All Stories

"Americans spend more than half a billion dollars annually on 150 million units of imported Christmas lights. U.S. News & World Report ranks the best Christmas light displays. And ABC’s reality TV show “The Great Christmas Light Fight” recently premiered its 10th season. Christmas lights, in short, are not only ubiquitous but also central to American culture. But that has not always been the case. The man credited with popularizing Christmas lights in the early 20th century, Albert Sadacca, had never celebrated Christmas. In fact, he was a Jew from the Muslim world," writes Devin Naar, associate professor of history and Jewish studies at the UW.

Dean Harris describes how Elizabeth Gordon, editor of House Beautiful, one of the premier home design magazines of the postwar period, espoused the style we now call midcentury modernism as a gentler alternative to the often harsher styles of prewar Europe. Dean Dianne Harris' writing is mentioned.

Learn about the sleep scientist and UW professor of biology, Horacio de la Iglesia, whose influential sleep research helped demonstrate the benefits of delaying school start times for Seattle high schoolers. Read writer Nicole Reeve-Parker's Faculty Friday, Spotlight.

Start the new year with lectures, performances, exhibitions and more.

A study measuring the sleep patterns of students at the University of Washington found that students fell asleep later in the evening and woke up later in the morning during winter, when daylight hours on the UW Seattle campus are limited and the skies are notoriously overcast. Researchers believe the students' natural circadian clocks were being "pushed back" or delayed in winter because they were not getting enough exposure during the day to natural light, and that getting more daytime light exposure can help reverse this.

Anthony Gill, a UW political science professor, argues in a new paper that gift-giving has long-term positive effects for society and the economy, regardless of what you buy.

Public Art is a tough genre, which might explain why most of it is so perfunctory, but a tour of Seattle's light rail stations unearths some striking artwork. School of Art + Art History + Design Assistant Professor Whitney and alum Mary Ann Peters are quoted. 

LaShawnDa Pittman, American ethnic studies and sociology professor, is excited to think together as the newest Hanauer appointee. Pittman's research centers socially marginalized women and those living with poor health resources/outcomes. Interrogate notions of “Western Civilization" in class and/or discuss what matters to you at an upcoming salon talk.

In a study published Dec. 8 in Nature Astronomy, an international research team, led by Orsola De Marco of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, analyzed 10 highly detailed exposures taken by the JWST of the Southern Ring Nebula. Their calculations show the central star that ejected the expanding nebula gas was originally three times the mass of the sun, and that unseen companions shaped the nebula's intricate features.

In the summer of 2018, 3,300 acres of the Olympic National Forest were set ablaze by poachers aiming to cut down maple trees. UW professors Daniel Hoffman and Lynn Thomas created a documentary, titled “The Maple Cutter,” about the incident — read writer Curran Nielsen’s interview with the filmmakers.