April 18, 5:30 PM | Burke Museum

The 91探花Taiwan Studies Arts & Culture Program is honored to host a memorial film screening and lecture honoring Dr. HU Tai-Li.

In memory of Dr. HU Tai-Li, the evening features an in-person screening of the first locally made ethnographic film in Taiwan,?The Return of Gods and Ancestors, by Dr. HU Tai-Li, and a lecture by Professor Scott Simon about Dr. Hu’s work and the influence of her pioneering ethnographic documentary practice in Taiwan. There will also be a reception honoring and celebrating Dr. Hu’s contributions on the study of ethnic relations in Taiwan.

Free |

April 18, 6:30 PM | Kane Hall

Many countries around the world have looked to the public universities of the United States and Canada as best-case examples of high-quality mass education. This has become less true after the financial crisis. Why is the contemporary public university struggling both at home and abroad???discusses the external pressures and internal policy failures that have undermined North American public universities in the 21st century, and describes features of a reconstructed public university that would better serve the domestic and global needs of the next thirty years.

Christopher Newfield?is Director of Research at the Independent Social Research Foundation (London) and immediate past President of the Modern Language Association. He was Distinguished Professor of Literature and American Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he taught for thirty years. His areas of research are critical university studies, literary criticism, quantification studies, innovation studies, the intellectual and social effects of the humanities, and U.S. cultural history before the Civil War and after World War II. He has written a trilogy of books on the university as an intellectual and social institution, concluding with?The Great Mistake: How We Wrecked Public Universities and How We Can Fix Them (2016).

?(Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences) will introduce the lecture as part of the Dean’s initiative?.

Free |

April 19, 7:00 – 8:30 PM | Gowen Hall

This Washin Kai event will be a lecture by Professor Ken Oshima of 91探花’s Department of Architecture, with participation by Professor Paul Atkins (Department of Asian Languages and Literature) and Washin Kai member and architect, Hiroshi Matsubara.

The architecture and gardens of the Katsura Imperial Villa 桂離宮 live on today as a paradigm of Japanese arts and cultures. Commissioned by two generations of princes of the Hachijō Imperial Family in the seventeenth century, this Xanadu embodies the ideals of tea master and artist, Kobori Enshū (小堀 遠州) and stands as an emblematic expression of both sukiya-zukuri architecture and modern design. This talk and conversation with Professor Paul Atkins and architect Hiroshi Matsubara will unpack the many facets including its literary and photographic interpretations to consider its implications for the future of Japanese traditions in a global context.

Free |

April 20, 7:30 – 9:00 PM | Kane Hall?

Leaders from the Makah Nation in Washington State will discuss ways they continue to exercise sovereignty across ancestral homelands and waters, especially as related to the Olympic National Park, the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary, the international border, and treaty fishing and whaling rights.

Speakers will include?Timothy J. Greene?(Makah Tribal Council Chairman),?Janine Ledford?(Director, Makah Cultural and Research Center), and?Rebekah Monette?(Cultural Resource Manager). This session will be moderated by?Joshua L. Reid?(Snohomish), who is the John Calhoun Smith Memorial Endowed Associate Professor of History and American Indian Studies and Director of the Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest.

Free |

April 20 – 22, 8:00 PM | Meany Hall

The acclaimed Step Afrika! is the world’s first professional company dedicated to the tradition of stepping — a polyrhythmic, percussive dance form that uses the body as an instrument. The company presents its latest work,?Drumfolk, a powerful piece inspired by the Stono Rebellion of 1739. Step Afrika! blends songs, storytelling and dance to explore a little-known event in American history that led to some of our country’s most distinct performance traditions. New percussive forms took root when the beats found their way into the body of the people, the?Drumfolk, in a way that would forever transform African American life and culture.

$53 Tickets |

April 20, 3:30 PM | ?Husky Union Building

The English Department is proud to host the sixth annual Scheingold Lecture in Poetry and Poetics, featuring??and?. There will be a reception and book signing to follow.

Free |

April 22, 10:30 – 12:30 PM | Gowen Hall

Unlock the language and music of Korea: Learn Korean through K-Pop, K-Musical, and K-Opera, and discover the singer in you. Learning a language can be tough, but it can be more fun than most imagine. This exciting workshop will teach Korean through the catchy tune of K-Pop, the dramatic performances of musicals, and the beautiful aria of K-Opera. Knowledge of Korean is not required.

The workshop will be lead by Eun Ju Vivianna Oh, a Korean-American soprano with a dynamic career as a recording artist, music director, teacher, and mother. She is a Doctor of Musical Arts candidate in Voice Performance and holds both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the UW. She has an extensive background in the music industry, having worked as a music director in the foreign film department at the Educational Broadcasting Station in Seoul, Korea. Currently, Eun Ju Vivianna is a predoctoral instructor at the UW, where she teaches private voice lessons to both music majors and non-music majors and mentors young singers and pianists in Seattle. Her versatility and expertise as a singer, music director, and teacher are undoubtedly unparalleled, making her an invaluable member of the musical community.

Free |

Have an event that you would like to see featured in the ArtSci Roundup? Connect with Lauren Zondag (zondagld@uw.edu).

Harris succeeds Dean , who is .

She currently is a senior program officer in The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s Higher Learning program, where her responsibilities include program leadership, strategic framework generation, grantmaking innovation, program staff supervision and the collaborative allocation of a grantmaking budget of $115 million to $130 million per year. Prior to that, Harris was dean of the College of Humanities and a history professor at the University of Utah.

“While at the University of Utah, Dr. Harris substantially increased the number of underrepresented tenure-line faculty and generated retention-oriented programs. She raised the research profile of the college, supported the creation of a digital humanities center and supported a number of undergraduate student success initiatives,” Richards said. “Throughout her career, Dr. Harris has been a tireless supporter of the humanities, and her track record of scholarly and administrative work reflects her commitment to expanding access, diversity, equity and inclusion in higher education.”

At the Mellon Foundation, Harris’ grantmaking portfolio includes leadership of a range of initiatives with a social justice and access-oriented focus, including higher education in prison, community college transfer pathways and the reimagined humanities doctorate in the 21st century. Her work also includes programs on diversifying higher education leadership, building a more diverse academy, and supporting American Indian and Indigenous studies and tribal colleges, scholars at risk and in exile, and the Just Futures Initiative competition.

She also leads the annual New Directions Fellowship competition and a range of initiatives on the public humanities, interdisciplinary programs and public research universities. Just prior to the 2016 presidential election, she was nominated by President Barack Obama to serve on the National Council on the Humanities, although her nomination was suspended due to the results of that election.

“I am thrilled and humbled by the opportunity to lead this outstanding college within a university I have long admired for its exemplary leadership, and for its excellence in every facet of the academic mission.?My deepest personal and career commitments have been to the public universities that have meant so much to me, to my family, and to the lives of so many others,?so it’s a particular joy for me to be joining the UW,” Harris said. “The breadth and depth of excellence that resides among the many facets of the College of Arts and Sciences and —most importantly — among its faculty, students, and staff is breathtaking, and their work results in?the innovative production of new knowledge our world and our students need now,?more than ever. As someone who has embraced collaboration and interdisciplinary scholarship throughout her career, I’m particularly pleased to be?stepping into this leadership role in a college that is replete with such opportunities, and where students and faculty are tackling some of the thorniest grand challenge issues of our time from a wide range of perspectives and approaches.”

Her scholarship, which has a broad temporal and geographic reach spanning from 18th-century Lombardy to postwar United States, is united by a sustained focus on the relationship between the built environment and the construction of racial and class identities. An interdisciplinary scholar whose work focuses on visual and material culture as well as histories of the built environment, she is particularly well known for her scholarly contributions to the study of race and space. In addition to her many essays and scholarly articles, she is the sole author of three monographs, editor of an additional three volumes and a series editor for the University of Pittsburgh Press.

As a principal investigator for many grants, she has fostered interdisciplinary collaboration and innovation in the humanities, such as the creation of the “Humanities Without Walls” consortium, which includes support for cross-institutional research collaboration, and an innovative program of summer workshops for predoctoral students in the humanities who wish to seek careers outside the academy.

Harris earned her doctorate in architecture and history of architecture, master’s degree in architecture and bachelor’s degree with a major in landscape architecture, all at the University of California, Berkeley.