Humanities Division

UW senior Tisbe Rinehart, a wilderness guide for UW adventures, attended a wilderness therapy program as a teen — a difficult experience she explores in her CHID senior thesis.

Large language models convincingly mimic the understanding of mental states. Emily Bender, professor of linguistics at the UW, is quoted.

The College of Arts & Sciences celebrates undergraduate and graduate students from across all four divisions, who are recognized for making the most of their time at the UW. 

Through a UW-led storytelling workshop and course, English language learners in the Seattle area strengthened their language skills and built community.

How embracing more integrated approaches to the humanities and centering students’ experiences can create opportunities for new curricular programs and benefit existing ones. Brian Reed, professor of English and Divisional Dean of Humanities at the UW, is mentioned.

The University of Washingtonâs graduate and professional degree programs were widely recognized as among the best in the nation, according to U.S. News & World Reportâs 2025 Best Graduate Schools rankings released late Monday.

The organization that honors Rosa Parks, Elie Wiesel, and Jane Goodall has also celebrated three members of the UW community. Honorees include: neurobiologist Linda B. Buck, ’75; Theodore Roethke, English professor at the UW, 1947-1963; and master glass artist Dale Chihuly, ’65.

Artificial intelligence is suddenly everywhere. Fueled by huge technological advances in recent years and gobs of venture capitalist money, AI has become one of the hottest corporate buzzwords. Roughly 1 in 7 public companies mentioned “artificial intelligence” in their annual filings last year, according to a Washington Post analysis. But the term is fuzzy. Emily Bender, professor of linguistics at the UW, is quoted.

The UW's new Global Literary Studies major encourages students to explore literary traditions from around the globe and all eras of human history.

In Singapore’s growing microcosm of modern multiculturalism, literary translators bridge people across walks of life. These skilled story-weavers shoulder the responsibility of making our far-reaching roots accessible to readers around the world. Nazry Bahrawi, Assistant Professor of Asian Languages and Literature, is quoted.

Recipes generated by artificial intelligence are increasingly popping up — and following, or trying to follow, them might lead to unexpected results, and not necessarily in a good way. Emily Bender, professor of linguistics at the UW, is quoted.

Chinese, like the other earliest inventions of writing, emerged in complex societies, where people needed to use symbols for writing. The script started as pictures, but quickly evolved to incorporate other mechanisms capable of indicating abstract concepts and grammatical structures. When Classical (or ancient) Chinese script spread, literate people in other cultures not only mastered it, but they then used it to represent their own distinct spoken languages in written form. Zev Handel, professor and department chair of Asian languages and literature at the UW, is quoted.

"Wabi-sabi is typically described as a traditional Japanese aesthetic: the beauty of something perfectly imperfect, in the sense of 'flawed' or 'unfinished.' Actually, however, wabi and sabi are similar but distinct concepts, yoked together far more often outside Japan than in it," writes Paul Atkins, professor of Asian languages and literature at the UW.

Recruiters are eager to use generative AI, but a Bloomberg experiment found bias against job candidates based on their names alone. Emily Bender, professor of linguistics at the UW, is quoted.

"Interesting, frustrating, and necessary,” is how Sarah Levin-Richardson, professor of Classics, describes her research into the lives of enslaved individuals in the ancient world.