pm. Seats open until filled.Accommodation requests related to a disability or health condition should be made by April 14 to the Simpson Center, 206.543.3920, humanities@uw.edu. This talk considers the role of fiction as a form of resistant truth telling in an era of lies, bullish*t, propaganda, GenAI fakes and conspiracy theory, and in the shadow of climate crisis. In our media atmosphere filled with falsehoods, fiction becomes a means of capturing messy realities unassimilable to propaganda. Moreover, the flexibility of fictional imagination allows for social responses to radical uncertainties, via new genres of storytelling that call climate-change publics into being. In this talk, we'll consider stories of megafire. Stephanie LeMenager's work on climate change and the humanities has been featured in The New York Times, ClimateWire, Science Friday, NPR, the CBC, and other public venues. She is Barbara and Carlisle Moore Professor of English and Professor of… Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Kane Hall (KNE). Campus room: 220. Accessibility Contact: Simpson Center, 206.543.3920, schadmin@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars. Event sponsors: Simpson Center for the Humanities. Tuesday, April 28, 2026, 6:30 PM – 8:00 PM.

Introduction to Natural Language Processing with NLTK & spaCy

Are you curious about how machines read and understand text? Join us for an intensive 2-hour online workshop where you will get a practical introduction to Natural Language Processing (NLP) using Python. NLP is the field that enables computers to understand, interpret, and work with human language. From spam filters and chatbots to medical record analysis and social media monitoring, NLP powers much of the technology we interact with daily. In this two-hour workshop, participants will get a structured tour of core NLP concepts and immediately apply them using two of Python's most popular libraries: NLTK and spaCy. Through live code demonstrations and sample Colab notebooks, you will preprocess raw text, build a basic text classifier, and extract named entities. Walk away with working code for text preprocessing, classification, and named entity recognition. Whether you are analyzing survey responses, exploring social media data, or building your first NLP pipeline, this workshop gives you the foundation to… Event interval: Single day event. Accessibility Contact: uwlib-scp@uw.edu. Event Types: Workshops. Target Audience: Graduate students, researchers, data analysts, software developers. Wednesday, April 29, 2026, 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM.

"Dangerous Subjects" Colloquium | Research and Relationality in the Peruvian Amazon

Free and open to all. At the Jackson School, opportunities and events are open to all eligible persons regardless of race, sex or other identity. ALL PARTICIPANTS: Please RSVP to Vanessa Freije (vfreije@uw.edu) THIS IS A HYBRID EVENT. ZOOM REGISTRATION HERE: https://washington.zoom.us/meeting/register/5aKlmvf7R0KGbr5naPCOjg IN-PERSON LOCATION: THO 317 Justin Pérez (UCSC) and Amanda Smith (UCSC) will present their works in progress as part of LACS’s “Dangerous Subjects” colloquium series. This workshop-style event is designed to provide constructive feedback, and the papers will be circulated to participants one week prior. Please RSVP to Vanessa Freije (vfreije@uw.edu). Justin Perez will present, “Excess and the Ontological Politics of Trans and Queer Worlds in Amazonian Peru,” which experiments with an affinity between two theories of excess. On the one hand, an ontological anthropology that takes seriously the social extension and political agency of beings that exceed the human, and, on the other,… Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Thomson Hall (THO). Online Meeting Link: https://washington.zoom.us/meeting/register/5aKlmvf7R0KGbr5naPCOjg. Campus room: THO 317. Accessibility Contact: lasuw@uw.edu. Event Types: Workshops. Event sponsors: This event is hosted by Latin American and Caribbean Studies as part of the Peru Education, Action, and Research network, and it is co-sponsored by the Simpson Center in the Humanities, Jackson School of International Studies, Comparative History of Ideas, the Department of History, and the Department of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies. Wednesday, April 29, 2026, 12:30 PM – 2:00 PM.

Katz Colloquium: Energy Humanities, with Stephanie LeMenager

Energy Humanities is a vibrant interdisciplinary field that studies the way that energy regimes are woven throughout human cultures, societies, and artforms. We will explore this field of study, in conversation with Stephanie LeMenager, who will give her Katz Distinguished Lecture the evening prior. LeMenager will talk about her 2013 book, Living Oil: Petroleum Culture in the American Century, then and now, with reflections on that research, more than ten years after publication. She will also discuss how Living Oil relates to her current work and to her first book, Manifest and Other Destinies. Stephanie LeMenager is Professor in English and Affiliate Faculty of the Environmental Studies Program at the University of Oregon, where she co-directs the Center for Environmental Futures. She held the Moore Chair in English from 2014-2024. LeMenager is author of several books. Her work on climate change and the humanities has been featured in The New York Times, ClimateWire, Science Friday, NPR, the CBC, and… 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. Event sponsors: Simpson Center for the Humanities, humanities@uw.edu, 206-543-3920. Target Audience: Open to UW Faculty, Students, and Staff. Wednesday, April 29, 2026, 3:30 PM – 5:00 PM.

Fire Humanities | Panel Discussion and Storytelling

Registration required. Doors open at 6pm, light refreshments served What does it mean to live well as wildfire and smoke season becomes more a part of life in the Pacific Northwest and many other places around the world? As much as we focus on preparedness and reducing materials that fuel wildfires, we must also reckon with the human dimensions of fire, which shape how we interact with it. “Fire Humanities” is a book project and an emerging field of study that draws on the humanities and arts to center stories, representations, collaborations, and values that promote adaptation, resilience, and justice as we adapt to a world with more fire. This program will feature a panel discussion with five contributors to the book, who will share their approaches to this emerging field of research. After the panel, you’ll be invited to share your stories of fire and smoke with each other, speak with the panelists, and participate in hands-on activities connected to the Fire Humanities project. This event is free and… Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Burke Memorial-Washington State Museum (BRK). Accessibility Contact: Simpson Center for the Humanities, 206-543-3920, humanities@uw.edu. Event Types: Workshops. Lectures/Seminars. Event sponsors: Simpson Center for the Humanities, 206-543-3920, humanities@uw.edu Burke Museum Generously made possible by the Solomon Katz Endowment in the Humanities. Thursday, April 30, 2026, 6:30 PM – 8:00 PM. For more info visit www.burkemuseum.org.

CSEAD Student Conference

The Spring 2026 CSEAD Student Conference will feature a keynote presentation and panels by current UW undergraduate and graduate students across a wide range of topics and disciplines in Southeast Asian studies. Panel 1: Colonial legacies and contemporary discourses on Southeast Asian environments Will Burnham (he/him) – Southeast Asian Studies, Marine and Environmental Affairs Andri Fernanda (he/him) – Asian Languages and Literature Rangga Rasyid (he/him) – Southeast Asian Studies Panel 2: Past, present, future: Nationalisms and national identities in Southeast Asia Eden Quah (she/her) – Southeast Asian Studies Imam Subkhan – Anthropology Bintang Sasmita Wicaksana – Learning Sciences and Human Development Panel 3: The sights and sounds of Southeast Asia MinhYen Do (any pronouns) – Southeast Asian Studies Rayne Mescallado (they/them) – Ethnomusicology Caitlin O’Malley (she/her) – Southeast Asian Studies Kelly Van Acker (she/her) – History Keynote presentation: Kathleen Gutierrez | The B-Sides of Unmaking… Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Thomson Hall (THO). Campus room: THO 317. Accessibility Contact: csead@uw.edu. Event Types: Conferences. Event sponsors: Center for Southeast Asia and Its Diasporas. Target Audience: Free and open to the public. Friday, May 1, 2026, 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM. For more info visit jsis.washington.edu.

Living and Writing Multispecies Autoethnography

Multispecies autoethnography is an ethnography of the self in relation to multispecies others. It's a methodology that goes beyond ethnography's consideration of positionality and situatedness to look deeply at the lives we're living with individuals of other species with whom we're in relation. It's a methodology of the "right here" - our everyday, intimate lives and how they unfold, the harms we cause, the things we learn, the forms of knowledge and care we co-create with other animals. As an antidote to much work in multispecies studies that focuses on convivial relationships with other animals or stops short of interrogating our own implicatedness in multispecies harm, this approach is oriented through an explicitly anti-anthropocentric ethic. Storytelling is at the heart of this methodology and, thus, the practice of writing. In this workshop, we explore how we might think about and do multispecies autoethnography, how it attends to animals and their experiences, and how the writing process can cultivate… Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Communications Building (CMU). Campus room: 202. Accessibility Contact: Maria Elena Garcia. Event Types: Workshops. Event sponsors: CHID, Geography, the Simpson Center for the Humanities, the Environmental Humanities Simpson Center grad cluster, and the More-than-Human Simpson Center grad cluster. Target Audience: academic. Friday, May 1, 2026, 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM.

Kathleen Gutierrez | The B-Sides of Unmaking Botany: Labor and the Archive of the Bereaved in the Colonial Philippines

Writing history entails good editing—and accepting when material can’t make the final cut. Lengthy research projects require a command of sources but also analytical flexibility. Such flexibility can ensure rigor sometimes at the expense of findings that, alas, must be shelved for some other future use. “The B-Sides of Unmaking Botany” will examine a set of sources that did not make it into the recently published monograph Unmaking Botany: Science and Vernacular in the Colonial Philippines (Duke University Press, 2025). The objectives of the talk are thus twofold: to provide a behind-the-scenes take on the production of a scholarly monograph and to offer a conceptual argument gleaned from the sources that nonetheless resonates with some of Unmaking Botany’s principal interventions. Up to today, little primary and synthetic information exists on Spanish-born, rank-and-file men recruited to join botany operations in the colonial Philippines in the late nineteenth century. That is, except for men whose widows… Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Thomson Hall (THO). Campus room: THO 317. Accessibility Contact: csead@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars. Target Audience: Free and open to the public. Friday, May 1, 2026, 3:30 PM – 5:00 PM.

The Sound of Feathers: Attentive Living in a World Beyond Ourselves

How do we cultivate attentiveness in ways that resist structures of violence and normalized relationships of harm and ambivalence with other species? How can an attention to our fraught histories and contemporary everyday encounters with other animals transform our lives and the lives of those around us to envision and manifest gentler futures of shared flourishing? How does noticing the things that are the opposite of noticeable lead to different ways of knowing, living, and relating? The Sound of Feathers: Attentive Living in a World Beyond Ourselves [Duke University Press, 2026] explores these questions by inviting readers and listeners to attend to the nuances of the most mundane elements of everyday life and multispecies encounters. This part-talk/part-reading considers what it means to pay attention, to be changed by the things we notice, to cultivate intimacy and reverence for the natural world, and to engage with the power of storytelling to re-narrate the kinds of lives we can live and the kinds of f… Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Communications Building (CMU). Campus room: 120. Accessibility Contact: Maria Elena Garcia. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars. Event sponsors: CHID, Geography, the Simpson Center for the Humanities, the Environmental Humanities Simpson Center grad cluster, and the More-than-Human Simpson Center grad cluster. Target Audience: academic. Friday, May 1, 2026, 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM.

Public Lecture | Have You Heard? Black Buddhism Through the Lens of Tina Turner | Dr. Ralph H. Craig III

Join us for an afternoon lecture on May 4th in HUB 250 featuring Dr. Ralph H. Craig III on Black Buddhism Through the Lens of Tina Turner. A light reception will be provided. Tina Turner's (1939–2023) successful recording career and electrifying stage performances earned her the moniker of “Queen of Rock and Roll.” At the same time, Turner was perhaps one of the most famous Black Buddhist celebrities. In this talk, I will highlight the ways that Turner's Buddhist practice combined her Afro-Protestant upbringing, the trans-Atlantic flow of metaphysical religious ideas, and SGI Nichiren Buddhism. The talk will show how Turner's combinatory religious sensibilities are indicative of trends in Black Buddhism. , Ralph H. Craig III is an Assistant Professor of Religion at Whitman College. He is an interdisciplinary scholar of religion whose research focuses on South Asian Buddhism and American Buddhism. His first book, Dancing in My Dreams: A Spiritual Biography of Tina Turner (Eerdmans Publishing, 2023),… Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Student Union Building (HUB). Campus room: HUB 250. Accessibility Contact: relig@uw.edu. Event Types: Academics. Event sponsors: UW Jackson School-Religious Studies Program, Asian Languages & Literatures, Buddhist Studies Program. Target Audience: Open to public. Registration required. Monday, May 4, 2026, 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM.

Capturing Grace

It seems like two separate realms. One is occupied by acclaimed dancers from Brooklyn’s world-renowned Mark Morris Dance Group, the other by people with Parkinson’s disease. CAPTURING GRACE is about what happens when those two worlds intersect. Filmed over the course of a year, Dave Iverson's remarkable documentary reveals the hopes, fears, and triumphs of this newly forged community as they work together to create a unique, life-changing performance. Registration Link. Event interval: Single day event. Campus room: Room 120 Lecture Hall. Accessibility Contact: ticket@uw.edu. Event Types: Screenings. Event sponsors: Presented in partnership with Meany Center, the UW Simpson Center for the Humanities, and the UW Department of Dance. Tuesday, May 5, 2026, 5:30 PM – 7:30 PM. UW Communications Building, Room 120 Lecture Hall: 4109 E Stevens Way NE, Seattle, WA 98195. For more info visit docs.google.com.

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. Event sponsors: The Stephanie Camp Memorial Lecture is sponsored by the Departments of History and Gender, Women's, and Sexuality Studies (GWSS), The Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies, and The Simpson Center for the Humanities. 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. Event sponsors: Center for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies, the UW Jean Monnet Center for Exellence, co-funded by the European Union. 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. Event sponsors: Simpson Center for the Humanities, 206.543.3920, humanities@uw.edu Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences at UW Bothell Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies New Collaborations in Critical Sports Studies Global Sports Lab, UW American Ethnic Studies. 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. Event sponsors: UW Hellenic Studies Program. 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. Event sponsors: Simpson Center for the Humanities, humanities@uw.edu, 206.543.3920 Co-sponsored by the Department of History. Monday, May 11, 2026, 3:30 PM – 5:00 PM.

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. Event sponsors: Stroum Center for Jewish Studies. Target Audience: Open to public. Registration required. Tuesday, May 12, 2026, 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM.

Black Digital Humanities: State of the Field

The racialized perils of digital technologies bear heavily on the present. These range from AI’s impact on ecosystems and scarce water resources to surveillance technologies which suppress dissent and social protest movements. Historically, Black populations in the US and abroad have been a testing ground for the use of digital technologies to curtail freedom and create unequal material impacts on everyday life and resources. This is something we are currently witnessing at rapid and far-reaching pace. Join the UW’s Black Digital Humanities in the Age of Technofascism research cluster for drop-in talks by scholars in the field, along with the community-led organisation Wa Na Wari. Presenters will briefly introduce their work using an object that they have chosen to represent their academic research. Speakers: Rebecca Bayeck, Utah State University Simone Durham, Morgan State University Christopher Paul Harris, University of California Irvine Jelani Ince, University of Washington Brandy Monk-Payton, Fordham… 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. Event sponsors: Simpson Center for the Humanities, 206.543.3920, humanities@uw.edu Henry Art Gallery Black Digital Studies in the Age of Techno-Fascism. 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. Event sponsors: The Stroum Center for Jewish Studies. 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. Event sponsors: Simpson Center for the Humanities, humanities@uw.edu, 206.543.3920 Cultural Analytics Praxis Faculty Research Collaboration. 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. Event sponsors: This event is hosted by Latin American and Caribbean Studies and co-sponsored by the Departments of Comparative History of Ideas and Geography. 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. Event sponsors: UW Sephardic Studies Program UW Middle East Center UW Stroum Center for Jewish Studies. 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. Event sponsors: Sacred Breath is sponsored by the Department of American Indian Studies, the Mellon Foundation, the Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies, the UW Department of English, the Banks Center for Educational Justice, the Squaxin Island Tribe, the Suquamish Tribe, and the Muckleshoot Tribe. 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”

Lecture Details TBA. 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 reading poetry and the affective experience of grief by studying how poems in the enduring aftermath of National Socialism and the Holocaust make space for an encounter with the uncontainable dimensions of loss—on and off the page. Generously made possible by the Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities. This event is free and open to the public. Accommodation requests related to a disability or health condition should be made by May 19, 2026 to the Simpson Center, 206.543.3920, schadmin@uw.edu. 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. Event sponsors: Simpson Center for the Humanities, humanities@uw.edu, 206.543.3920 Part of the Relational Memory Studies project. 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”

Workshop Details & RSVP Link TBA. 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 reading poetry and the affective experience of grief by studying how poems in the enduring aftermath of National Socialism and the Holocaust make space for an encounter with the uncontainable dimensions of loss—on and off the page. Generously made possible by the Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities. This event is free and open to the public. Accommodation requests related to a disability or health condition should be made by May 19, 2026 to the Simpson Center, 206.543.3920, schadmin@uw.edu. 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. Event sponsors: Simpson Center for the Humanities, humanities@uw.edu, 206.543.3920 Part of the Relational Memory Studies project. Wednesday, June 3, 2026, 1:00 PM – 3:30 PM.