UW Public Lectures

Filter:

Group photo looking up at the members of the band

Quetzal

January 20, 2025 6:30 pm

Town Hall Seattle, Livestream (Hybrid)

Pay What You WillAvailableRecordedOpen

Join us for an evening of community inspired music with the relentlessly innovative, bi-lingual, Chicano Grammy award-winning rock band, Quetzal. Together we will celebrate the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.with a band that narrates the social, cultural and political stories of humanity.

Registration opens on December 12, 2024.

Lecture Details

An Evening with Martha Gonzalez

January 22, 2025 6:30 pm

Town Hall Seattle, Livestream (Hybrid)

Pay What You WillAvailableRecordedOpen CART Captioning

Help us welcome back UW alumna, Chicana artivista, musician, feminist music theorist and Associate Professor in the Intercollegiate Department of Chicana/o Latina/o Studies at Scripps/Claremont College, Dr. Martha Gonzalez. Together we will take a lyrical journey filled with her creative ideas and thoughts on art as activism.

Registration opens on December 12, 2024.

Lecture Details

Tateuchi East Asia Library Digital Scholarship Series

January 22, 2025 4:30 pm

Gowen Hall

FreeAvailableOpen

The presentation highlights a number of interrelated projects in the domain of Text Analysis for the purpose of Digital Philology.

River of the Gods: The Nile and Ancient Egypt

January 22, 2025 7:30 pm

Kane Hall (Room 130)

FreeAvailableOpen

Part of the History Lecture Series: River Histories. Flowing more than 4,000 miles from the highland lakes of East Africa to the Mediterranean, the Nile is Africa’s longest river. Ancient Egyptians honored the river as a god, building temples along its banks and revering the animals nourished by its waters. This lecture examines how the Nile’s geography and ecology underpinned the development of Ancient Egypt; it will also show how the river’s association with divinity has endured beyond antiquity.

Sarah Kreps – “Tech Titans: Navigating the Policy Landscape from Nuclear Weapons to Artificial Intelligence”

January 23, 2025 6:00 pm

Henry Lower Level Galleries

FreeAvailableOpen

Surrounded by Lucy Kim’s exhibition, Mutant Optics, join Kim and Lucy Cotter, writer, curator, researcher, and author, as they discuss art practice as a form of research.

Gangstagrass

January 24, 2025 6:30 pm

Town Hall Seattle, Livestream (Hybrid)

Pay What You WillAvailableRecordedOpen CART Captioning

Gangstagrass, the band known for providing the music America needs, will demolish every preconception you have about country music and hip-hop music. Let’s party together with this irresistible blend of America's rural and urban music traditions!

Registration opens on December 12, 2024.

Lecture Details

University of Washington International Security Colloquium (UWISC): “Tech Titans: Navigating the Policy Landscape from Nuclear Weapons to Artificial Intelligence”

January 24, 2025 1:30 pm

Gowen Hall 1A

FreeSold outOpen

Sarah Kreps - "Tech Titans: Navigating the Policy Landscape from Nuclear Weapons to Artificial Intelligence"

Rana Jaleel: Making Authoritarian Sex

January 27, 2025 4:00 pm

Communications Building 120

FreeAvailableOpen

Rana M. Jaleel reviews Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization’s failure to require a rape or incest exception in states that would if not ban or restrict access to abortions.

Together in Translation: Rewriting Virginity in Feminist Solidarity

January 27, 2025 7:00 pm

HUB 250

FreeAvailableOpen

The talk will explore the political role of translation in facilitating transnational feminist transformations and connectivities.

Ganges: The Many Lives of an Indian River

January 29, 2025 7:30 pm

Kane Hall (Room 130)

FreeAvailableOpen

Part of the History Lecture Series: River Histories. Over the centuries, the Ganges and its tributaries have also been a major natural resource for the highly developed states and societies that emerged in their basins, in recent times supporting a significant proportion of India’s huge population. A source of sustenance—and irrigation, transportation, and power—the Ganges story is about the fascinating and complex dynamics between its waters and religion, culture, economy, politics, and environment.

Collaborative Book Celebration: The Yoga of Power

January 30, 2025 3:30 pm

Communications Building 202

FreeAvailableOpen

In their book, The Yoga of Power, Sunila S. Kalé and Christian Lee Novetzke show that yoga has long expressed political thought and practice.

Book cover showing a large group people sitting in square

Book Talk: ‘Revolutionary Taiwan: Making Nationhood in a Changing World Order’, with Catherine Chou and Mark Harrison

January 30, 2025 3:30 pm

Thomson Hall 317

FreeAvailableOpen

Revolutionary Taiwan helps to show how democratization in Taiwan constituted a revolution, changing the form of government and how Taiwanese people see their island as a nation.

Headshots of M Aziz, Robyn Spencer-Antoine, and Dan Berger

Approaches to Black Power Histories

January 31, 2025 3:30 pm

Communications Building 202

FreeAvailableOpen

M Aziz, Robyn Spencer-Antoine, and Dan Berger discuss Black Power Histories and Methodological approaches to African American History.

Prompt Engineering & Interacting with AI

February 3, 2025 11:30 am

Communications Building 202

FreeAvailableOpen

Geoffrey Turnovsky will highlight two technologies that came from early modern print: characters in textual representations of the human in fiction and characters in letterforms.

Hopkins Faculty Award Lecture in Chemistry: Prof. Daniel Gamelin

February 4, 2025 4:00 pm

TBD

FreeAvailableOpen

Prof. Gamelin was selected for this award for his outstanding contributions to our research, education, and service missions.

A Shattered Country: Burma/Myanmar Four Years After the 2021 Military Coup d’Etat

February 4, 2025 3:30 pm

Thomson Hall 317

FreeAvailableOpen

Join Associate Professor Mary Callahan as she explores the evolving crisis in Myanmar four years after the 2021 military coup.

Bad Jews: Bad for the Jews? Sex, Shame and Moral Policing in Argentine Jewish History with Mir Yarfitz

February 5, 2025 7:00 pm

Thomson Hall 101

FreeAvailableOpen

How did 20th-century Argentine Jewish organizations view sexual morality? How did these views impact the broader community? Hear guest lecturer Mir Yarfitz discuss this and more.

The Social Shift: Content Creators, New Voices, and the Future of News

February 5, 2025 5:30 pm

Kane Hall (Room 225) , Livestream (Hybrid)

FreeAvailableOpen

Explore how content creators' work brings new voices and perspectives to journalism, their evolving relationships with traditional media, and what drives their passion.

Rio Grande: Boundaries and Borderlands

February 5, 2025 7:30 pm

Kane Hall (Room 130)

FreeAvailableOpen

Part of the History Lecture Series: River Histories. The power of the Rio Grande derived from its capacity to inspire reflection on the proper boundaries between peoples, nations, and races—boundaries negotiated in words but also through violence. Mexicans, Europeans, and Americans all found in the Rio a place to envision the outline of a new global order.

The Role of Art and Journalism in Society

February 6, 2025 6:30 pm

Town Hall Seattle, Livestream (Hybrid)

Pay What You WillAvailableRecordedOpen CART Captioning

Join multimedia investigative journalist and artist, Wesaam Al-Badry for a conversation exploring how artists maintain a profound grasp on truth. Mr. Al-Badry will challenge us to answer questions about the role artists play in reimagining journalism as a medium of genuine critical reflection and societal truth, among others.

Registration opens on December 12, 2024.

Lecture Details

Linguistics Department Colloquium: Michael McAuliffe from Amazon

February 7, 2025 3:30 pm

Hitchcock Hall 320

FreeAvailableOpen

Department of Linguistics' 2025 Colloquium series with Michael McAuliffe from Amazon.

Cover of book Sharing Poetry's Pleasures with classical Indian painting of a poet reading to many people

Vali Dakhani and Early Rekhtah Networks: Sharing Poetry’s Pleasures

February 7, 2025 11:30 am

Communications Building 202

FreeAvailableOpen

Purnima Dhavan and Heidi Pauwels reexamine the emergence of Rekhtah (now called Urdu) as a literary and poetic language in the eighteenth century.

Stice Feminist Lecture of Social Justice: “Fighting Fascism with Intersex Justice,” presented by Sean Saifa Wall

February 10, 2025 3:00 pm

Kane Hall (Room 225)

FreeAvailableOpen

Join Dr. Sean Saifa Wall in a conversation that asks questions, speaks truths, and offers a way forward through these recent years.

Confucianism, Virtue Ethics and the Science of Perception

February 12, 2025 4:00 pm

Communications Building 202

FreeAvailableOpen

In this more technical colloquium, Edward Slingerland will review some of the academic and scientific controversies the project required him to navigate.

The Columbia: Where the Internet Live

February 12, 2025 7:30 pm

Kane Hall (Room 130)

FreeAvailableOpen

Part of the History Lecture Series: River Histories. An artery of indigenous commerce, a nexus of the fur trade, a power source for war work, and a water source for industrial-scale agriculture, the mighty Columbia is now home to one of the world’s most notable concentrations of data centers. These enormous facilities, owned and operated by the world’s largest technology companies, are the physical backbone that make cloud computing, social networking, and AI possible.

Global History and the Emergence of the Peasant in Colonial Panjab

February 13, 2025 3:30 pm

Thomson Hall 317

FreeAvailableOpen

Navyug Gill explores the peasant and laborer as noval political subjects forged in the meeting between colonialism and struggles over culture and capital within Panjabi society.

Translating Freud: Psychoanalysis in the Popular Jewish Press with Naomi Seidman

February 19, 2025 4:30 pm

Communications Building 120

FreeAvailableOpen

Guest lecturer Naomi Seidman will take us inside “the Freud craze” to explore the impact Freud’s work had on Eastern European Jews.

Poster for the film showing hundreds of protesters in Chile

FILM SCREENING |”My Imaginary Country”

February 20, 2025 5:30 pm

Allen Library Auditorium

FreeAvailableOpen

Join Livia Lima and Andrés Barría for a screening of Patricio Guzmán's 2019 documentary, "My Imaginary Country (Mi país imaginario)."

Disparities in Disconnections: Utility Access in the Age of Climate Change

February 21, 2025 12:00 pm

Gowen Hall 1A, The Olson Room

FreeAvailableOpen

Lecture from David Konisky, Indiana University Bloomington, about utility access in the age of climate change

Diana Behler Memorial Lecture: DorotFrom the Grimms’ Wonder Tales to AI: Wells, Hedges, Automata, Screens. How to connect the dots?

February 21, 2025 2:30 pm

Denny 359

FreeAvailableOpen

Prof. Dorothee Ostmeier, University of Oregon, will deliver a lecture in honor of beloved UW Professor Diana Behler.

Self-Destructive Policy Seeking and Self-Benefiting Shirking, with Ko Maeda, University of North Texas

February 21, 2025 3:30 pm

Thomson Hall

FreeAvailableOpen

This study empirically shows that Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party has been gaining an electoral advantage by not achieving its stated goal of revising the constitution

An Evening with Krzysztof Siwczyk

February 24, 2025 6:00 pm

TBD

FreeAvailableOpen

Join us for a reading and a conversation with an award-winning Polish poet Krzysztof Siwczyk and his translator Prof. Piotr Florczyk, moderated by Prof. Agnieszka Jeżyk.

Weston and Sheila Borden Endowed Lecture in Theoretical Chemistry: Prof. Abraham Nitzan

February 26, 2025 4:00 pm

TBD

FreeAvailableOpen

This lecture is supported by the Weston and Sheila Borden Endowed Fund in Chemistry, established by the Bordens in 2015.

Severyns Ravenholt Seminar in Comparative Politics: Pablo Beramendi, Duke University

February 28, 2025 1:30 pm

Gowen Hall 1A, The Olson Room

FreeAvailableOpen

Severyns Ravenholt Seminar in Comparative Politics with Pablo Beramendi, Duke University

2025 John B. and Mary K. McDiarmid Lecture

February 28, 2025 3:30 pm

TBD

FreeAvailableOpen

2025 John B. and Mary K. McDiarmid Lecture with Craig Williams, University of Illinois.

Linguistics Department Colloquium: Kathleen Hall from UBC

February 28, 2025 3:29 pm

Hitchcock Hall 320

FreeAvailableOpen

Winter 2025 Linguistics Colloquium Series with Kathleen Hall, University of British Columbia

Transnational Feminist Non-aligned Movement for Genuine Security and a Culture of Life

March 4, 2025 6:30 pm

Town Hall Seattle, Livestream (Hybrid)

Pay What You WillAvailableRecordedOpen CART Captioning

Join us for a conversation with San Francisco State University (emerita) activist and educator, Margo Okazawa- Rey for a conversation that will explore how generations of feminist and other radical and visionary movements, activists, artists, musicians, journalists, academics are facing “monsters” - the state and civil society leaders of the globalized culture of killing are threatening the very survival of the planet.

Registration opens on December 12, 2024.

Lecture Details

The Idea of Equality in America

March 6, 2025 12:00 pm

Gowen Hall 1A, Olsen Hall

FreeAvailableOpen

UW Colloquium in Political Theory: Dr. Emma Rodman, "The Idea of Equality in America"

Guest Pianist Lecture Recital: Catherine Kautsky

April 1, 2025 5:00 pm

Brechemin Auditorium

FreeAvailableOpen

Pianist Catherine Kautsky, chair of the keyboard department at Lawrence University, Appleton, WI, presents a lecture-recital: “Debussy’s Paris: Poets, Politics and the Piano.”

2025 Washin Kai Lecture

April 8, 2025 5:30 pm

Kane Hall (Room 210)

FreeAvailableOpen

Speaker: Prof. Davinder Bhowmik, Department of Asian Languages & Literature, University of Washington. More information to come.

WISIR Speaker Series presents Emily Zackin, Johns Hopkins University

April 15, 2025 12:30 pm

Smith Hall 40A

FreeAvailableOpen

Public lecture from Emily Zackin, Johns Hopkins University.

Severyns Ravenholt Seminar in Comparative Politics: Iza Ding, Northwestern University

April 18, 2025 1:30 pm

Gowen Hall 1A

FreeAvailableOpen

Severyns Ravenholt Seminar in Comparative Politics: Iza Ding, Northwestern University

Center for Environmental Politics: Emily M. Broad Leib, Harvard Law School, “Harnessing Law and Policy to Reduce Food Waste”

April 18, 2025 12:00 pm

Gowen Hall 1A

FreeAvailableOpen

Center for Environmental Politics presents a lecture on food waste laws and reduction.

The AfroFuture Now

May 1, 2025 6:30 pm

Town Hall Seattle

Pay What You WillAvailableComing Soon CART Captioning

Join award-winning graphic novelist and all-around champion of Black culture, John Jennings for a conversation about the current history of Black speculation.

Registration opens on March 12, 2025.

Lecture Details

An Evening with Christine Sun Kim

May 6, 2025 6:30 pm

Town Hall Seattle

Pay What You WillAvailableComing Soon

Berlin-based artist Christine Sun Kim discusses her wide-ranging practice around sound and language. Reflecting on her experiences as a member of the Deaf community, Kim will delve into her work within various systems of visual communication, including American Sign Language (ASL), musical notation, infographics, and television captioning. Kim is currently showing a new mural, Ghost(ed) Notes, on the east facade of the Henry Art Gallery. We encourage you to visit the mural prior to the talk!

Registration opens on March 12, 2025.

Lecture Details

A Triadic Counterinsurgency Framework to Unpack Government – Non State Armed Actor – Constituency Relations

May 9, 2025 2:00 pm

Gowen Hall 1A

FreeAvailableOpen

UW International Security Colloquium (UWISC): “A Triadic Counterinsurgency Framework to Unpack Government – Non State Armed Actor – Constituency Relations” with Efe Tokdemir.

Katz Distinguished Lecture in the Humanities: Jahan Ramazani

May 13, 2025 6:30 pm

Kane Hall (Room 120)

FreeAvailableOpen

Jahan Ramazani is University Professor and Edgar F. Shannon Professor of English at the University of Virginia.

Center for Environmental Politics: Maura Allaire, University of California-Irvine, “Water Governance Disparities and Utility Performance: Evidence from California”

May 16, 2025 12:00 pm

The Olson Room, Gowen Hall 1A

FreeAvailableOpen

University of California-Irvine's Maura Allaire discusses water governance disparities and utility performance in relation to what's been observed in California.

Photo of Andrew Markus and wife in black and white

2025 Andrew L. Markus Memorial Lecture

May 19, 2025 5:00 pm

Kane Hall (Room 225)

FreeAvailableOpen

This lectureship was established in memory of Andrew L. Markus, Associate Professor of Japanese Literature at the University of Washington from 1986-1995.

Judge Joel Ngugi

May 21, 2025 6:30 pm

Town Hall Seattle, Livestream (Hybrid)

Pay What You WillAvailableRecordedComing Soon CART Captioning

As a member of the Kenyan judiciary Judge Ngugi will talk about some of the most pressing political questions of our time in both his country and the USA, including how we ensure an equitable, independent and wise judiciary; as well as how we can imagine justice beyond narrow legal frameworks.

Registration opens on March 12, 2025.

Lecture Details

Severyns Ravenholt Seminar in Comparative Politics: Nathan Lane, University of Oxford

May 23, 2025 1:30 pm

Gowen Hall 1A

FreeAvailableOpen

Nathan Lane; University of Oxford with graduate Student Discussant: Brian Leung, UW.

Sorry, no results! Please try another option.

Past Lectures

Quetzal

An Evening with Martha Gonzalez

Tateuchi East Asia Library Digital Scholarship Series

River of the Gods: The Nile and Ancient Egypt

Sarah Kreps – “Tech Titans: Navigating the Policy Landscape from Nuclear Weapons to Artificial Intelligence”

Gangstagrass

University of Washington International Security Colloquium (UWISC): “Tech Titans: Navigating the Policy Landscape from Nuclear Weapons to Artificial Intelligence”

Rana Jaleel: Making Authoritarian Sex

Together in Translation: Rewriting Virginity in Feminist Solidarity

Ganges: The Many Lives of an Indian River

Collaborative Book Celebration: The Yoga of Power

Book Talk: ‘Revolutionary Taiwan: Making Nationhood in a Changing World Order’, with Catherine Chou and Mark Harrison

Approaches to Black Power Histories

Prompt Engineering & Interacting with AI

Hopkins Faculty Award Lecture in Chemistry: Prof. Daniel Gamelin

A Shattered Country: Burma/Myanmar Four Years After the 2021 Military Coup d’Etat

Bad Jews: Bad for the Jews? Sex, Shame and Moral Policing in Argentine Jewish History with Mir Yarfitz

The Social Shift: Content Creators, New Voices, and the Future of News

Rio Grande: Boundaries and Borderlands

The Role of Art and Journalism in Society

Linguistics Department Colloquium: Michael McAuliffe from Amazon

Vali Dakhani and Early Rekhtah Networks: Sharing Poetry’s Pleasures

Stice Feminist Lecture of Social Justice: “Fighting Fascism with Intersex Justice,” presented by Sean Saifa Wall

Confucianism, Virtue Ethics and the Science of Perception

The Columbia: Where the Internet Live

Global History and the Emergence of the Peasant in Colonial Panjab

Translating Freud: Psychoanalysis in the Popular Jewish Press with Naomi Seidman

FILM SCREENING |”My Imaginary Country”

Disparities in Disconnections: Utility Access in the Age of Climate Change

Diana Behler Memorial Lecture: DorotFrom the Grimms’ Wonder Tales to AI: Wells, Hedges, Automata, Screens. How to connect the dots?

Self-Destructive Policy Seeking and Self-Benefiting Shirking, with Ko Maeda, University of North Texas

An Evening with Krzysztof Siwczyk

A Scheme to Forget, a Demand to Remember: The Century-Long Battle Over the Memory of the Tulsa Race Massacre

Weston and Sheila Borden Endowed Lecture in Theoretical Chemistry: Prof. Abraham Nitzan

Severyns Ravenholt Seminar in Comparative Politics: Pablo Beramendi, Duke University

2025 John B. and Mary K. McDiarmid Lecture

Linguistics Department Colloquium: Kathleen Hall from UBC

Transnational Feminist Non-aligned Movement for Genuine Security and a Culture of Life

The Idea of Equality in America

Guest Pianist Lecture Recital: Catherine Kautsky

2025 Washin Kai Lecture

WISIR Speaker Series presents Emily Zackin, Johns Hopkins University

Severyns Ravenholt Seminar in Comparative Politics: Iza Ding, Northwestern University

Center for Environmental Politics: Emily M. Broad Leib, Harvard Law School, “Harnessing Law and Policy to Reduce Food Waste”

The AfroFuture Now

An Evening with Christine Sun Kim

A Triadic Counterinsurgency Framework to Unpack Government – Non State Armed Actor – Constituency Relations

Katz Distinguished Lecture in the Humanities: Jahan Ramazani

Center for Environmental Politics: Maura Allaire, University of California-Irvine, “Water Governance Disparities and Utility Performance: Evidence from California”

2025 Andrew L. Markus Memorial Lecture

Judge Joel Ngugi

Severyns Ravenholt Seminar in Comparative Politics: Nathan Lane, University of Oxford