UW News

Arts and entertainment

May 10, 2021

ArtSci Roundup: A new Measure: the Revolutionary Quantum Reform of the Metric System, Sacred Breath: Indigenous Writing and Storytelling Series, and more

During this time of uncertainty and isolation, find solace in digital opportunities to connect, share, and engage. Each week, we will share upcoming events that bring the UW, and the greater community, together online. 

Many of these online opportunities are streamed through Zoom. All UW faculty, staff, and students have access to Zoom Pro via UW-IT. 

Sacred Breath: Indigenous Writing and Storytelling Series

May 17, 6:00 – 7:15 PM | Online

The Department of American Indian Studies hosts an annual literary and storytelling series. Sacred Breath features Indigenous writers and storytellers at wǝɫǝbʔaltxʷ – Intellectual House on the University of Washington 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.

A new Measure: the Revolutionary Quantum Reform of the Metric System

May 18, 6:00 PM | Online

Scientists must rely on a system of units to provide a quantitative description of our universe. The International System of Units (the SI, or Metric system) starts with seven base units from which all measurable properties of objects and phenomena can be expressed. The universal and international character of science strives for the standards that define the units—necessary for the effective scientific communication that underpins the longstanding and continued success of science—to be unambiguous, precise, constant and accessible to everyone.

On May 20, 2019, World Metrology Day, the international metrology community adopted revolutionary changes to the SI wherein all of the base units of measure are defined by fixing the values of constants of nature. The SI is now firmly based on quantum methods of measurement. The talk, sponsored by the Department of Physics and presented by William D. Phillips, 1997 Nobel Laureate in Physics, will explain why we needed such reform and how we achieved it.

Art and Political Activism: A Conversation from Peru

May 18, 4:00 PM | Online

Visual artists Jorge Miyagui and Mauricio Delgado, and visual anthropologist Karen Bernedo Morales, will share their experiences in executing award-winning public art interventions that include Art for Memory (Asociación Cultural Museo Itinerante Arte por la Memoria) and the Muralist Brigade (La Brigada Muralista). They will help us understand the role that art has played in moments of political instability, mass protest, and COVID. Discussing recent events in Peru, they will also describe how a visual internationalism informs their political activism and creative work.

Sponsored by the Simpson Center for the Humanities and co-sponsored by Comparative History of Ideas, African Studies, Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Jackson School of International Studies, School of Art + Art History + Design, School of Drama, Geography, and Photo/Media.

Stephanie M.H. Camp Lecture | Tiya Miles (Harvard), “A Tattered Dress”: Materiality and Memory in the Lives of Enslaved Women
May 19, 3:30 – 5:00 PM | Online

This talk, sponsored by the Department of History and UW Libraries and presented by Tiya Miles, Professor of History and Radcliffe Alumnae Professor at Harvard University, will highlight artifacts of Black women’s material culture to consider ways that objects can help us recover experiential aspects of the gendered Black past. Together, we will unpack Ashley’s Sack, the gift of an enslaved mother to her daughter in antebellum Charleston, in an effort to gain special access to Black women’s cultures of care and strategies of memory keeping. The sack contained several objects, including a hand-me-down dress. By applying the trailblazing findings of the historian Stephanie M. H. Camp, we will explore the meanings of adornment, dignity, and survival.

E.U. Democracy Forum: Phillip Ayoub – Pride amid Prejudice: The Impact of the First Pride in Sarajevo
May 20, 12:00 – 1:15 PM | Online 

Democracy cannot be taken for granted — not in Europe, not anywhere. With this series of talks by experts on European politics and society we want to encourage discussion about the future of democracy in the European Union, its member states, and the neighborhood. Phillip Ayoub, Associate Professor, Occidental College will present the final lecture in the E.U. Democracy Forum.

This lecture series is organized by the Center for West European Studies and the Jean Monnet Center of Excellence with support from the Lee and Stuart Scheingold European Studies Fund, the EU Erasmus+ Program, the Ellison Center for Russian, East European and Central Asian Studies, and the Center for Global Studies.

Without Enhancements: Sexual Violence in the Everyday Lives of Asian American Women
May 21, 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM | Online

Join Erin Khuê Ninh, who writes about the model minority as racialization and subject formation, for this talk sponsored by the Southeast Asia Center, Department of American Ethnic Studies, and Japan Studies Program.

 

Asian American Women Rising: NOT the Model Minority
May 22, 10:30 AM – 12:30 PM | Online

Celebrate AAPI Heritage Month with host Velma Veloria, Former WA Rep and UW Honors Scholar-in Residence, Doan Diane Hoang Dy, Wing Luke Museum, Connie So, teaching professor of American Ethnic Studies and OCA-GS, Sutapa Basu, UW Women’s Center, Tianna Andresen, a student in American Ethnic Studies, and Aretha Basu, City of Seattle.

Looking for more?

Check out UWAA’s Stronger Together web page for more digital engagement opportunities.

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