56�Թ��� professor and economics expert, S. Charusheela was the featured guest at the annual Mirror Stage Activism Brunch in North Seattle this past weekend. During the eye-opening discussion, she explored the many facets of income inequality and how it is related to politics, culture, and business. The complete discussion is available to watch on the .

The brunch also included a sneak peek of Expand Upon: Income Inequality and the Wage Gap, featuring two newly-commissioned plays by Nelle Tankus and Mary Fields. Mirror Stage Managing Artistic Director, and 56�Թ��� Bothell graduate, Suzanne M. Cohen says the new plays explore, “the wide-ranging impact, and offer a glimpse into what role we each play in supporting and maintaining the status quo, and the detrimental effects on us all.” The plays will be performed live online at on October 15, 16, 22, and 23. Each showing will be followed by an online group discussion. It will be a unique experience for the playwrights and actors to hear directly from the audience.

Mirror Stage is a nonprofit arts organization that uses the power of storytelling to challenge assumptions, bias, and prejudice, increasing equity and inclusion while encouraging more thoughtful reflection on today’s issues. With the goal of increasing empathy and social justice, Mirror Stage connects people more deeply to perspectives and experiences other than their own while amplifying historically excluded stories, voices, and faces- bringing us to a place of common understanding. Mirror Stage is theatre that gets people talking, as well as thinking. To learn more about the upcoming events, sign up for the .

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Oguara, a long-time resident of Seattle, Washington who now resides in Kent is a prolific songwriter, world music artist, storyteller, actor ( – 2020), cultural enthusiast, and playwright, with interest in stage musical productions.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in Political Science from University of Washington Seattle and an M.A. in Cultural Studies from 56�Թ���. Earlier in 2020, Oguara published his first two books, Fisherman’s Son and , followed by and in 2021.

is Oguara's latest entry in his conscious endeavor to bring cultural awareness on environmental issues in some parts of the world.

All of Oguara's books are available in Paperback and eBook formats on Amazon Books. You can also follow him on his Author's Page ().

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IAS faculty member Ching-In Chen has been selected as an , a year-long intensive leadership experience for artists, culture bearers and other arts practitioners.

ILI is a collaborative program of Alternate Roots, First Peoples Fund, National Association of Latino Arts & Cultures (NALAC), PA’I Foundation and Sipp Culture. ILI’s “intercultural” approach emphasizes overlapping experiences, shared spaces and mutual accountability – and seeks to challenge dominant social norms while honoring differences of histories, traditions, vocabulary and more. .

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IAS faculty member Lauren S. Berliner has published “” in a special issue on in the journal Feminist Media Histories. In the article, Berliner examines what we might learn about the themes, identities, and production practices that are escaping (algorithmically informed) representation when we pay attention to digital media that have been filtered out or over, or have simply gone unwatched.

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IAS alum Marcus Johnson received his bachelor's in Global Studies ('13), and a master's in Cultural Studies (’16). As a Cultural Studies student, he worked with IAS faculty member Ben Gardner on “The Multi Dimensions of Blackness: Cultural Hegemony in the United States and Abroad.” Johnson’s research stems from a “disquieting” encounter he had while visiting family in the Dominican Republic that catalyzed his interest in different formations of “blackness” in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and the United States.

Currently a Ph.D. candidate in the 56�Թ��� Department of Communication, Johnson was selected to receive a . The Excellence in Teaching Awards were created to recognize the contributions of graduate student instructors to the scholarship of teaching and learning. Graduate instructors enrich the classroom through meaningful and creative teaching approaches.

The award recognizes exceptional teachers who demonstrate 1) extraordinary effectiveness as a 56�Թ��� instructor; 2) extensive knowledge and mastery of the subject matter; 3) effectiveness at engaging students, closing gaps between teaching and learning and supporting student success; 4) innovation in course and curriculum design; 5) ability to inspire, guide, and mentor students through independent and creative thinking; and 6) service as a mentor, collaborator, and consultant to other teaching assistants and students by helping to enrich the scholarship of teaching and learning

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IAS faculty member Ching-In Chen has been commissioned as a poet to write poems about for the Great Peninsula Conservancy in Kitsap County.

Writing the Land partners with various nonprofit and environmental organizations to coordinate the “adoption” of conserved lands for poets. Each poet is paired with and visits the land to create work inspired by place and preservation. Poems created are available to the land protection organizations for use in their media and outreach and are printed in anthologies which help raise awareness of the importance for land conservation and for fundraising.

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IAS faculty member Ching-In Chen presented as part of the Association for Asian American Studies conference last week on the 2022 Lambda Literary Finalist anthology. Chen discussed their sequence of poems in recombinant, which imagines a speculative relationship between these two artifacts (Fan & Basket) from the Peabody Essex Museum’s Asian Export Art Collection and the Native Art Collection as well as the circuits that these artifacts moved through to get to the museum.

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IAS faculty member Amoshaun Toft is interviewed in “,” a current analysis of homelessness discourse published by Real Change News. The article argues that that Toft’s previous from 2008, along with a from 2014, provides a useful framework for understanding the current framing of homeless sweeps in Seattle.

“As I do my own reading of the news on homeless encampment sweeps and this emphasis on crime and property theft in Seattle, I’m seeing a lot of similar stuff. It seems like the same playbook, really,” Toft tells Real Change.

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April 9 and 11, IAS faculty member Naomi Macalalad Bragin moderated a roundtable and gave a research talk on Waacking/Punking, a dance that derives from the first gay clubs of Los Angeles, California, during the Disco and Funk music era of the early 1970s.

Her groundbreaking work highlights stories of 1970s Soul Train television dancers, as well as young women who are redefining global streetdance culture in the 2000s. « » (click for video) was a public roundtable featuring young Paris streetdance artists Habibitch, Leï the Night, Bruno Marignan, and Sonia Soulshine, held at Centre Dunois dance studios on April 9.

Naomi’s presentation « » (click for video) took place on April 11, contributing to the year-long interdisciplinary seminar Recherches sur le masculin, co-organized by professors Pauline Peretz, Patrick Farges and Ivan Jablonka, at University of Paris Campus Condorcet.

All events were funded by l’École Universitaire de Recherche ArTeC, l’Institut universitaire de France, l’Université Paris Cité, l’Université Sorbonne Paris Nord, l’Institut d’histoire du temps présent (CNRS-Université Paris 8). Naomi’s book, Black Power of Hip Hop Dance: On Kinethic Politics, is forthcoming with the international Dance Studies Association, Studies in Dance series.

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IAS faculty member Lauren Berliner published the article, “,” in a special issue of Frames Cinema Journal titled “Sensing the Archive: Exploring The Digital (Im)materiality of the Moving Image Archive.”

In the article, Berliner questions what we mean when we refer to “home movies” in the age of social media. She investigates the ways in which videos representing the domestic sphere and personal and community histories circulate on video-sharing platforms and addresses how the archive of the internet is a space of continuous appropriation and inscription into consumer culture and racial capitalism.

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