Each year, courses in Humanities First are taught by faculty from across the Humanities division. This year, we have professors from English, Philosophy, Scandinavian Studies, Spanish and Portuguese Studies, and Asian Languages and Literature. Learn more about them below!
Humanities 101 (Autumn 2024)
Dr. Colin Gioia Connors has been thinking a lot about trees — how we name them, how we call them, how we use them, and how we thank them. Disciplinarily he is a folklorist, which means that, while he has experience working with people from varied cultural traditions, his work is united by the humanistic endeavor of understanding how communities make meaning in a particular place. The words we use matter, and Colin is particularly interested in the words of place, that is, place-names. His dissertation, for example, applied features of sociotoponomastic theory (the “social life” of place-names) to a medieval Icelandic saga in order to argue that the saga’s place-names communicated to medieval audiences not only the real geography in which the saga was set, but also communicated normative or ‘correct’ attitudes towards that geography. Is a forest, for example, a place of mystery, of peace, or of economic opportunity? Currently, Colin is reconsidering Viking Age place-names that suggest that specific forests were understood as sacred. What might it mean for a forest to be sacred? What folk practices informed that attitude? Colin is excited to consider place as an integral part of our HUM 101 course on ‘Journeys.’ He is a lecturer and podcast producer in the Department of Scandinavian Studies, and he joins Humanities First as a Section Leader for Humanities 101 in Autumn Quarter, 2024.
Dr. Emily Hall started her academic journey with one question: how does an individual express social and political opposition under authoritarian power? This led her to dissertation on the role of political cartoons and cartoonists in promoting free speech, press, and anti-authoritarianism within the South Korean democracy movements of the twentieth century. After receiving her degree from University of Washington in 2019, she expanded her research to include the rise of webcomics and other pop cultural phenomenon and how it shapes and reflects South Korean culture and social trends. Fundamentally, Dr. Hall explores how artists express their ideas through genre, emotion, aesthetics, trauma, and humor to challenge social norms, inspire change, and provide perspective on the human condition. She joins Humanities First as a Section Leader for Humanities 101 in Autumn Quarter, 2024.
Dr. Sam Hushagen received his PhD in English literature from the University of Washington in 2019 after completing a dissertation on early-modern science and descriptive poetry. He researches the connections among poetry written between 1660 and 1850, philosophy of mind, and the history and philosophy of science to show how these areas can be seen in productive conjunction rather than as isolated pursuits. He is currently working on a book about landscape poetry and sense experience, and has published essays in The Wordsworth Circle, The William Carlos Williams Review, and Milton Quarterly. Sam began teaching at UW as a graduate student in the English department in 2013. Before pursuing his doctorate, Sam was a UW undergraduate in English and CHID. He joins Humanities First as an Instructor for Humanities 101, 102 and 103 and as Program Coordinator.
Dr. Alex McCauley works on ecology and political economy in nineteenth-century literature. Drownings, floods, swamps, sinking islands, liquefying crowds—that’s his material. Dr. McCauley tracks those interests back to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, when he was living in Thailand and went to the coast with my high school to help out with relief efforts. That specific flood has led Dr. McCauley to global water issues: too much water, or not enough, everywhere we look. And, too often, that means a small number of people profiting from controlling that water. The humanistic question Dr. McCauley cares most about is how to read. That means thinking about the possibilities and limits of interpretive methods, whether interpreting a provincial Victorian novel or a contemporary report on dams filling up with silt. The hard work is avoiding algorithmic thinking. It’s very easy to see the same thing over and over wherever we look, and to repeat the same scripted arguments. (Like constantly complaining about a small number of people benefiting from controlling water.) The best solutions Dr. McCauley has found for that problem are attending to specifics, connecting those specifics to each other in new ways, and practicing self-criticism. Alex joins Humanities First as a Section Leader for Humanities 101 in Autumn Quarter, 2024.
Dr. Antonio Rueda's research is centered on the literary, visual and socio-historical analysis of marginalized communities in early modern Europe and the Mediterranean world. His journey as a humanist begins with the acknowledgment of humanity’s inherent dignity and evolves into a dedication to reason and knowledge in pursuit of collective progress. In order to achieve this goal, Antonio delves into questions concerning human existence, ethics, and societal change. Marginalized minorities, such as Romani people or enslaved and free Black Africans, were crucial to early modern discourse, and are still today essential voices in the ongoing struggle for equity and justice. Their experiences and perspectives continue to shape narratives, challenge dominant paradigms, and advocate for inclusive transformation of our society. A humanist, in his view, is someone who contributes to amplify the voices of these communities through teaching and research. By incorporating these perspectives, humanists scrutinize how society constructs its worldview and power dynamics, addressing the issues that arise at the margins. As an educator, Antonio believes in the need to empower students to engage with complex issues that explore topics like historical marginalization to uncover truths for a more equitable society. Humanist teacher-scholars play a decisive role in reshaping societal understanding and advocating for meaningful social change, aiming to bring those at the margins to the forefront of discourse and action. Antonio joins Humanities First as a lecturer for Humanities 101 in Autumn Quarter, 2024.
Dr. Ian Schnee has always enjoyed talking about movies and video games. When he discovered philosophy, he realized that all along he had been practicing with his friends core humanistic skills: interpretating narratives; using evidence to argue for ambiguous character arcs; evaluating works according to norms of aesthetics, genre, morality, or game play. Philosophy concerns fundamental questions of what it means to be a person: how should we live; what gives our lives meaning; what (if anything) separates human intelligence from artificial intelligence? Ian's work takes films and video games to be philosophical works that insightfully investigate these questions just as much as traditional books and journal articles. Ian joins Humanities First as a lecturer for Humanities 101 in Autumn Quarter, 2024.
Humanities 102 (Winter 2025) and 103 (Spring 2025)
Sarah Stroup, the program director of Humanities First, is a professor in the department of Classics and the chair of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies. Prof. Stroup received her undergraduate degrees from the University of Washington (BA Philosophy; BA Latin and Classical Studies), and her graduate degrees from the University of California, Berkeley MA Latin; PhD Classics). Prof. Stroup is interested in the intellectual and political history of the late Roman Republic, late Republican cryptography and doublespeak, ancient philosophy of science and knowledge, ancient sport and spectacle, and the advanced technologies of the Greeks and Romans. Prof. Stroup is a strong believer in the public, professional, and personal value of a humanities education, where our focus is on strategic and effective communication. Prof. Stroup can be reached at scstroup@uw.edu.
Sam Hushagen received his PhD in English literature from the University of Washington in 2019 after completing a dissertation on early-modern science and descriptive poetry. He researches the connections among poetry written between 1660 and 1850, philosophy of mind, and the history and philosophy of science to show how these areas can be seen in productive conjunction rather than as isolated pursuits. He is currently working on a book about landscape poetry and sense experience, and has published essays in The Wordsworth Circle, The William Carlos Williams Review, and Milton Quarterly. Sam began teaching at UW as a graduate student in the English department in 2013. Before pursuing his doctorate, Sam was a UW undergraduate in English and CHID. He joins Humanities First as an Instructor for Humanities 101, 102 and 103 and as Program Coordinator.