Faculty
Byron Au Yong, MFA, Director, MFA in Arts Leadership and Interdisciplinary Arts-Arts Leadership, Associate Professor, Performing Arts and Arts Leadership, received Best Opera 2023 from Nashville Scene for his work Stuck Elevator, produced by Nashville Opera.
Sonia Barrios Tinoco, PhD, Associate Professor and Chair, Modern Languages, was elected to serve a second term of 3 years in the Executive Board of the Pacific Ancient & Modern Languages Association (PAMLA). She also presented “De adultos a niños: cambios en los patrones de migración” in the Association’s conference in Portland, OR, on October 27. She also published the article “Preguntas no aptas para menores, sujetos truncados por desplazamiento forzoso” in Letras Hispanas, Special Volume 19.2, 2023.
Marina Cárcamo-García, PhD, Assistant Professor, Modern Languages and Cultures, participated in the 51st Conference on New Ways of Analyzing Variation at Queens College, NY, with the presentation “Spanish Lexical Borrowings in Portuguese among the Venezuelan Diaspora in Brazil: A Variationist Perspective”, on October 14.
Serena Chopra, PhD, Assistant Professor, English/Creative Writing, published a poem with the Academy of American Poets, Garden Variety Lesbians.
Leann Conley-Holcom, DMA, Assistant Professor, Director of Choral and Vocal Activities and Music Program Director, Performing Arts and Arts Leadership, performed the inaugural season of the new Seattle-based professional choir Evergreen Ensemble. The program was centered on the relationship between grief and gratitude, and how those two universal experiences so often coexist. Featuring Marcel Tyberg’s Mass in G Major, as well as works by Stephen Paulus, John Ness Beck, Jocelyn Hagen, Pablo Casals, and Matthew Emery.
Jackson Cooper, MFAL '22, Adjunct Faculty, Arts Leadership, was named by Musical America as One of the Top 30 Arts Professionals of 2023. MA asked the performing arts industry to nominate people “who persistently and relentlessly strive to keep the performing arts vital. They are thoughtful, creative, and often innovative; they are the hard workers.” Cooper will be profiled in the December Special Issue of Musical America.
Lydia R. Cooper, PhD, Director, University Core and Professor, English, co-authored a research paper on how gaming can be used as trauma therapy. That research paper was used by a group of students at a game design program to design a game following our therapeutic model. Their game just won an international award.
Daniel Avi Gilbert Coren, PhD, Assistant Professor, Philosophy, published "Testing for Intrinsic Value" in a 2023 issue of Inquiry (66: 773-798). He also gave an invited talk at the 2023 Northwest Ancient Philosophy Workshop entitled "An Aristotelian Semicompatibilism."
Julie Homchick Crowe, PhD, Assistant Professor, Communication and Media, co-authored a new article, “Supplements as symbols: Public arguments against natural health product regulation in Canada.”
Angelique M. Davis, JD, Professor, Political Science, Program Director, African and African American Studies, and Appointments in Pre-Law Program, Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies, presented two workshops for the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity in October, “Solo Success: How to Thrive in the Academy When You're the Only __ in Your Department “ at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and ”Re-Thinking Mentoring: How to Build Communities of Inclusion, Support, and Accountability” for the Society of Family Planning's annual conference in Seattle. She also presented her own talk for the Junior Faculty Mentoring Program at St. Louis University on October 18, titled “Exhale: Centering Your Wellness for Sustainable Results.” Here's a post on LinkedIn about it.
Yancy Dominick PhD, Teaching Professor, Philosophy, presented the paper "Educate to Liberate: Black Panther Pedagogy in Ancient Philosophy Class," at the Northwest Ancient Philosophy Workshop at Portland State University. In it he discusses the changes I've made to my Honors Origins of Philosophy class with the help of the Mellon Foundation funding he received.
Victor D. Evans, PhD, Assistant Professor, Communication and Media, contributed a chapter to new anthology, "I want my GayTV (SVOD)."
Carlyn E. Ferrari, PhD, Assistant Professor, English, participated in a Zoom webinar titled "Literature, Critical Theory and Black Ecologies," featuring prominent thinkers specializing in Black culture, literature and theory, hosted by the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice. Read about it here. She also co-hosted an invitational event, “Mellon Democracy and Landscape Initiative Annual Colloquium.”
Brittany Heintz Walters, PhD, Assistant Professor, Kinesiology, published the research article, "Visual feedback and declines in attention are associated with altered visual strategy during a force-steadiness task in older adults" in the Journal of Neurophysiology with co-authors Kevin Keenan, Wendy Huddleston, Kristian O'Connor, Jinsung Wang, and Marie Hoeger Bement.
Audrey Hudgins, EdD, Matteo Ricci Institute and affiliate faculty in International Studies, and co-panelist Monica Lopez Cuétara of Radio Huaya, presented “Aprendizajes transnacionales del empleo temporal agrícola migrante con visas H2A entre Veracruz y Washington” at the Academic Colloquium during the biennial meeting of the Jesuit Migration Network – Central America/North America in San Salvador, El Salvador in October 2023. The assembled network, representing the countries of North America and Central America, issued a final statement addressed to states, governments, communities, and the Catholic church, and can be found here.
The Laughter, the acclaimed novel by Sonora Jha, PhD, Associate Dean for Academic Community and Professor, Department of Communication and Media, is included on the long list for the Aspen Words Literary Prize. This prestigious $35,000 annual award is for an influential work of fiction that illuminates a vital contemporary issue and demonstrates the transformative power of literature on thought and culture. Annually, open to authors of any nationality, the award is one of the largest literary prizes in the United States, and one of the few focused exclusively on fiction with a social impact.
Henry Kamerling, PhD, Associate Teaching Professor, History, attended the Festival of Monsters Conference hosted by the theatre department at the University of Santa Cruz in California. He presented “'For the first time, she is free': The Monstrous Women of Marvel’s Early 1970s Horror Comics," a paper on his current research project on Marvel's 1970s horror comics.
Kate Koppelman, PhD, Chair and Associate Professor, English, and Associate Appointments in Medieval and Early Modern Studies and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, published “A Medievalist in Barbieland," which reads the end of the recent Barbie movie against medieval notions of female capacity and incapacity. It was published in The Sundial, the digital publication for the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, showcasing some of the most forward-thinking public humanities work in the fields of premodern studies.
David Kwon, PhD, MBA, MDiv, MSW/AM, Assistant Professor, Theology and Religious Studies, published his first monograph Justice after War (The Catholic University of America Press, 2023). Dr. Kwon was interviewed last month about the new book by CUA Press: Q&A with David Kwon.
Mariela Lopez Velarde, PhD, Assistant Professor, Modern Languages and Cultures, attended the II Congreso Internacional de Lenguas y Lingüística (PEARL), as part of the Ciencia, Sociedad e Investigación Universitaria’s (SIU), 8th Congress at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador-Sede Ambato (PUCE-Ambato), where she was the keynote speaker on Oct. 19th with the presentation “Effects of Native Phonology on Spoken Word Recognition and Second Language Phonological Processing”. She also gave the workshop “Does the Dialect We Speak Condition Our Second-language Learning Process? Dialects, Identity, and Second Language Acquisition” on the same day.
Sean McDowell, PhD, Associate Professor, English, published his debut collection of poems, Learning to Jump (Wipf and Stock). This book seeks what can sustain us during troubled times. Across a range of spaces, from the ancient Celtic ring forts of the Aran Islands, to an artist’s studio, to an old woman’s dressing table, these poems attend to urgencies too often neglected in the press of everyday obligations. Here are celebrations of making and of things well-made, expressions of gratitude, and acts of preservation, along with meditations on those befores and afters defining peoples’ lives: a poet takes religious vows, a child loses a front tooth, a man dies of a heart attack in the street. To counter the pain of grief, these poems discover—in a hummingbird feeding, in a goat giving birth, in wind heard through dry stone walls—images of beauty and mystery that connect us with nature and each other. Whether focusing on how to cut boards with a handsaw or paint in egg tempura, make chicken soup from scratch or read Ulysses to pieces, this book also honors skills passed on and hard-won habits that enrich ordinary days with meaning. Only by paying such scrupulous attention can we trust our many leaps and the ground we land on.
James Miles, MFA, Assistant Professor, Performing Arts and Arts Leadership, was interviewed by Geekwire about his role as the new creative economy manager for Seattle’s Office of Economic Development. He also recorded a podcast with The Equity Institute about hip hop and education.
Quinton Morris, DMA, Professor, Violin, was a guest on the podcast, DoubleExposure. His work with his organization, Key to Change, was featured in the Seattle Times, “How Renton’s Key to Change is making a difference in classical music," including how two of his students recently made their debuts with the Seattle Symphony. That milestone was also reported in The Facts.
It is election season and Patrick Schoettmer, PhD, Associate Teaching Professor, Political Science, is in the news, commenting on the Seattle races.
- Seattle Times: Missing in action: How absent young voters swung Seattle politics
- KING 5 News: Live Election Coverage
- KING 5 News: “Early election results show possible Seattle City Council shakeup”
- KUOW: “Low voter turnout, a move to the middle, and many races still in play: day-after election analysis”
Eric Severson, PhD, Associate Teaching Professor, Philosophy, gave a paper entitled “On Not Wasting Black Time” at the 2024 Psychology and the Other Conference, in Boston on October 8.
Donna Teevan, PhD, Chair and Associate Professor, Theology and Religious Studies, and Rev. Louis Gaffney S.J. Chair, offered a presentation titled “Losing Their Religion: Young Adults and Disaffiliation” at St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church in north Seattle October 15, 2023.
Charles M. Tung, PhD, Professor, English, , co-organized a seminar, “MDOT: the Modernist Department of Transportation,” at the Modernist Studies Association conference in Brooklyn, New York, Oct. 26-29. His paper, “Modernist Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Information-Superhighway Hermenautics,” explored the connections between early twentieth-century representations of traffic and navigational experience and contemporary understandings of culture as an information machine in which the metadata is the message.
The Bozeman Daily Chronicle picked up the May 5 article, "Mindfulness, meditation and self-compassion – a clinical psychologist explains how these science-backed practices can improve mental health" by Rachel Turow, PhD, Adjunct Faculty, Psychology, originally published in The Conversation.
Co-editors Jason Wirth, PhD, Professor and Department Chair, Philosophy and Associate Appointment, Film Studies, and Paul Nelson, and Adelia MacWilliam celebrate the release of Cascadian Zen at Elliott Bay Book Company on December 4. The volume features poetry, essays, artwork, and interviews, bringing together nonfiction, poetry, and translations that explore expressions of Zen within the Cascadia bioregion.
Collaborations: Faculty/Student/Alums
Denver Public Safety Survey
Jacqueline Helfgott, PhD, Professor, Criminal Justice, Criminology and Forensics, and Director, Crime and Justice Research Center; Matthew Hickman, PhD, Professor and Chair, Criminal Justice, Criminology and Forensics are conducting a pilot program with the assistance of MACJ alums Brandon Bledsoe and Shannon Christensen. The project is the SPD-SU MCPP and Seattle Public Safety Survey collaboration. The project has generated significant media coverage in Denver, including:
Mayor’s Office CARE Dual Dispatch Behavioral Health Response Pilot
Dr. Helfgott and Dr. Hickman will also conduct the evaluation of the City of Seattle's new initiative, the Community Assisted Response and Engagement dual dispatch program designed to relieve the stress on police and fire departments who respond to many behavioral health calls. Watch the press conference here.
Eastside Leadership Conference
Onur Bakiner, PhD, Associate Professor, Political Science, and Joe Nguyen, BA Humanities and Finance '06, spoke at the Bellevue Chamber of Commerce’s Eastside Leadership Conference discussing the future of artificial intelligence, its economic impacts and public policy to regulate its use. “Automated decision making must have a human in the loop that helps verify the decision and outcome,” said Professor Onur Bakiner, PhD when reflecting on the security, regulation and legislation around artificial intelligence. “People need to understand the underlying variables.”
Casey Watkins, PhD, CSCS, Assistant Teaching Professor, Kinesiology, and Brittany Heintz Walters, PhD, Assistant Professor, Kinesiology, received a $10,000 mini grant from the Center for Community Engagement to better integrate Community Engaged Learning throughout their curriculum. In collaboration with L’Arche Seattle and the Maker’s Space, they hope to garner mutual benefit for Seattle students and L’Arche residents alike by providing students with project and placement-based opportunities to work with and better support adults living with developmental disabilities. Throughout the students’ curriculum, courses will be scaffolded with course content and responsibility to better understand our Seattle L’Arche community and their current physical activity needs, varying neuromuscular capacities, deficits, capabilities, movement limitations, and most importantly, learn how practitioners can best support their athletic and lifestyle goals. They hope through engaging with the students, the L’Arche residents will get needed support, physical training, increased physical activity and improved quality of life.
The Lived Experience of Forgiveness
Steen Halling, PhD, Professor Emeritus, Psychology, edited a book, "The Lived Experience of Forgiveness" (Lexington Press), which is now available in E Book format in the SU Library. The topic matter is one that touches all of our lives and most of our disciplines. The contributors represent psychology, philosophy, and religious studies. The topics range from self-forgiveness to forgiveness and reconciliation in Rwanda after the genocide. One of the contributors is Claire LeBeau, PhD, Associate Professor, Psychology,
Theiline Pigott-McCone Visual Culture Reading Group
Kirsten Moana Thompson, PhD, Professor and Director, Film Studies, and Theiline Pigott-McCone Endowed Chair (2022-24) and faculty presented papers on October 13. Presenting were Alexander Mouton, Nicolas Tamarkin, Hazel Hahn, Gabriella Gutiérrez y Múhs, Kenneth Allan, S. Chris Brown and Janet Hayatashi.
ASAP/14: Fugitivity, the annual Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present
Three CAS colleagues and one recent alumnus presented work at the conference, held this year in Seattle at UW/Seattle & Bothell, Oct. 4-7. A keynote for the conference was held at Seattle University on Friday, Oct. 6.
Kate Koppelman, PhD, Chair and Associate Professor, English, and Associate Appointments in Medieval and Early Modern Studies and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies presented “He’s not my boyfriend”: Temporal Displacement as Escape and Enclosure in Netflix’s The Old Guard" on the session "Place, Race, Time in Film and TV." She performed a reading of the Netflix film, The Old Guard, for the ways in which it creates both an escape from and an enclosure within the complicated structures of medieval chivalry and medieval chivalric bonds between men.
Alexander Mouton, MFA, Chair and Associate Professor, Art, Art History, and Design, presented “To A Place of Time, Held Within Four Walls” on a panel entitled, "Perspectives on Forever Wars." He brought together the fugitivity of his artistic practice with a critical analysis of the period of history that swallowed up Eastern Europe in a deadly abattoir, held between the pincers of Hitler’s National Socialism and Stalin’s Soviet Union.
Charles M. Tung, PhD, Professor, English, and Ken Allan, PhD, Associate Professor, Art History and Visual and Culture Studies, chaired a two-part seminar panel entitled "The Association for the Study of the Arts of Survival: Living in, Through, and after Crisis" that included work from scholars of literature, film, art history and visual culture from across the country.
Mariah Ribeiro, BA, Art History with Departmental Honors '19, PhD Candidate, Art History, University of Washington, presented ""Indigenous Fugitivity as Futurity" about how contemporary artist Cannupa Hanska Luger’s Mirror Shield Project at Standing Rock, which evaded colonial control and surveillance, activated fugitivity through the maintenance of Lakota cultural practice and how his more recent project, Future Ancestral Technologies, repurposes the concept to imagine Indigenous futurity.
Charles Tung also presented "Viral Cultures and the Department of Cultural Epidemiology" He explored the trope of fungal infection in Ling Ma’s Severance (2018) as an expression not only of the need for a critical epidemiology able to track the ills of neoliberal zombification but also of the desire for what Benjamin Bratton imagines as a “positive post-pandemic biopolitics.”
Ken Allan presented "A Spanner in the Works of the Attention Economy: The Order of the Third Bird and the Practice of Radical Attention" about a recent Frye Art Museum exhibition and the fugitive community of "attentionauts" who challenge the monetizing of our attention and propose an alternative model of interpretative practice for the humanities. As a member of the board of ASAP, he also helped bring a conference keynote talk and a student-focused conversation on contemporary art and Indigenous culture to Seattle U between the artist/scholars Dylan Robinson and Tania Willard, who teach at the University of British Columbia, Canada. This was made possible with the help of the College's Pigott Family Endowment for the Arts funding, Dean David Powers and the Department of Art, Art History & Design.
Alumni
Congratulations to the SU alumni recognized in this year's Alumni Awards, include these CAS alumni: Alumna of the Year: Dorothy Cordova, BA Sociology ‘53; Outstanding Recent Alumna: Renee Rassilyer-Bomers, BA Humanities, ’03 and Nursing ’03, ’05 and ’16; Community Service Award: Major General Bret Daugherty, MPA ’89; and Athletics Hall of Fame: Kacie Sowell Timmons, BA Sport and Exercise Science, ‘14. Read the SU Newsroom story.
SU’s Army ROTC Brady Battalion’s namesake, Major General (Retired) Patrick Henry Brady, ‘59, visited Seattle University on Sep. 28, 2023. Interested in the status of the Battalion, he toured the ROTC offices, including the gym and Hall of Valor and while here, he contracted a current Cadet. MG Brady was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions in Vietnam. MG Brady also received awards for other valorous acts during his time in service, to include 1x Distinguished Service, 6x Distinguished Flying Crosses, 2x Bronze Star Medals with V Devices, and 1x Purple Heart. For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty, Maj. Brady distinguished himself while serving in the Republic of Vietnam commanding a UH-1H (commonly known as a Huey) ambulance helicopter, volunteered to rescue wounded men from a site in enemy-held territory which was reported to be heavily defended and to be blanketed by fog. Throughout that day Maj. Brady utilized three helicopters to evacuate a total of 51 seriously wounded men, many of whom would have perished without prompt medical treatment. Maj. Brady's bravery was in the highest traditions of the military service and reflects great credit upon himself and the U.S. Army. We were proud to have this distinguished alumnus visit the ROTC office.
Chelsea Booker, BA, English/Creative Writing '14 was promoted to freelance editor at the online travel guide, Travel Lemming.
Julia Crain, BA, Public Affairs ‘06 was named Planning Director for Butte-Sliver Bow County.
Ariel Davis, Master of Public Administration '22 was inducted into the Rho Lambda Zeta chapter (Washington state) of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Incorporated, a renowned historically African American sorority with a rich tradition of promoting community service, scholarship, sisterhood, and finer womanhood.
Major General (Ret.) Barb Holcomb, Nursing and Army ROTC, '87m RN, BSN, MSN, was appointed to the board of directors at Maxwell Biosciences.
Chris Thomas, BA Journalism, '97, was named to the Centralia College Board of Trustees by Governor Jay Inslee.
Cameron Tyson, BA, Sociology '23, currently pursuing a Certificate in Leadership Formation at Seattle University, was featured in the Seattle Times as he begins his sixth collegiate basketball season as a redshirt senior.
Krista Williams, MNPL ‘16, was appointed CEO of Alaska trucking and logistics firm Carlile.
Students
Debate Team
The team is off to a strong start. Danny Herre and Dylan Berman advanced to the first-year finals at both the YODL and Lewis and Clark tournaments. They both won top five speaker awards. Pepper Berry and Trinity Doyle were mere points away from advancing at the YODL. tournament and Alex Cruz and Ed Strok had a strong showing in the YODL tournament. A consistent group of six to eight teams are showing up for practices and events which have included a practice debate at the University of Washington, something we plan to continue. The team is looking forward to tournaments in November including the Climb Team IPDA and Linfield tournaments, hosting the Seattle U grades 3-12 speech and debate tournaments, and then participating in and hosting our Seattle U IV college tournament to finish up the fall quarter.
Senior Enrico Favela Muhs was the selected youth poet to give the keynote poem for the Annual Latino Community Fund for Washington State.