Three new faculty books from the ÁńÁ«ÊÓÆ” cover the recipes and culture of the world’s largest Syrian refugee camp, traditional ecological knowledge of Indigenous peoples and data science for neuroimaging researchers.

UW News spoke with the authors to learn more.

Documenting history and rituals of Syrian cuisine

When was invited to Zaatari, the world’s largest Syrian refugee camp, she noticed that stories of the camp rarely included women’s voices. As she learned more about their lives, she had the idea to create a cookbook to counter the effects of domicide – the deliberate destruction of housing and basic infrastructure – and carve a space for the women to share their cultural knowledge with the world.

Published by Goose Lane Editions, “,” brings to life stories and traditions that have been passed down from generation to generation. Fisher wrote the book in collaboration with over 2,000 refugees. All royalties return to the people of Zaatari, which is located near Jordan’s border with Syria.

“The book was a way to increase global awareness about war and refugees, and to show how important food and other aspects of the culture are in human survival and in telling the human story,” said Fisher, a UW professor in the Information School and an adjunct professor of communication.

The women in the camp were excited when Fisher approached them with the idea – even though many of them had never seen a cookbook.

“Part of why our book is so fascinating is that it focuses on tacit knowledge and the social nature of cooking,” Fisher said. “You learn to cook by cooking alongside somebody else.”

With over 130 recipes, some of which have never been written down before, the book documents the history and rituals of Syrian cuisine and how they have been adapted to life in a refugee camp. It also chronicles camp culture.

“We cannot lose our connections with humanity,” Fisher said. “Just because someone is a refugee living in a camp halfway around the world, doesn’t mean that their lives don’t have value. They are important within the global world that we live in and are all part of the history of humanity. All of these things need to be preserved and supported.”

Because they are war refugees, the people involved in the project were all credited with aliases. The photographs of the women were also taken from behind to protect their identities and as part of Islamic practice.

“The Zaatari book is just a powerful example of the UW community-engaged research, of working with a refugee community and agencies inside a high security closed refugee camp,” Fisher said. “It was just incredible what we were able to do.”

For more information, contact Fisher at fisher@uw.edu.Ìę

Collection highlights Indigenous environmental knowledge

In “,” presenters from the discuss best practices for traditional ecological knowledge, or TEK, which refers to evolving knowledge acquired by Indigenous peoples through direct contact with the environment.

(enrolled Haliwa Saponi/descendant Eastern Band Cherokee), who is an associate professor and chair of Social and Historical studies in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the ÁńÁ«ÊÓÆ” Tacoma, edited the book. She brought together speakers from the Indigenous Speakers Series and multigenerational Indigenous peoples to share how TEK aids in environmental justice efforts and why it should be adapted into Western sciences.

Launched by Montgomery in 2015, the Indigenous Speaker Series is a multi-purpose platform that promotes community partnerships, amplifies the voices of Indigenous people and dialogues about Indigenous people’s cultural and traditional lived experiences.

“Part of the Indigenous Speaker Series is about bringing in multigenerational voices to talk about all sorts of topics that relate to sustainability, because sustainability isn’t just about ecosystems or STEM initiatives,” Montgomery said. “It’s also about culture, identity, all those sorts of things. This project is about me really being passionate about decolonizing and indigenizing the narrative.”

As the founder and director of the Indigenous Speaker Series and “a humble, forever student,” Montgomery wanted to give back to the community by helping people share their stories.

“Culturally, I’m taught that my wealth is determined by how many people can say I contributed when asked,” Montgomery said. “Did I give back? How many people did I uplift as I made it on the journey? Being an editor, it sounds like a position of unique power. But to me, it was a humbling opportunity to reach out to people and to say, ‘I believe in your voice. Let me create a platform so you can share it.’”

Storytelling is about empowerment and justice, Montgomery said. Published by University Press of Colorado, the book is a multi-tribal collection and a space for people from all walks of life to share interdisciplinary knowledge through their stories.

“The reason why it’s important for me to always uplift the voices and the storytelling of people is that I want people to feel comfortable in their identity and the walk that they walk,” Montgomery said. “If you save spaces to tell their story, erasure doesn’t happen.”

For more information, contact Montgomery at montgm2@uw.edu.Ìę

A new guide on data science for researchers

“,” recently published by Princeton University Press, serves as a guide to broadly relevant data science skills with specific application to neuroimaging research.

Written by , research associate professor of psychology at the UW and data science fellow at the UW eScience Institute, and , the book fills the need for an authoritative resource on data science for neuroimaging researchers.

“We’re both neuroimaging researchers and both of us painstakingly acquired data science skills by learning from mentors and peers and teaching ourselves,” Rokem said. “What we wanted to do was make that process a lot easier, especially for early-career researchers in our field.”

In 2016, Rokem and Yarkoni established a summer school focused on data science and neuroimaging. They’ve received funding from the National Institutes of Mental Health since 2017 to run the course, which is now called . Over the years, they identified gaps in existing training and worked to fill them.

In June, The Organization for Human Brain Mapping (OHBM) awarded Rokem the , which is given to an OHBM member who has made significant contribution to education and training in the field of neuroimaging. Rokem was recognized for the work that led to the book, among other accomplishments.

Formal training programs don’t typically cover topics like data management and programming topics in machine learning, Rokem said. The book provides a source that students, teachers and instructors can use to learn and teach about these skills.

“Neuroimaging and neuroscience research, much like many other fields, is inundated in data,” Rokem said. “The instruments that we use to make neuroimaging measurements and the datasets that we have available to us are all becoming larger, more complicated.”

Researchers who are mentoring students don’t always have experience with the current magnitude of available datasets. “Data Science for Neuroimaging: An Introduction” helps bridge the gap.

There is also a growing concern about reproducibility in the neuroimaging field, Rokem said.

“One of the ways to mitigate concerns about reproducibility is to automate everything, track the progress of the research and then make the research openly available in a way that others can inspect what we’re doing,” Rokem said. “This is part of a larger movement around open science and reproducible research that the eScience Institute has been advancing here at the UW. Part of what we write about in the book is, what are the tools and techniques for making research accessible to and reproducible by others?”

The book, which allows users to run code examples and experiment with them hands-on, is also openly.

For more information, contact Rokem at arokem@uw.edu.

When was a graduate student, she visited elementary schools with other members of her program to talk about science and give demonstrations. But explaining their work and research to the students was a challenge, which gave Rorrer the idea to use coloring pages.

“The coloring idea came from the fact that I like to doodle,” said Rorrer, an assistant professor of chemical engineering at the ÁńÁ«ÊÓÆ”. “I like to draw, and coloring is kind of a ubiquitous medium. I think kids love it. Adults love it. And so, I thought, why don’t we bring the two together and use the coloring pages to explain the research?”

is a free, all-ages coloring book series that brings current doctorate-level research in science and engineering to a general audience. Each coloring page includes illustrations and descriptions of research papers and projects — all presented in a way that anyone can understand, on some level.

“Some of the descriptions are written toward more of a high school reading level,” Rorrer said. “An elementary schooler might not necessarily understand everything that’s going on in the descriptions. But my hope would be that they can still learn from it, enjoy coloring it, start to develop an interest in the science and maybe see themselves represented in some of the scientists that are featured.

“But I do think adult coloring is a really big trend. I think it’s for everyone. Everyone has something to learn.”

The first coloring book volume was a collaboration between Rorrer and other graduate students in her program at the University of California, Berkeley. The researchers illustrated some of the pages  themselves, while others worked with Rorrer on the drawings and descriptions of their work. One page explains photosynthesis through an illustration of a sunflower sitting at a table holding utensils and preparing to eat stacks of pancakes. Another shows how plant waste is turned into sustainable fuel. Each step has a picture to color, from a power plant to a farm with a windmill to a car at a gas pump.

“For the second volume, I started getting a lot of people who were really interested in collaborating and having me illustrate their work and work with them on the description,” Rorrer said. “I actually ended up putting a little application form on the website where, if someone had a pitch for a coloring page to feature some of their research — whether it be a recent publication or just kind of a general area of research in their group — they could write a little blurb about it and submit.”

With interested researchers from all over the U.S. and a few from outside the country, the second volume featured work from various fields of study, such as RNA, service dogs, the gut bacteria of insects and DNA. It was also the first themed volume: Women in STEM.

The website also offers themed pages featuring people of color and their work in STEM.

“We have a few coloring pages highlighting different history-making scientists,” Rorrer said. “We have a theme series for Black History Month, Hispanic Heritage Month, things like that. I would really love to expand those pages and celebrate more diversity and history makers in the sciences.”

Rorrer is also working on translating existing pages: The website already has a few pages available in Spanish, including those that are part of the Hispanic Heritage Month collection.

“We had a couple of other volunteers who have been slowly chipping away at other languages as well,” Rorrer said. “So many scientists are multilingual, and I think it’s such a wonderful thing to have volunteers help with explaining the science in different languages and reach out to a broader audience.”

Audience feedback has been very positive, Rorrer said. There have been more than 30,000 downloads and the pages are even being used as learning tools in K-12 classrooms.

“The hope is that the general public can kind of learn about research and science and engineering,” Rorrer said, “and aspiring scientists can get excited about potential schooling and career opportunities.”

For more information, contact Rorrer at jrorrer@uw.edu.

Three new faculty books from the ÁńÁ«ÊÓÆ” cover wide-ranging topics: life in the Rio Grande Valley, fossils of Washington state and the colonial roots of contemporary intersex medicine. UW News talked with the authors to learn more.

Collection highlights life in Rio Grande Valley

“” is a collection of short stories and comics from , professor of Slavic languages and literature at the UW. The works are mostly set in the Rio Grande Valley along the Texas-Mexico border, where Alaniz grew up as a second-generation Mexican American.

“I wanted to come up with a collection that would speak to that area,” Alaniz said. “There is Chicano literature, and there’s even literature from the valley, but it’s just not very well known. I really wanted to highlight that part of my life and material that’s been influenced by it.”

Some of the collection is autobiographical, while other pieces are fiction. Alaniz also combined stories he created years ago with newer works.

“It runs the gamut in terms of genre,” Alaniz said. “What I’m trying to do is create a sort of hybrid text where some of the same stories get repeated in the prose section and the comic section. They speak to each other. It destabalizes what we mean by memory.”

A story told in comic form is typically perceived as funny or irreverent, Alaniz said. The same story told through text is often taken more seriously, even if the narrative hasn’t changed.

“Puro Pinche True Fictions,” published in September by Flowersong Press, opens with “Genoveva,” which features Alaniz’s paternal grandfather. Much of the text was taken from interviews that Alaniz conducted with him.

“A lot of what he says is in the kind of Spanish that was spoken on the border by people from his generation that weren’t educated,” Alaniz said. “I don’t translate much of it, partly to honor what made him, him. To translate him would alter that. Hopefully, people from the valley or people who speak that kind of Spanish will feel seen and heard.”

Another story, “Tamales,” is a science fiction piece about a migrant family traveling to Mars for work in the year 2063. Their rocket ship crash lands and many of the migrants are killed. The piece is a nod to science fiction author Ray Bradbury, who often wrote about Mars. But it also tells the story of Alaniz’s maternal grandparents crossing the border and their relationship with their son, Alaniz’s uncle. Much of the dialogue is taken verbatim from Alaniz’s grandparents, whom he recorded before they died.

“This collection is a gift for the people of the Rio Grande Valley,” Alaniz said. “It’s not a gift that they will always like, because it’s not a romanticized version. There’s trauma. It’s not all roses. But I hope they recognize a voice that comes from that place, which still means a lot to me. I like to think I haven’t forgotten where I came from.”

“Puro Pinche True Fictions” is Alaniz’s second publication this year. In March, he released “.” Alaniz first published the comic strip “Moscow Calling” in the 1990s while working in Russia as a journalist. It was featured in the English-language newspaper The Moscow Tribune. The new collection completes the strip’s storyline as a graphic novella and adds new material, including a short story about the war in Ukraine.

For more information, contact Alaniz at jos23@uw.edu.

Uncovering the fossils of Washington state

Washington state is home to more than half-billion years of natural history. In “,”  and David B. Williams dive into this rich history to tell the stories of 24 fossils found in the state.

“I’ve been a paleontologist for a very long time. I started working at the ÁńÁ«ÊÓÆ” in 1992, and through all these years I have met so many people,” said Nesbitt, former curator of paleontology at the Burke Museum. “They were all very interested in fossils from Washington. Many of them asked if they could read more and there is no book. So, I realized I had to write a book.”

Nesbitt collaborated with Williams, an independent science writer, for four years to bring these stories to the public.

“He’s published a number of really exciting books, and I love the way he writes,” Nesbitt said. “When I started writing my book, I realized it was a bit boring. Although the topics were great, I’m just not a general science writer. I write academic papers, and so I asked David if he was interested in collaborating and bringing the book to life. He was, and I was thrilled with that.”

The book doesn’t just tell the story of fossils in the state. It’s also about the field of paleontology and those who work behind the scenes to bring fossils to light.

“It is about Washington, but it is not all the fossils in Washington. This is a selection of the ones that I found people were interested in, the ones that have interesting stories behind them,” Nesbitt said. “It’s also a book about the people who found the fossils and the people who worked on the fossils.

“It’s a book about how paleontology has changed and how the science has changed in the last 50 years. It’s become much more technological, much more comparative and much more integrated into the other science fields. Hopefully I’ve got all of that into the book.”

For more information, contact Nesbitt at nesbittlizanne@gmail.com.

Examining colonial roots of intersex medicine

In “,” recently published by Duke University Press,  examines how colonialism and scientific racism are inherent to contemporary intersex medicine.

Swarr developed the book from research she started as a graduate student in the 1990s when she first came across the claim that intersex was more common among Black people than white people. As she investigated the falsity, Swarr met Sally Gross, the founder of Intersex South Africa, the first intersex organization on the African continent. When Gross died in 2014, Swarr set out to finish the book as a tribute to the work of Gross and other activists.

While Swarr initially thought the false claim stemmed from 1970s literature, she soon discovered the roots stretched back to the 1600s when colonizers arrived in what is now known as South Africa.

“I found echoes and traces of this claim throughout history,” said Swarr, associate professor of gender, women and sexuality studies. “The ways that intersex was racialized was striking to me. I think it’s manifested in a lot of ways, over time and in how race and gender manifest in bodies that are pathologized. You see this in museum representations and in film. There is strong historical resonance.”

The topic is currently most often discussed through the treatment of intersex athletes.ÌęSwarr opens the book by writing about , a South African middle-distance runner who has won two Olympic gold medals and three world championships in the 800-meter event. Semenya faces continual allegations that her body is “too masculine” for women’s sports.

Semenya was subjected to examinations of her reproductive organs and evaluations of her chromosomes and hormones. The International Olympic Organizing Committee has prohibited her from competing unless she has surgery or pharmaceutically alters her natural testosterone levels, a decision she continues to fight.

“My book offers a perspective on the ways that racism and discrimination against those in the  are an integral part of the conversation,” Swarr said. “We can’t talk about contemporary sex testing without talking about colonialism and racism.”

The book also highlights the growth of the African intersex social movement, particularly with the expansion of social media.ÌęSwarr said there is now more of an opportunity to create community and rally for intersex justice with and for intersex people who might have otherwise been isolated.

“They’ve created educational online videos and hashtag campaigns to support folks who’ve been targeted, like Caster Semenya and others who have experienced violence,” Swarr said. “Their ability to share their strategies and reach out to change the hearts and minds of everyday people and to influence legislation and doctors’ protocols has been impressive. It helps to disrupt the idea that social movements are more advanced in the Global North.”

Swarr is donating all author royalties from the book to . The book can also be accessed .

For more information, contact Swarr at aswarr@uw.edu.

Three new faculty books from the ÁńÁ«ÊÓÆ” cover wide-ranging topics: oysters, the moral contradictions of religion, and Cherokee creature names and environmental relationships. UW News talked with the authors to learn more.

Updated ‘Heaven on the Half Shell’ a ‘love letter’ to oysters

Oysters are a beloved food in the Pacific Northwest, but many people don’t realize what it’s taken to bring this bivalve from tide to table. “” dives into this very topic, providing readers with insight into the diverse history and communities involved with all things oysters

The book was written by and of the along with author . Originally published in 2001, “Heaven on the Half Shell” has been updated and republished two decades later by UW Press.Ìę Double the length of the original, the new version includes an additional chapter as well as more photos and text.

“Over the course of 20 years, it needed a lot of updating,” said Gordon. “There was originally no mention, for example, of ocean acidification in the book. That is probably the biggest confrontational point nowadays, but it wasn’t on the radar then. I felt it badly needed some updating, and I’m glad that the Sea Grant people agreed with me.”

The story of the oyster “includes a lot of social history, environmental history and the development of what we know as the Pacific Northwest,” Larson said.

“One big focus that we had on this new edition was really elevating our treatment of the tribal history and carrying that history up to date with how important many tribes are in terms of owning and operating their own shellfish farms today,” Larson said. “That’s another slice of history that can be told and looked at through this kind of unique perspective.”

Apart from oyster history, the book also provides readers with a behind-the-scenes look at modern-day oyster farming and recipes for how to enjoy oysters after the harvest.

“The ways that we’ve been eating them in the past and the ways that we’re eating them now are different,” Wagner said. “I personally wanted to document that and show how it changed over time and the different faces that have contributed to those recipes.”

The oyster farming industry has evolved since the book’s initial publication, with environmental changes like ocean acidification and rising temperatures causing new issues for farmers. But the underlying theme of the book and the main requirement for a thriving oyster industry remains clean water, Gordon said. The Pacific Northwest still has pristine waters in many places and a growing population that understands its role in the industry.

“This book is basically a love letter to the oyster,” Gordon said. “And it’s great, because I’ve always felt that in order to get people motivated to protect the natural resources, you have to get them to love the environment.”

For more information, contact Wagner at maryannb@uw.edu, Larson at larsonsa@uw.edu, and Gordon at david@davidgeorgegordon.com.

Mark Smith’s ‘Right from Wrong’ reveals moral contradictions of religion

It seems harder and harder in today’s world for people to come together to respectfully debate an issue, consider alternative viewpoints and reach a consensus. But such a process is vital to determining how we will function and progress as a society, argues in his new book.

In “,” published by Prometheus Books, Smith tackles religious and secular approaches to establishing a moral code. He underscores contradictions in the texts and challenges the defenses of Christianity – a form of theology known as apologetics.

“One major part of my book explores how pious members of book-based religions grapple with scriptures that any modern person would have difficulty swallowing,” said Smith, a UW professor of political science. “If the text justifies genocide, or defends patriarchy, or requires capital punishment for minor offenses, how can the believer respond?

“If you’re absolutely convinced that God is good, and that a set of scriptures captures his speech either through inspiration, as in Christianity or directly as in Islam, you’ve got to reconcile any challenges you face.”

Smith proposes that a process of inclusive deliberation is a more thoughtful, rational basis for establishing objective morality and the means of working together in community. He points to what is today a practice widely recognized as immoral – slavery – and prohibited around the world. But it took centuries of heated debate (and a civil war in the United States), as well as the spreading of abolitionist views through the printing press, and the stories and speeches of formerly enslaved people.

Today, Smith said, the shrinking of traditional media and the rise of social media often keep people from engaging in meaningful discussion.

“You can curate what you read, watch, and listen such that you never have to hear from people with contrary views. Social media, for its part, rewards those who preach to the choir.Ìę By doing so, you attract likes and followers. Anyone who tries to engage with the ‘other side’ gets quickly dismissed as a traitor to the cause,” Smith said. “The result is that we have many siloed conversations that rely on distortion and straw man tactics rather than true deliberation across lines of political difference.”

But it’s still possible, Smith said, among people of all faiths, or no faith.Ìę He writes in the book’s conclusion: “No person has all the answers, but if we put our minds together, we can make progress on even the most difficult moral questions.”

For more information, contact Smith at masmith@uw.edu.

Exploring nature through Cherokee creature names

In “,” , professor and chair of American Indian Studies at the UW, explores nature and the world through Cherokee creature names, environmental relationships, traditional stories and philosophical discussions with fluent Cherokee speakers and knowledge keepers.

Published by UW Press, the book provides a unique perspective of the world we live in by bringing together decades of oral history. The creature names – Cherokee words for the natural world, including birds, animals, edible plants, reptiles, amphibians, trees, insects, plants and fish – were collected orally from elders over a 30-year span by , the late Cherokee cultural leader.

Loretta Shade, Hastings’ wife, and their son, Larry, shared the collection with Teuton and said they wanted to publish. Written in collaboration with the Shades, “Cherokee Earth Dwellers” documents more than 600 creature names.

“As we went over the collection and looked through all these different names, and all the stories that are attached to the creature names, we realized this is more than just something like a dictionary,” Teuton said. “It’s actually a Cherokee ecology through words and relationships. And so, we began to work together and reached out to other elders to get their input on the project and to reflect on the collection created by Hasting Shade.”

This community-driven collaboration was written “with the goal of creating a work of art and a work of language, revitalization and cultural revitalization that would be valued by all Cherokee people.” Teuton hopes it can be used as a resource by people studying the Cherokee language as it includes spellings, pronunciations, meanings for various names and stories told by traditional storytellers in the community.

“This book can teach about the natural world and about traditional ways of understanding oneself in relation to the relatives that we have among us —plant relatives, animal relatives, fish relatives,” Teuton said. “All the different creatures of the natural world with whom we have relationships, dependencies and reciprocal engagements with.”

For more information, contact Teuton at teuton@uw.edu.

Three new faculty books from the ÁńÁ«ÊÓÆ” cover topics ranging from children’s use of technology to the life experiences of Black women to neuroscience and brain research. UW News talked with the authors to learn more.

Guiding healthy interactions between children and technology

Technology plays a fundamental role in nearly every aspect of our lives, but finding ways to guide healthy usage of technology among young minds remains a tumultuous process.

In “,” , associate professor in the UW Information School, explains how technology affects children in the various stages of their childhood. Published in March by MIT Press, the book provides parents and teachers with ideas to help kids navigate the digital world in a healthy way.

“I’ve been researching technology’s role in child development for almost 20 years now, and throughout that time I have repeatedly gotten questions like, ‘Is technology good or bad for my kid?’” Davis said. “So I really wanted to take this complicated landscape of research that has accumulated over the last couple of decades and make sense of it in a way that could offer something concrete for parents, teachers and policymakers, and even for technology designers and researchers.

“The goal here is to offer a concrete framework for making sense of what we know about the interaction between technology design and child development that will guide good decisions on these different levels.”

Using her experiences as a researcher, parent, teacher and older sister, Davis highlights the difficulties in identifying a clear approach to dealing with technology and children.

“We have accumulated quite a bit of research over the last couple of decades. It doesn’t point to one clear answer,” Davis said. “That’s partly because technologies are different. But also children are very different, and their circumstances are very different. A one-size-fits-all approach really doesn’t work when we’re talking about kids and technology.”

In the book, Davis introduces the idea of the “good enough digital parent,” updating the mid-twentieth century theory of the “good enough mother” to fit the modern world.

“The good enough digital parent is trying to do their best,” Davis said. “They’re trying to steer their children towards self-directed, community supported digital experiences, but with the recognition that they’re not going to be perfect all the time. It’s the idea that, with your child, you’re both developing and figuring this out together, making mistakes and adjusting along the way, and then also importantly recognizing that these are challenging things to deal with.”

Davis concludes that some of the onus must be taken off the family unit and placed back on industry and government regulation. It’s important, she said, to think of ways in which the different levels of society can pitch in and help solve these challenges.

For more information, contact Davis at kdavis78@uw.edu.

Emotion, creativity and knowledge intertwine in ‘Feelin’

Early in her new book exploring the art, emotion and life experiences of Black women, makes clear the title, “Feelin,” is intentional, to be written, uttered and understood exactly as is.

“I’m grounding it in the cultural space of African American language and knowledge production. The context in which the word feelin would be used — I’m feelin that, I’m not feelin that, you feel me — that marks knowledge, a kind of complete understanding of something,” says Judd, an associate professor of gender, women and sexuality studies. “I consider the word whole in its own right, and to use an apostrophe would mark where something is missing. To take seriously the cultural meanings of the term, the language from which it comes from, I’m no longer using the standard English reference. I’m using the cultural term.”

Published by Northwestern University Press, “” is a book that, like the very meaning of the title, Judd wants the reader to experience. Each chapter delves into an issue, idea or perspective through the lens of creative works.

A chapter on song as ecstatic practice delves into the music of a series of vocalists and in particular, of Aretha Franklin and Avery*Sunshine. Another chapter confronts the stereotype of the angry Black woman, and the emotion of anger, through Nina Simone’s song “Mississippi Goddam” (and the backlash she faced for it), and Judd’s own poetry and haunting video reflecting on Sandra Bland, who died in police custody after a 2015 traffic stop in Texas.

That video is just one of many works Judd invites the reader to view, listen to or read by scanning QR codes scattered throughout the book. But they’re not meant to be supplementary, like the CD-ROMS that used to be tucked inside covers, Judd says. “I think of it as a part of the experience of the book. It’s not bonus material. It IS the material.”

Judd sees “Feelin” as a coalescing of ideas over time.

“It was understanding the depth of how these Black women artists, writers and musicians were calling on people to detach themselves from this idea that valuable knowledge is non-emotional and exists only in the realm of what one set of people thinks is rational, and that desire to remove us from knowledge that is felt is another way of discounting our stories, another way of discounting our experience,” Judd said.

And the cover art? Judd’s own, a mixed media piece called “Following the Bright Back of the Woman.”

For more information, contact Judd at bjudd@uw.edu.

Look inside your brain with ‘Neuropedia’

Neuroscience and brain research is a vast and deeply complicated field. A new book by , research associate professor in the UW Department of Bioengineering and executive director of the UW , is written specifically to take a public audience inside the fascinating world of the brain.

—published by Princeton University Press as part of their Pedia series and illustrated by Chudler’s daughter, Kelly Chudler — explores the mysteries of the brain and offers a peek behind the curtain of what really goes on inside our heads.

“This kind of book is more for the general public. It’s not supposed to be a textbook,” Chudler said. “It’s one of the many ways that I can communicate neuroscience and brain research to the public.”

Chudler hopes the book will help audiences develop a deeper appreciation for the intricacies of the brain and the field of neuroscience.

“There are many misconceptions, what we call neuro-myths, about the brain,” Chudler said. “So, I’d like people to get a basic understanding of the structure and function of the nervous system and some of the controversies involved. I hope that people will be able to appreciate and even empathize with people who are affected by diseases of the nervous system.”

Neurological and psychiatric diseases are a part of human life, and Chudler wants to help combat some of the negative beliefs associated with these diseases.

“I hope that people can better understand what’s going on with friends and family,” Chudler said, “and maybe even reduce stigma attached to neurological and mental disorders and perhaps even help people affected by these conditions.”

Written like an encyclopedia of all things neurological, the book functions like an extended glossary with entries from A-Z.

“People don’t have to read it from cover to cover. They can just flip through and read the short three or four paragraphs for each entry,” Chudler said. “Because each entry is short, you can’t get into too much depth. I hope people will read a particular entry and want to learn more and do some of their own research, because an entire book can be written about each entry.”

The book also includes references, illustrations and resources for those who want to learn more about various topics like Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and even the neurological effects of COVID.

“They’ll be provided with a basic understanding of how the nervous system works, some of the limitations of our understanding of the brain, the current state of research and maybe learn some facts or figures for the next time they’re on Jeopardy or at a trivia night,” Chudler said.

For more information, contact Chudler at chudler@uw.edu.