Seminar registration is now open.
Register online or call (206) 621-2230 x16.

Each TAS seminar is comprised of two sessions. When you register, you are committing to attend both sessions.

All seminars meet Saturdays, 9am to 1pm, in the Simpson Center for the Humanities, on the University of Washington Seattle campus.

All seminars are led by University of Washington faculty and are eligible for clock hour or graduate-level university credit.

Sept 20 & Oct 4, 2008
Understanding Evolution
Becca Price (Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences, UW Bothell)
How do big changes in life forms evolve over time? How can our closest living relations be chimpanzees if we look so different? Aimed at teachers wishing to connect the study of natural history with scientific concepts, this partially lab-based seminar reveals how evolution works by studying casts of chimpanzee skulls, fossil humans—including Lucy, the most complete and best preserved of any erect-walking human ancestor—and modern humans. We will engage the burgeoning field of evo-devo (evolutionary developmental biology) as we explore fundamental mechanisms of evolution.

Related Event: Lucy's Legacy: The Hidden Treasures of Ethiopia, Pacific Science Center, October 12, 10 am


Oct 11 & 25, 2008
Young People, New Technologies
Crispin Thurlow (Communication)
Wired whizzes or techno-slaves? Today’s communication technologies—cell-phone texting, social networking, and online gaming—generate daily media reports which invariably position young people, parents, and teachers between a rock and a hard place: how to keep up without selling out. How can educators engage technology in ways useful and meaningful to young people? Through cultural, historical, and experiential approaches, this seminar examines popular (mis)perceptions of new communication technologies, their increasingly prevalent role in daily life, and effective ways of framing the technology/education relationship.

Nov 1 & 15, 2008
Sherman Alexie on Page and Screen
Tom Grayson Colonnese (American Indian Studies)
Widely acclaimed as an important American literary voice, Sherman Alexie is a contemporary storyteller whose work spans the genres of poetry, fiction, and film. A Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian who has moved from the Rez to the urban center, Alexie brings into focus the experiences of contemporary American Indians in the Northwest, and speaks with special power to young people. This seminar will look at how Alexie shapes his stories thematically and stylistically to engage readers, while exploring the cultural traditions, historical struggles and social issues that inform them.


Nov 8 & 22, 2008
Artists and Intellectuals as Icons
Jessica Burstein (English and Women Studies)
When Oscar Wilde quipped that "only shallow people do not judge by appearances," he captured something central to a media culture of modern celebrity. Why do we keep looking? In this seminar we'll look at artists and intellectuals as style-makers and theorists of style. Tracing a history of fashion and self-fashioning that begins with Wilde and ends with Annie Liebovitz, the seminar will provide a vocabulary and framework for reading images—specifically, photographic portraiture—and our fascination with particular figures. Trendsetting literati such as Walter Benjamin and Susan Sontag will guide our readings.

Related event: Annie Liebovitz, Seattle Arts & Lectures, November 19, 7:30 pm

Jan 17 & 31, 2009
Staging Shakespeare Then & Now
Odai Johnson (Drama)
Elizabethan theatre culture profoundly influenced Shakespeare's composition choices. This seminar will investigate the force of staging practices, theatre conventions, and architecture on the shape and meaning of his plays and will survey techniques employed by modern productions aspiring to recover Shakespeare's theatre. Drawing upon Othello, Romeo & Juliet, Tempest, and Henry V, we will consider how directors then and now have confronted the difficulties associated with staging conflicts of sex, race, and empire.


Jan 24 & Feb 7, 2009
A Human Rights for the 21st Century
Bruce Kochis (Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences, UW Bothell)
Since the United Nations' official declaration in 1948, basic human rights have become a movement, legal system, and moral call to action. But what are human rights? Is a global moral system possible in a culturally various world? This seminar investigates the philosophy, history, and evolution of rights in light of critical current issues from Darfur to Tibet, and asks how U.S. political and educational systems might answer the pressing question, "What is to be done?"

Related event: Seattle Human Rights Film Festival at Nortwest Film Forum, Screening date TBA


Feb 28 & Mar 14, 2009
Teaching Racial Literacy
Jonathan Warren (Jackson School of International Studies)
How can schools build a deeper understanding of race and more effective skills for responding to racism and its effects? In most U.S. educational and political institutions, race talk today centers on colorblindness. In this seminar, we will analyze this discourse, including its limits for characterizing the work of power and race. In the process, we'll investigate the primary assumptions, identities, and social practices impeding racial literacy and introduce a more productive, alternative framework—race cognizance—to enhance racial literacy in multiple contexts.


Apr 18 & May 2, 2009
Graphic Novels: Reading the New Genre
Caroline Simpson (English)
The graphic novel's emergence as a popular reading genre challenges current concepts of reading and writing. Incorporating this genre into our classrooms may encourage student reading, but we must also cultivate critical approaches that simultaneously recognize graphic novels' similarities to other narrative forms and their significant differences and departures from those traditions. Through the graphic novel, this seminar asks what it means to read or be literate and explores the implications of reading and writing as avenues to literacy in other forms.


Apr 25 & May 9, 2009
Youth in Global Times
Craig Jeffrey (International Studies and Geography)
Global transformations in economic prospects and cultural possibilities have catapulted young people to the center of political life internationally. Tellingly, the World Bank focused its 2007 World Development Report on youth transitions to adulthood. But how can we connect the struggles of youth elsewhere with our own students' concerns? Looking at challenges like privatized education, destabilized employment, and intensified policing here and elsewhere, this seminar offers comparative contexts for reflecting on and engaging with youth experiences around the world.


May 16 & 30, 2009
Ethics and Climate Change
Stephen Gardiner (Philosophy)
Climate change ranks among the most important international problems today. Growing gaps in wealth and influence and the rise of consumer lifestyles globally only compound the challenges to moral understanding and action. This seminar examines the ethical dilemmas and philosophical questions that this environmental crisis poses—from the uncertainties of scientific knowledge and policy-making to the requirements of international and intergenerational justice and the moral responsibilities of individuals—so that we might better meet the future.


Complete course descriptions