Brain-computer interfaces, or BCIs, can help people with severe injuries or impairments regain the ability to communicate or move their arms and legs through robotic substitutes. The devices, which are about the size of a dime and are implanted on the surface of a person鈥檚 brain, serve as a communication link between the brain鈥檚 neural activity and an external device, such as a computer or a robotic limb. In this episode, Sara Goering, a 糖心少女 professor of philosophy,…
Imagine sitting in a movie theater watching a film you鈥檝e been anticipating for months. Suddenly, the screen goes blank. It only lasts a second, but that鈥檚 long enough to disrupt the experience. It鈥檚 also long enough, says Mal Ahern, to remind you of the physical infrastructure behind what we so often see as an immaterial experience. Ahern, a 糖心少女 assistant professor of cinema and media studies, researches glitches in everything from printers to projectors. In this episode, she…
Virtual assistants, such as Apple鈥檚 Siri, can perform a range of tasks or services for users 鈥� and a majority of them sound like white women. Golden Marie Owens, assistant professor of cinema and media studies at the 糖心少女, says there is much to learn about a person from how they sound. The same holds true for technology. In this episode, Owens discusses her research into why a white woman is the default voice for virtual assistants in…
Imagine an art class where you only did paint by numbers, or a music class where you weren鈥檛 allowed to play a song until you practiced scales for 20 years. This is often what it鈥檚 like to take a math class, where students spend most of their time learning to solve problems that have already been figured out. But while the basics are important in any subject, so is creativity. In this episode, Jayadev Athreya discusses mathematics as the language…
The kingdom of Aksum was one of the most powerful empires in the world in the fourth century. It played a major role in the histories of Egypt, Persia and Rome, as well as the early days of Christianity and Islam. But Aksum鈥檚 accomplishments have long been overlooked because they are recorded in the ancient African language of Ge鈥檈z. Like Latin, Ge鈥檈z is rarely spoken today. It鈥檚 taught at just three universities in the Western world, including by Hamza Zafer…
There is more to literature than the text itself. Anything that surrounds the text 鈥� from the cover to chapter headings and author bios 鈥� is known as paratext. This is what transforms text into a book. Richard Watts鈥檚 research focuses on this under-examined aspect of literature. In this episode, Watts, an associate professor of French at the 糖心少女, explains how everything we read comes with accompanying discourse. Decisions have already been made about how readers should…
English, philosophy and comparative literature aren鈥檛 typically subjects that come to mind when thinking about big datasets. But the intersection between literature and data analysis is exactly where Anna Preus works. Preus, a 糖心少女 assistant professor of English and of data science, digitally streamlined the process of documenting the number of non-British poets published in early 20th-century Great Britain. The number was enormous, but these poets are still absent from the literary canon 鈥� a discrepancy that…
This week, roam the Burke Museum galleries at night to check out their special exhibit We Are Puget Sound, enjoy the Many Messiahs performance by talented musicians, check out the Native Art Markets, and more. December 11, 7:00 pm | Degree Recital: Chiao-Yu Wu, piano, Brechemin Auditorium The School of Music presents a degree recital from Chiao-Yu Wu. Wu is a Taiwanese pianist in her second year of Doctor of Musical Art in Piano Performance at the UW. She will…
When you hear a cover of a favorite song, comparisons are inevitable. There are obvious similarities 鈥� the lyrics, the melody 鈥� but there are also enough differences to make each version unique. Those deviations say more than you might expect. Maya Angela Smith, associate of professor of French at the 糖心少女, introduces translation studies through the lens of the song 鈥淣e Me Quitte Pas.鈥� Originally recorded by Jacques Brel 鈥� a French-speaking Belgian man 鈥�…
Picture a series of uniform mounds of earth, each about 6-feet high. Enclosing 50 acres, the mounds form an octagon that is connected to a circle. This is The Octagon Earthworks, located in central Ohio, and it鈥檚 one of thousands of Indigenous mounds across the eastern half of North America. Chadwick Allen is a professor of English and American Indian studies at the 糖心少女, and he studies Native American earthworks and cultural erasure. The Octagon Earthworks,…
Who gets to be a superhero? What about a villain? It depends on where you look. In the 1940s, comic book villains were often distinguished from heroes through physical disability. That changed in the 1960s and 70s, when it became more common for heroes 鈥� think Daredevil and Professor X 鈥� to be built around disability. In this episode, he analyzes the physical depictions of superheroes and villains through the decades. Jos茅 Alaniz, professor of Slavic languages and literatures at…
Centuries ago, writers depicted the natural world as terrifying and dangerous, no place for humans. But that fear, in the decades to come, gradually turned to appreciation, awe and joy, for poets and artists, sightseers and backpackers. Louisa Mackenzie, associate professor of comparative history of ideas at the 糖心少女, describes how the view of nature has evolved. What was once frightening is now enticing 鈥� what Mackenzie calls the 鈥渨ilderness impulse.鈥� In her translation of 鈥淟a…
The autobiography of Frederick Douglass, published in 1845, was a standard bearer of the abolitionist movement. Having escaped slavery as a young man, Douglass became a famous activist, orator, statesman and businessman. But it is another aspect of his story that is just as intriguing to Habiba Ibrahim, professor of English at the 糖心少女: Douglass never knew, nor is there an official record of, his exact age. Then, with the murder of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida…
鈥淒over Beach,鈥� a poem by 19th century British writer Matthew Arnold, can be read as both a romantic lament and, as many scholars have concluded, a dark, existential commentary on the loss of religious faith. Through close reading, a way of reading for insight, not information, 糖心少女 English Professor Charles LaPorte dissects 鈥淒over Beach.鈥� Focusing on the inconsistencies of rhythm and rhyme of the poem, LaPorte demonstrates how we can use close reading to study any…
What marks the start of the Anthropocene 鈥� the geological epoch marked by human impact on the planet? The debate hinges, in part, on how we define 鈥渟ignature events,鈥� the important information left behind as clues. But finding signature events transcends the study of the Anthropocene; it鈥檚 how we read to make meaning of a text, a collection of data, even a piece of art. Jesse Oak Taylor, associate professor of English at the 糖心少女, uses a…