Cultural Studies

Denise Grollmus is a writer, scholar, teacher, web designer, and translator who was the Simpson Center's Communications Manager from 2018-2020. 

José Alaniz, professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and the Department of Cinema and Media Studies (adjunct) at the University of Washington, Seattle, has published two monographs, Komiks: Comic Art in Russia (University Press of Mississippi, 2010) and Death,

Dan Berger is associate professor of comparative ethnic studies at the University of Washington Bothell. His research and teaching focus on histories of the carceral state and US social movements.

I work in feminist, queer, and critical race theory. At its broadest, my research considers twentieth and twenty-first century cultural and scientific representations of gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity in the Anglophone and Francophone worlds.

Having completed her first book, Urbanism and Urbanity: The Spanish Bourgeois Novel and Contemporary Customs (1845-1925) (Bucknell UP) in 2013, Professor Mercer is currently finishing another book manuscript, titled An Incoherent Voyage: Spanish Cinema Pioneers, Between Technophilia

Xin Peng is a Ph.D.

Sarah Dowling's research and teaching focus on language politics, settler colonialism, and contemporary writing. She is especially interested in poems written between and across languages.

Oscar Aguirre-Mandujano studies early modern Ottoman intellectual history, and its connections to literature, poetry, and bureaucracy.

Priti Ramamurthy is a professor in the Department of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies.

Yomi Braester's research focuses on literary and visual practices, with emphasis on modern China and Taiwan—in architecture, advertisement, screen media, and stage arts. He inquires how texts and images form and manipulate our perception of space and history.

Susan Gaylard completed her undergraduate work in her native South Africa, before studying at Berkeley and the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa. Prof. Gaylard focuses on the early modern period, in particular the intersection between literature and material culture.

Liina-Ly Roos received her PhD from the University of Washington, and she taught at the University of Minnesota before joining the GNS.  In her teaching and research, she specializes in twentieth to twenty-first century Nordic and Baltic culture with a specific focus on post-WWII and contemp

Geoffrey Turnovsky specializes in the literary and cultural history of early modern France and Europe, with an emphasis on print culture, early modern media, the profession of authorship, and on readers and publics in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Ying-Hsiu Chou's research interests focus on interdisciplinary approaches to Chinese fiction, film, and popular culture, with emphasis on genre, gender, cross-media adaptation, and transcultural encounter.

José I. Fusté received his Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies from UC San Diego in 2012.

Dr. Jade Power-Sotomayor engages embodied practices of remembering and creating community as a lens for theorizing performative constructions of Latinidad.

Abraham Avnisan is an interdisciplinary artist whose work is situated at the intersection of image, text, and code.

Kristin Dew is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering at the University of Washington.

Benjamin Gardner's research engages political questions and theoretical debates, contributing to scholarship on 1) the cultural politics of the environment, 2) political economy of development, and 3) the post-colonial state.

Sonnet Retman is a literary scholar who works on African American literature and culture.  Her work explores how narrative produces race as it intersects with constructions of gender, sexuality and class.  She is particularly interested in analyzing the meanings of racial representation

C. R. Grimmer is a poet and scholar from Southeast Michigan's Metro-Detroit area. C. R. received their Ph.D. in Literature and Cultural Studies at the University of Washington (UW) as well as their M.F.A. in Creative Writing and M.A.

I am generally interested in historical and interdisciplinary approaches to the study of modern culture.

I am an Associate Professor of English at the University of Washington in Seattle. My scholarship is in African American Literary Studies of the twentieth and twenty first centuries.

Kenworthy's work sits at the intersections of medical anthropology, public health, and politics. She has been working and conducting research in southern Africa (Lesotho and South Africa, primarily) since 2005.

Ayda's research interests center around forced migration studies, critical humanitarian studies, and anthropology of religion. Ayda has currently finalized her field research in Gaziantep, Turkey.

Burcu is in the Interdisciplinary PhD Program in Near and Middle East Studies.

Rick Bonus is primarily a professor of American Ethnic Studies, but he also has strong interests in the conjunctions among ethnic studies, American studies, Pacific Islander Studies, and Southeast Asian studies, particularly as they deal with the historical and contemporary phenomena of migration

Katia Chaterji was a 2020 Mellon Collaborative Fellow for Reaching New Publics with 

Prof. Halperin is Associate Professor of International Studies, History, and Jewish Studies, and the Jack and Rebecca Benaroya Endowed Chair in Israel Studies, at the University of Washington.

Sebastián López Vergara focuses on Latin American Cultural Studies and Indigenous Studies. He is interested in studying Indigenous politics in Latin America and the permanence and changes of colonialism.

As the Administrative Assistant for the Simpson Center, Kalia supports the center’s operational integrity by managing the general occupation and maintenance of offices and event spaces; assisting the Administrator with fiscal processing; and facilitating internal and exter

Angela Durán Real is a pre-doctoral instructor at the University of Washington, a co-director of PAGE, and a board member of the Imagining America National Advisory Board.

Marcus Johnson was a 2018 Mellon Collaborative Fellow for Reaching New Publics and is currently a doctoral candidate in the UW Department of Communication.

Céline Maillard was a 2018 Mellon Fellow for Reaching New Publics.

Madeleine Yue Dong is a 2022-2023 Society of Scholars Fellow.

Amalie Goul Dueholm is a 2022-2023 Society of Scholars Fellow.

Gust Burns is a doctoral candidate in English at the University of Washington. His dissertation examines the prohibition of human capacity through mixed readings of artistic works, Black Studies, Marxist theory, and philosophy.

Caleb holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Washington, Seattle. His research focuses on nineteenth-century American literature and culture, sexual violence, and the history of slavery in the United States.

Nanya Jhingran is a poet, scholar, and teacher from Lucknow, India, currently living by the coastal margin of the Salish Sea, on the unceded lands of the Coast Salish People upon which the city of Seattle was built.

Sasha Senderovich is an Assistant Professor in Slavic Languages & Literatures and the Jackson School of International Studies, and a faculty affiliate at the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies.

Julie Stoverink acts as the chief financial officer for the Simpson Center.  She works closely with the faculty Director, Simpson Center staff, and CAS administrative team to steward the Center’s diverse financial portfolio, including budget development, revenue forecasting, fin

Douglas S. Ishii is an assistant professor in the Department of English, where he teaches classes in Asian American literature and culture, U.S. multiethnic literatures, queer of color critique, and cultural studies methods and theory. He received his Ph.D.