News from the School of IAS

Category: Research and Creative Practice

Dan Jacoby discusses the Janus decision’s implications for labor unions

IAS faculty member Dan Jacoby wrote a commentary for The Herald on the Supreme Court’s Janus decision, which put an end to public agency unions requiring non-union member to pay “agency fees” toward collective bargaining expenses. Jacoby argues that the Janus decision will weaker unions and put workers at risk. “…this ruling will push public policy further down the discredited path of private contracting agencies. Private contractors do bargain the terms of employment, but ...

July 16, 2018

Rob Turner and Justin Felder work to return Kokanee salmon to local creeks

The Lake Forest Park (LFP) Stewardship Foundation is partnering with IAS faculty member Rob Turner and Biology faculty member Jeff Jensen on the “Return Kokanee to Our Streams” project. Turner has undertaken the testing of catch basin filters to determine their effectiveness in removing pollutants (heavy metals and polycarbons) in stormwater runoff from local roads. Environmental Studies major Justin Felder is assisting Turner by taking samples and gathering data and has completed the project’s second scientific report. ...

July 13, 2018

Kristin Gustafson publishes two new columns in Clio: Among The Media

IAS faculty member Kristin Gustafson published two new columns in Clio: Among The Media. The most recent column, “Using History to Draw Student Attention to the ‘Difficult and Dangerous’ Work of Journalism, Over Time, Around World,” describes her classroom lesson on Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s resistance against attacks meant to shut down her journalistic voice and her resiliency to find new pathways to campaign against lynching. Gustafson identifies histories like that of Wells-Barnett and historical understanding as valuable teaching tools. They can frame moments such as with the recent news of five U.S. journalists killed ...

July 9, 2018

Becca Price publishes “Songwriting to learn”

IAS faculty member Becca Price, along with Sarah Ward (56³Ô¹ÏÍø College of Education), Katie Davis (56³Ô¹ÏÍø iSchool), and Greg Crowther (56³Ô¹ÏÍø Bothell School of STEM and Everett Community College), recently published, "Songwriting to learn: how high school science fair participants use music to communicate personally relevant scientific concepts," a paper that describes the qualities of music that high school students wrote about scientific ideas. The students were all participating in the local BioExpo science fair. Their songs employed ...

July 5, 2018

Lauren Berliner publishes Producing Queer Youth: The Paradox of Digital Media Empowerment

IAS faculty member Lauren Berliner published Producing Queer Youth: The Paradox of Digital Media Empowerment. Based on over three years of participant action research with queer teen media-makers and textual analysis of hundreds of youth-produced videos and popular media campaigns, the book challenges popular ideas about online media culture as a platform for empowerment, cultural transformation, and social progress. It offers a nuanced picture of openings that emerge for youth media producers as they ...

June 29, 2018

Amaranth Borsuk Interviewed at the Los Angeles Review of Books Blog

The LARB Blog has just published an interview with IAS faculty member Amaranth Borsuk about her new MIT Press volume, The Book. Borsuk's wide-ranging conversation with writer Andy Fitch covers how she came to write this book, the many historical forms the book has taken over time and in different regions, the affordances of the familiar codex, and what artists' books have to teach us about ...

June 28, 2018

Amaranth Borsuk launches public project to define the book

To accompany her recently-published volume The Book (MIT Press, 2018), IAS faculty member Amaranth Borsuk has launched a web project to expand our definition of an object we think we know intimately. At t-h-e-b-o-o-k.com, Borsuk is compiling crowd-sourced answers to the question What is the/a book?, which she has posed to over 100 artists, writers, scholars, publishers, and librarians. In her MIT Press volume, Borsuk defines the book with ...

June 28, 2018

IAS students publish the 2018 issue of Clamor

Clamor is the campus’s literary and arts journal, focusing on work produce by 56³Ô¹ÏÍø Bothell student and alum. As IAS faculty member and advisor to the students who create Clamor Amaranth Borsuk puts it, “Clamor is essential in building community around the arts on campus. Creative students from across the disciplines see a home for their work between the journal’s covers, and the campus as a whole benefits from the enriching experience of reading the journal.”

June 28, 2018

Jennifer Atkinson speaks at the Smithsonian Institution

IAS faculty member Jennifer Atkinson speaks at the Smithsonian Institution on "Cultures of the Garden: The Hidden Histories of an American Obsession" (an author panel with Jennifer Atkinson and Dr. Robert S. Emmett). Atkinson's talk previewed her forthcoming book, Gardenland, in which she argues that gardening literature is not just a place to find advice about roses and rutabagas: it also contains hidden histories of desire, hope and frustration, and tells a story about how Americans have ...

June 27, 2018

Kari Lerum receives Washington State Labor Research Grant

IAS faculty member Kari Lerum has received a Washington State Labor Research Grant from the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies at University of Washington. The grant will fund the first year of her new research project, “Assessing the impact of anti-trafficking legislation on transgender sex workers.” This research comes out of years of community-based work, most recently with the Coalition for the Rights and Safety of People in the Sex Trade and the Seattle LGBQ commission. This project will focus on ...

June 26, 2018