To understand trolls is to understand oneself—and professor Lotta Gavel Adams knows them better than most. But Gavel Adams, professor emerita and Barbro Osher Endowed Chair of Swedish Studies at the University of Washington, insists she’s neither troll scholar nor folklorist. “I am an historian of literature and culture who looks at what trolls look like [...]

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“The pursuit of happiness.” It’s a phrase that helped form our basis as a nation, but could it be that the pursuit of “happiness” is leaving us less happy than ever before? What is happiness, anyway? Those are questions Annie Nguyen explores in the writing classes she teaches as a lecturer at the University of Washington Tacoma; [...]

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Harry the Husky is about to hit the big time for the first time. For most of the year, the UW Spirit cheer and dance program follows the schedule of other UW teams, performing at football, volleyball, and men’s and women’s basketball games. But this January, the team of 16 dancers, 24 coed stunters and [...]

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Step into Steve Herbert’s office in Smith Hall at the University of Washington and it’s the art that immediately catches your eye. On a back wall above his desk hang two large pen-and-ink drawings of labyrinthine detail, imbued with a spinning sense of motion through thousands of short hatch marks made by a ballpoint pen. [...]

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Leonora Clarke isn’t a doctor, but she does work hard to provide healthcare to the underserved. As manager of service learning at UW Medical Center, Clarke works to support 50 healthcare projects staffed by more than 500 medical students serving thousands across Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho. “Service learning is about getting out, using [...]

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For some, traveling the world conveys a sense of freedom. For Sonal Khullar, associate professor of art history at the University of Washington, however, the act of crossing borders all too often illustrates the strictures and stumbling blocks of globalism in the twenty-first century. “One of the things I’ve noted is that we usually think [...]

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For any academic, the moment of holding your first published book is one of accomplishment, elation, and total triumph. But for Alexes Harris, a professor of Sociology at the University of Washington, that moment came on the heels of learning her life hung in the balance. A year earlier, she’d been working out when she [...]

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It’s a best-in-the-West showdown you won’t want to miss. This Sunday at 3 pm, UW Men’s Soccer takes on reigning three-peat national champion Stanford at Husky Soccer Stadium. “This is a huge weekend because Stanford is the three-time conference champion in a row and three-time national champion in a row,” says head coach Jamie Clark. [...]

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Deep in a cavernous concrete basement, Jennifer Bean sits stooped over a Steenbeck machine. The large, flatbed editor helps her hand-control the frame-by-frame movement of a filmstrip nobody has seen in eighty years. Like all filmstrips produced before the mid-century introduction of acetate safety stock, it is made of nitrocellulose, a highly flammable material prone [...]

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When UW Women’s Soccer associate head coach Amy Griffin thinks about winning a national championship, she thinks about everything that has to go right. Not in terms of lucky bounces or fortuitous footwork, but in terms of the ways a championship team will prepare and support one another—both during games and in times in between. [...]

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It’s an instrument unlike any you’ve ever seen or heard. Tracing its origins to early 20th century Trinidad, the steel pan is constructed by hammering notes into the sunken bottom of an oil drum and played using small, rubber-tipped mallets. But the instrument’s outward simplicity belies complex origins. “For the people of Trinidad, the steel pan represents [...]

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As millions of students go back to school this September, one University of Washington professor says school leaders and other involved adults have just as much opportunity to learn once the first bell rings. “There are forms of expertise that educators don’t have,” says Dr. Ann Ishimaru, an associate professor of Educational Policy, Organizations & [...]

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