During autumn quarter 2022, Hedwige Meyer, teaching professor of French, brought Michel Jean, author of the award-winning novel, Kukum, to her FRENCH 301: Language in the Francophone World course via Zoom. The students read Kukum prior to the visit by the author. The 90-minute meeting allowed the students to deepen their understanding of the book and

In June of this year, a team of University of Washington researchers and faculty kicked off a new partnership with the community of Ulukhaktok, Northwest Territories, Canada. One of the members of the team, Jason Young, is a Canadian and Arctic Studies Affiliate and a former Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellow in the

In May 2022, the Center partnered with UW in the High School to provide professional development training for French teachers on Québec topics. UW in the High School includes almost 20 educators who teach UW French language courses to high school students across the state. This year the Center sponsored Sarah Hurlburt, professor of French

Professor Rich Watts, Department of French and Italian Studies, signs off after five years of service to the Center and Jackson School of International Studies. — As my five-year term as faculty director of the Canadian Studies Center in UW’s Jackson School of International Studies draws to a close, my thoughts are mostly with those

Patrick Christie, a professor in the Jackson School and School Marine and Environmental Affairs, was appointed faculty director of the Canadian Studies Center effective July 1, 2022. Christie has a strong interest in and commitment to justice and sustainability. He works at the interface of oceans and coastal communities, but also works in other environments.

The Center welcomes David Butman, associate professor, School of Environmental and Forest Sciences, as a new affiliate to the Center. David Butman is an associate professor in the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences as well as the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. His research focuses on the ecology and biogeochemistry of freshwater ecosystems

Yoshitaka Ota served as director of the Nereus Program, a global interdisciplinary initiative between the Nippon Foundation and the University of British Columbia to further knowledge about how to best attain sustainability for the world’s oceans, between 2011 and 2019. During that time, he identified a capacity and knowledge gap in addressing the widening inequality in

Maya Angela Smith, an associate professor in the Department of French and Italian Studies, focuses on the intersection of racial and linguistic identity formations among marginalized groups in the African diaspora, particularly in the francophone world. She also researches how Blackness is constructed in francophone regions as well as how French studies can diversify and

Andy Meyer, a newly appointed assistant teaching professor in the Department of Scandinavian Studies, focuses on Norwegian and North American language and literature, with an emphasis on ecocriticism, poetry and poetics, and Arctic studies. His work and much of his teaching is engaged in questions about the relationship between literary imagination and the concept of

P. Joshua Griffin is an environmental anthropologist working at the intersections of Indigenous studies, political ecology, critical social science, and climate change. His community-engaged research focuses on Arctic Indigenous ecologies, climate change, environmental health, food sovereignty, hunting and fishing governance/rights, and environmental planning. More broadly, he is interested in approaches to “climate adaptation” that center