• Chinese Characters across Asia: Continuity and transformation in Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese

    Chinese, like the other earliest inventions of writing, emerged in complex societies, where people needed to use symbols for writing. The script started as pictures, but quickly evolved to incorporate other mechanisms capable of indicating abstract concepts and grammatical structures. When Classical (or ancient) Chinese script spread, literate people in other cultures not only mastered it, but they then used it to represent their own distinct spoken languages in written form. Zev Handel, professor and department chair of Asian languages and literature at the UW, is quoted.
    03/13/2024 | Northwest Asian Weekly
  • Analysis: What is the Japanese ‘wabi-sabi’ aesthetic actually about? ‘Miserable tea’ and loneliness, for starters

    "Wabi-sabi is typically described as a traditional Japanese aesthetic: the beauty of something perfectly imperfect, in the sense of 'flawed' or 'unfinished.' Actually, however, wabi and sabi are similar but distinct concepts, yoked together far more often outside Japan than in it," writes Paul Atkins, professor of Asian languages and literature at the UW.
    03/12/2024 | The Conversation
  • OpenAI GPT sorts resume names with racial bias, test shows

    Recruiters are eager to use generative AI, but a Bloomberg experiment found bias against job candidates based on their names alone. Emily Bender, professor of linguistics at the UW, is quoted.
    03/08/2024 | Bloomberg
  • Lifting Marginalized Voices — from Ancient Rome

    "Interesting, frustrating, and necessary,” is how Sarah Levin-Richardson, professor of Classics, describes her research into the lives of enslaved individuals in the ancient world. 

    March 2024 Perspectives
  • Frank Herbert’s ‘Dune’ is a climate and environment story — are you paying attention?

    Frank Herbert designed his beloved story, “Dune,” as a critique of our own world and a cautionary tale for the future. Herbert's time as a UW student is mentioned, and Jesse Oak Taylor, associate professor of English at the UW, is quoted.
    The Seattle Times
  • Opinion: The growth of Southeast Asian and Korean programs at the UW

    "Asian communities in Washington are changing, and our state’s century-old Asian languages department must change as well. Comparison of the U.S. 2020 Census results with the previous 2010 Census demonstrates that Asian demographics in our state and region are undergoing dramatic changes," writes Zev Handel, professor and department chair of Asian languages and literature at the UW.
    Northwest Asian Weekly
  • Why DK Metcalf's use of ASL means more than just talking smack

    Seahawks receiver DK Metcalf has been learning American Sign Language and has taken some of this newfound knowledge to the field, signing his celebrations after scoring. What began as a hobby has become a means of self-expression, and as Metcalf has gained attention for signing during games, he has realized it has a great significance to those who use ASL to communicate and the deaf community. The UW's Dan Mathis, assistant teaching professor of linguistics, and Kristi Winter, associate teaching professor of linguistics, are quoted.
    ESPN
  • Colleen McElroy, poet and UW’s first full-time Black female faculty member, dies

    Colleen J. McElroy, a nationally known poet and the first Black woman to serve as a full-time faculty member at the UW, died of natural causes Dec. 12. She was 88. Frances McCue, a teaching professor of English at the UW, is quoted.
    The Seattle Times
  • Building Connections Through Opera

    Lokela Alexander Minami (BA, 2010; MA, 2012) turned a lifelong passion for opera into a career that introduces others to the art form.

    January 2024 Perspectives
  • New faculty books: Story and comic collection, Washington state fossils, colonial roots of intersex medicine

    Three new faculty books from the University of Washington cover wide-ranging topics: life in the Rio Grande Valley, fossils of Washington state and the colonial roots of contemporary intersex medicine. UW News talked with the authors to learn more. Collection highlights life in Rio Grande Valley “Puro Pinche True Fictions” is a collection of short...
    UW News
  • Speaking English with an accent is means for celebration, not exclusion

    In collaboration with the UW Polish Studies Endowment Committee, award-winning poet and UW assistant professor Piotr Florczyk dedicated an event to the reading and discussion of poetry in Polish and English. Contributing writer Avery Cook dives into the importance of bilingual writing and writers.

    The Daily
  • How Microsoft’s hiring of OpenAI’s Altman could reshape AI development

    Following a dramatic departure of two key leaders from ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, Microsoft, a major investor in the startup, ended up a winner on Monday. The Redmond-based tech giant said Monday it was hiring former OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and co-founder and former OpenAI President Greg Brockman, who left after Altman’s ouster Friday, to lead an in-house AI innovation lab. Emily M. Bender, professor of linguistics at the UW, is quoted.
    The Seattle Times
  • Opinion: ‘Translating’ a Times article to reach new audiences

    "College freshmen read a New York Times Magazine piece about issues in education, then communicate what they learned by experimenting with audience and format," writes Megan Butler, a doctoral student of English at the UW.
    The New York Times
  • The Henry celebrates the ‘Godmother of Iranian cinema’

    Building upon the curriculum of the new course, “Cinema and Feminism in the Middle East”, the department of Middle Eastern languages and cultures and the Henry art gallery collaborated on film screenings from a renowned Iranian director. The films “[serve] as a window into a culture rich with history that is worth learning about”, according to writers Shireen Aryana and Madhavi Karthik.  

    Read More
  • Ted Chiang and Emily Bender worry about the dark side of AI

    What do you get when you put two of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people on artificial intelligence together in the same lecture hall? If the two influencers happen to be science-fiction writer Ted Chiang and Emily M. Bender, professor of linguistics at the UW, you get a lot of skepticism about the future of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT.
    GeekWire