Department of History

Start the spring season by listening to Strings for Peace, explore how mud animates relationships at the Henry Art Gallery, attend the anticipated University Faculty Lecture and more.

James Gregory, UW professor of history, knows the subject of racism in housing well. For roughly two decades, he’s been unearthing the ugly, racist underpinnings of racial disparities in wealth and homeownership seen to this day across Puget Sound.

The City of Kirkland was counting on Google to be the “catalyst project” in its proposed Station Area Plan, a reimagining of the area around a planned rapid transit bus station into a higher density community of housing and businesses. But suddenly and without warning to the outside world, the plans went away last month. The City of Kirkland issued a surprising press release: Google, which on the same day announced it was cutting 12,000 jobs globally, no longer planned to be the tech centerpiece in the city’s development plan. The company’s move to back out of the project — even with $113 billion in the bank and $60 billion in profits last year — highlights the surprisingly fleeting relationship between big tech companies and the cities they’ve reshaped, and the mixed feelings and uncertainty left behind. Chuck Wolfe, affiliate associate professor of urban design and planning at the UW, and Margaret O'Mara, professor of history at the UW, are quoted.

More than 40,000 property deeds containing racially discriminatory language have been uncovered in Western Washington by the Racial Restrictive Covenants Project. Director James Gregory, professor of history at the University of Washington, and his team aren't finished yet.

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Christopher Tounsel, associate professor of history at the University of Washington, found multiple connections between Sudan and Seattle while researching his upcoming book. The most prominent was the late Andrew Brimmer, a UW alum who in 1966 became the first Black member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.

Ever wonder what the world would be like without planes, computer software and online shopping? Thanks to progressive Seattle innovators and change-makers, the world is a much better place to live, work and play. Margaret O'Mara, professor of history at the UW, is quoted.

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

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

"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.

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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.

In honor of American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month, deepen your learning in American Indian studies, make connections on campus, and celebrate the work of the University of Washington Seattle's College of Arts & Sciences faculty, staff, students and alumni.