New faculty books from the University of Washington include those from the Information School, bioengineering, mathematics, the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, and Earth and space sciences.
Feminist theory of creep through technological analysis
Nassim Parvin, professor in the Information School, is the co-author and co-editor of “Technocreep and the Politics of Things Not Seen,” published by Duke University Press.
New and emerging technologies, especially ones that infiltrate intimate spaces, relations, homes, and bodies, are often referred to as creepy in media and political discourses. In “Technocreep and the Politics of Things Not Seen,” Neda Atanasoski and Nassim Parvin introduce a feminist theory of “creep” that they substantiate through critical engagement with smart homes, smart dust, smart desires and smart forests toward dreams of feminist futures.
Contributing authors further illuminate what is otherwise obscured, assumed, or dismissed in characterizations of technology as creepy or creeping. Considering diverse technologies from border surveillance and China’s credit system to sexcams and home assistants, the volume’s essays and artworks demonstrate that the potential and pitfalls of artificial intelligence and digital and robotic technologies cannot be assessed through binaries of seeing/being seen, privacy/surveillance or harmful/useful.
Together, their multifaceted and multimodal approach transcends such binaries. This volume develops creep as a feminist analytic and creative mode on par with technology’s complex entanglement with intimate, local, and global politics.
For more information, contact Parvin at nassimi@uw.edu.
Foundations of microfluidics through broad understandings of the world
In “How the World Flows: Microfluidics from Raindrops to COVID Tests,” Albert Folch, professor of bioengineering at the UW, explores microfluidics, the field of science that studies fluids constrained to spaces that are smaller than one millimeter wide. Through engaging and digestible stories, Folch takes a lens to this tiny science and demonstrates how big a role microfluidics plays in life as we know it.
“It was my wife who insisted I write another book on microfluidics,” Folch said. “She insisted that this one be for the general public and cover not just the academic microfluidic chips but also the mesmerizing microfluidics one finds in nature and in a variety of contraptions and devices you’d never think to call ‘microfluidic.’”
The goal of “How the World Flows” was not for students to learn microfluidic engineering, but instead, to create a broader understanding of the foundations of the field. As the title suggests, this process spans from natural raindrops to COVID tests, affecting humanity in marvelous ways.
“Just like microelectronic circuits are too small for you to see and are hidden under the screen of your smartphone, most microfluidic phenomena happen in tiny spaces,” Folch said. “All these microfluidic systems, despite their microscopic size, have had a colossal impact on our planet and our lives. In some capacity or another, they all make the world flow.”
For more information, contact Folch at afolch@uw.edu.
Unified account of a fundamental mathematical object
Gerald B. Folland, professor emeritus of mathematics at the UW, recently published “The Heisenberg Group: A Survey.”
This is a survey of the mathematics developed over the last 60 years concerning the Heisenberg group, a mathematical object that has connections with many different areas of mathematics.
Folland intends the audience to be graduate students and professionals in mathematics, providing “the first unified account of the diverse analytic and geometric mathematical developments associated with the Heisenberg group.”
For more information, contact Folland at folland@uw.edu.
Jewish family saga unveiled
Martin Tompa, professor emeritus of computer science and engineering at the UW, published “Odds of Survival” in February. This braided historical novel is based on family history concealed from Tompa by his parents throughout his childhood.
The book starts in the 1930s, as two Jewish families live happy and successful lives in cosmopolitan Vienna. On March 12, 1938, without firing a shot, the Nazis annex Austria into the German Reich, and Adolf Hitler marches into Vienna with his army. This sudden, terrifying event tears each of these close-knit families apart and scatters their members across the globe as they snatch at any possibility of safe haven.
Liesl, who is 18 years old, flees alone to London and a servant’s life. Liesl’s future soulmate, Peter, is deported from Vienna and thrown into a Hungarian jail. Liesl’s parents, Otti and Ernst, flee on the Trans-Siberian Railway to a foreign life in Shanghai. Two years later, they sail to Manila in the Philippines, arriving just as Japan’s bombardment and occupation begin.
By the end of 1945, all four of them and several more family members converge on New York City as though drawn together by magnetic forces.
“It is a tale of survival against terrible odds and the rebuilding of family at journey’s end,” Tompa said. “Writing this family saga has been my dream for 25 years.”
For more information, contact Tompa at tompa@cs.washington.edu.
Solutions to help our land
In “REGEN: A New Future For Farming, Food, and Health,” David R. Montgomery, professor of Earth and space sciences at the UW, lays out practical and productive solutions to recover the health of our land through soil-building regenerative agriculture. Drawing on the work of farmers, historians and researchers, he articulates the power of rebuilding soil health by minimizing or avoiding physical and chemical disturbance of the soil, such as through combining cover cropping, no- or low-tillage and crop diversity.
The combination allows farmers — and gardeners — to greatly reduce or eliminate synthetic fertilizer and pesticide use and can help address a number of today’s most pressing problems.
The book takes apart common myths around conventional farming and unearths much-needed soil rehabilitation as the key to our agricultural future.
“REGEN shows how reforming the way we see and treat the land can address critically underappreciated, yet eminently solvable problems to restore the health of our land and secure civilization’s agricultural foundation — and a healthy future for society and ourselves,” Montgomery said.
For more information, contact Montgomery at bigdirt@uw.edu.