IAS News

IAS faculty member Linda Watts teaches the Nat Turner slave rebellion as a case study in history and a way for Discovery Core students to learn through the different stories told about the event. Nat Turner led a slave rebellion in 1831 in Southampton County, Virginia where many people were killed, including Turner who was hanged. “We have almost nothing that comes directly from Nat Turner. We see him refracted through other people’s accounts,” said Watts, who challenges her challenges her students to become historical detectives. They not only investigate the historic situation, they also analyze its implications in artists’ imaginations.

Students in IAS faculty member Min Tang’s Critical Media Literacy course developed educational workshops to share with the Northshore School District’s teachers and students. “I encourage my students to think about how power structures in a society shape the media systems and processes,” Tang said. “I want them to understand the kind of power media has in shaping our social discourses, perceptions and opinions.”

IAS faculty member Rob Turner helped run an hour-long discussion session at the 2021 Annual Meeting of the Association of American Colleges & Universities in January.  The session was titled Fostering Sustainability Out of a Pandemic: Pathways for Higher Education to Create a More Resilient Institution and Society. In November, he received ...

IAS faculty member Jennifer Atkinson’s seminar on climate grief and eco-anxiety was featured in a New York Times story on efforts to support people experiencing distress over the global climate crisis. The article, Got Climate Anxiety? These People Are Doing Something About It, noted that the number of Americans who are “very worried” about climate change has more than doubled over the past five years to its current rate of ...

IAS faculty member Karam Dana was a panelist on "Timely Lessons from 2020: The Course." The four panelists from all three UW campuses discussed their lectures in teaching the more than 900 students registered for the course in a live broadcast in which the discussion was around the significance of the course in reflecting on the year 2020. A recording of the segment ...