Perspectives Newsletter

• 

  Fellows, Futurists & More Awards

  Recent awards and appointments celebrate the accomplishments of Arts & Sciences faculty, staff, and alumni. 

Opportunities to Explore

• 

  Vanity Fair

  Through March 16 (see event page for showtimes)
  Floyd and Delores Jones Playhouse
  Vanity Fair tells the parallel stories of disadvantaged Becky and privileged Amelia as each strives to secure love, success, and stability in the patriarchy of early 19th-century London. The play, presented by the UW School of Drama, explores the complexities of a world that often rewards those who break the rules.

• 

  Exhibition: Hank Willis Thomas

  Through August 4
  Henry Art Gallery
  The Henry Art Gallery exhibition “Hank Willis Thomas: LOVERULES - From the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation” features 90 works across a range of media. Critical awareness, civic engagement, collaboration, and empathy are among the core invitations of Thomas’ work. Through the mining and reframing of iconic imagery and texts, Thomas connects historical moments of resistance to our lives today.

• 

  Sonic Ruins of Modernity: Ladino Folksongs Today

  March 28, 7:30 – 9:00 pm
  Kane Hall, Room 220
  Edwin Seroussi (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) will discuss Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) folk songs in modern times, drawing on his forthcoming book on the topic. Seroussi has published on North African and Eastern Mediterranean Jewish music, on Judeo-Islamic relations in music and on Israeli popular music. This event is co-sponsored by the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies, the Near and Middle East Studies PhD program, the College of Arts and Sciences, and the School of Music Ethnomusicology Program.

• 

  Mivos Quartet, Music of UW Faculty Composers

  March 29, 7:30 pm
  Meany Hall – Katharyn Alvord Gerlich Theater

  Seating is in the Meany West Lobby (capacity limited)
  The Mivos Quartet, dubbed by the Chicago Reader as “one of America’s most daring and ferocious new-music ensembles,” performs works by UW faculty composers Joël-François Durand, Huck Hodge, and others in this guest artist performance presented by the School of Music. 

• 

  Chinese Characters across Asia: Continuity and Transformation in Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese

  April 3, 2024, 7:00 – 8:30 pm
  Kane Hall, Room 210 (with Zoom option)

  At one time, the spoken languages of Korea, Japan, and Vietnam were all written in Chinese characters. Zev Handel, professor and chair of the UW Department of Asian Languages & Literature, will explain how the building blocks of the Chinese script were adapted to represent the words and sounds of Japanese, what happened to Chinese-character writing in Korea and Vietnam, and why Japanese is the only one of these languages that still uses Chinese characters in its writing. Presented by Washin Kai. Register for in-person or online attendance. 

In The News

• Air pollution messes with moths’ ability to smell flowers

  A new study shows that byproducts of car exhaust disrupt pollination by degrading the floral scents that insects use to track down their favorite plants. Jeff Riffell, UW professor of biology and Washington Research Foundation Distinguished Investigator, is quoted. Riffel and Joel Thornton, UW professor and chair of the Department of Atmospheric Sciences, worked on the study with joint doctoral student Jeremy Chan (now at University of Naples).

  Popular Science

• Researchers take a freeze-frame reading of electrons energized in a stream of water

  An international team of scientists has blazed a new trail for studying how atoms respond to radiation, by tracking the energetic movement of electrons when a sample of liquid water is blasted with X-rays. Xiaosong Li, Larry R. Dalton Endowed Chair in Chemistry at the UW – and a senior author of a paper about the research – is quoted.

  GeekWire

• TIME 2024 Women of the Year: Ada Limón

  UW School of Drama alumna Ada Limón, US Poet Laureate and MacArthur Fellow, is featured as one of twelve TIME Women of the Year for 2024.

  TIME

• Quintard Taylor has blazed a trail to Black history of the American West — and around the world

  As an academic, Quintard Taylor, Scott and Dorothy Bullitt Professor Emeritus of American History at the UW, blazed a trail as an author and educator of Black history in the American West. Since launching the website Blackpast.org in 2007, he has been sharing Black history with the entire world.

  The Whole U