Graduate Research Cluster | Simpson Center for the Humanities

Graduate Research Clusters (formerly Graduate Interest Groups) foster crossdisciplinary collaboration and inquiry among graduate students in the form of cross-departmental reading, screening, and/or discussion groups, dissertation working groups, and other activities. Research clusters may organize activities that draw on local intellectual and cultural resources, including faculty and community leaders. To receive updates when we are open to accepting proposals, subscribe to our newsletter.

Felted Swan by Pazyryk Culture. 5th - 4th century BCE. Shades of blue in the background with a swan made of felt in the foreground.

Textile Studies

Our holistic study of textiles includes the cultural and theoretical implications of textile crafts and objects, studies in aesthetics, adornment, and materiality, gendered labor, linguistic and literary poetics, among others.

Colonialism

Cultural Studies

Humanities

Identity and Culture

Technology

Visual Culture

Feminist Writing

This writing and research group aims attention at the “craft” of writing to build a sense of solidarity among those engaged in intensive writing, particularly on theses or dissertations.

Interdisciplinary Translation Studies

Participants will emphasize strategies for making their voices collectively heard in the development of translation studies-related curricula, events, and programming at the UW.

Communication

Cultural Studies

International Relations

Language and Literature

Translation Studies

Crowds watching oil fields accident, smoke coming out of oil rigs. Circa 1920

CMS-iSchool Joint Graduate Conference in Media Technologies

Graduate students from CMS and the iSchool worked together to create an inaugural joint graduate conference in media technologies, which was held in spring 2022 on the UW Seattle campus.

Communication

Comparative Literature, Cinema & Media

Collective for the Study of Racial Capitalism

Scholar-activists convene from across UW to share work, workshop writing, and develop inter- and cross-disciplinary capacity for relationally grounded graduate student work in the field of Racial Capitalism.

C.O.M.R.A.

The Conjecture, Other, Meet, Reckon, Acknowledge (C.O.M.R.A) group is a salon of international graduate students who are interested in decentering narratives around theatre, cinema, performance, visual arts, literature, and creative writing.

Comparative Literature, Cinema & Media

Creative Writing

Visual Culture

Interdisciplinary Dissertation Writing Group

Participants discuss research and writing strategies but also provide solicited feedback to one another to support success as interdisciplinary scholars of misrepresented populations and regions.

Doctoral Education

Higher Education

Art of black and pink neurons spiraling on a yellow background.

CHIME

Founded in 2020, the Critical Humanities in Medical Education (CHIME) initiative unites a coalition of graduate students dedicated to raising critical consciousness in medical education.

Gender and Sexuality

The Gender and Sexuality Graduate Research Cluster supports UW graduate students in a range of inquiry into gender and sexuality as social structures shaping institutions, interactions, and identities.

Feminisms

Gender and Sexuality Studies

Identity and Culture

Sociology

Eighteenth-century painting depicting a young girl wearing a yellow dress reading.

Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century (18/19)

The group has met on campus for more than thirteen years and currently hosts events that reach both academic and non-academic audiences, fosters collaboration and camaraderie among students, and promotes connections between students and faculty.

18th Century

19th Century

Humanities

Interdisciplinary Research

Photo of two people's heads connected by a long tube.

HAPTICS Study Group

Disability Studies

Multi-color circular genome data visualization

Genomics Salon

Participants in this salon will practice a discussion-based approach to examining subjects related to the field of genomics and, more broadly, modern biology.

Ethics

Health Humanities

Medical Sciences

Art based on medical and historical representations of female bodies

Indigenous Studies

Still image from Julie Dash's 1991 film Daughters of the Dust.

Black Cinema Collective

Black Studies

Cinema Studies

Comparative Literature, Cinema & Media

Diablo Dam in Ross Lake National Recreation Area of Washington, courtesy David Fulmer/Creative Commons

Interdisciplinary Freshwater Exploration Series on Dams

Environment

Comparative Study of Race

Race

Cellphone Repair Shop built from Shipping Container, Joe Slovo Park, Cape Town, South Africa (Wikimedia Commons)

African Media and Materialities

The African Media and Materialities graduate research cluster focuses on media and materialities to bring together several strands of thought and research. We examine objects, environments, and people, and their relationships with one another.

Africa Studies

Cultural Studies

Technology

A series of vintage movie cameras at the Shanghai Film Museum. Image courtesy of Ungsan Kim.

Moving Images

Comparative Literature, Cinema & Media

A close-up of the comic the Yellow Kid Gives a Show at Ryan's Arcade, published in the New York Journal in 1898, in which two children run into a paint shop and one emerges covered in paint.

Comics Studies

Visual Culture

Abstract painting of multicolored faces.

Psychoanalysis and Politics

Feminisms

Gender and Sexuality Studies

Political Science

Race

Sociology

Photo of an apartment complex with tennis courts and pools walled off from an area of lower-income housing.

Critical Design

Design

Sociology

Photo of a sign with the words Don't Privatize! Our schools are not for sale.

Public Scholarship

Painting by Jake Prendez of two women facing each other with arms outstretched on a blue background.

Xicana Living Pedagogies: Resistance, Testimonios, and Transformation

Cultural Studies

Pedagogy

Close-up image of the poster for the Race/Knowledge Project event with parachutes on a blue background.

The Race/Knowledge Project: Crossdisciplinary and Community Collaborations as Anti-Racist Praxis

Pedagogy

Race

A white-brick wall with the bricks arranged in arches.

Rethinking East Asia

This cluster will explore various aspects of East Asia, especially boundary-breaking, cross-disciplinary approaches that challenge conventional and dominant mappings and theoretical frameworks.

Cultural Studies

East Asia

Feminisms

Photo is a mise en abyme with multiple digital tablets and devices fragmenting a woman.

Autoethnography

The activities specific to this research cluster entail three events over the course of the 2022-2023 academic year. Each quarter, a scholar will be invited to virtually present on a topic that relates to autoethnography. This method seeks to counter the biased pitfalls of an ostensibly objective researcher in ethnography by making them a central component of the research study.

Public Scholarship

Shadows of people stand in a dark room with specks of white light.

Constellations of Asian Racialization

This research group brings together graduate students who are interested in studying how Asian racialization occurs across borders, spaces, technologies, and cultural representations.

Asian American

Asian Languages & Literature

Race

Blurred images of dancers on a stage with red curtains behind them.

Critical Performance Writing Cluster

Interdisciplinary Research

Visual Culture

Photo of the 1913 painting by Wassily Kandinsky named Small Pleasures, with abstract use of color and lines.

Study of Emotions and Affect

This GRC concentrates on emotion and affect studies, initiating thought-provoking dialogues and debates on emotion and capitalism, solitude and loneliness, affective ecologies, and affect's role in race, racism, and racial liberation.

Affect Studies

History of Emotions

Interdisciplinary Research

Photo of the acrylic and embroidery artwork named Assaulting the Eye with Ecstasy by Pacita Abad.

Transnational Filipinx Diaspora Studies

This GRC brings together students from history, English, feminist studies, and other departments to explore influential and contemporary scholarship in cultural diaspora studies.

Colonialism

Cultural Studies

Gender and Sexuality Studies

History

Humanities

Race

Photo of a person holding a large book open for the camera with a drawing of Shakespeare on the page.

Shakespeare and Early Modern Textual Studies

This GRC links English, drama, comparative literature, textual studies, library science, and archival exploration to gain a deeper understanding of Shakespeare and his contemporaries.

16th Century

Textual Studies

Various technologies like a landline phone and an iPad are nailed to a telephone pole. On the telephone pole, there is a sign that reads "Platform Perspectives"

Platform Perspectives

This GRC explores how digital networks and platforms have transformed the way we interact with information, culture, and society.

Cinema Studies

Digital Humanities

Ethics

Sinophone Public Scholarship

This GRC produces monthly podcasts and public events to bridge Anglophone and Sinophone social science and humanities for both academics and online publics.

Humanities

Public Scholarship

Photo of a camas prairie with purple flowers and tall green grass.

Indigenous Writing Praxis

This Graduate Research Cluster explores settler colonialism theory, anticoloniality, Indigenous resurgence, and Indigenous feminisms, seeking to create community in the interdisciplinary space of Indigenous Studies.

American Indian and Indigenous Studies

Pedagogy

White background with the word QUEERCRIP in all caps in bold large black text with the words Research Collective in small black italic text beginning underneath between the letters C and R. In the background of the text, there are six lines in muted rainbow tones, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. The lines curve in a sideways rainbow or c-shape and continue to twist off-screen (and in some images back on the page in a straight horizontal line under the text).

QueerCrip Research Collective

This GRC invites researchers and allies engaging in QueerCrip-themed work who are passionate about creating community, collaborating on interdisciplinary research, peer mentoring, resource sharing, and creative strategizing to ensure our research benefits the communities we serve.

Queer Studies