Reading Redhawks with SU Professor Jasmine Mahmoud and author Serin Houston

This two-part session features Jasmine Jamillah Mahmoud, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Performing Arts & Arts Leadership. Attendees should read the introduction as well as chapters 1, 3, and 4 of Imagining Seattle.

In Imagining Seattle, Serin D. Houston uses a case study of Seattle to shed light on how ideas about environmentalism, privilege, oppression, and economic growth have become entwined in contemporary discourse and practice in American cities.

On December 9, Serin Houston, author of Imagining Seattle will give a talk about her book followed by Q&A led by Dr. Mahmoud.

On December 10, Dr. Mahmoud will facilitate a mapping exercise with attendees inspired by the text. Attendees are encouraged to bring a blank piece of paper and crayons and markers in the following colors: black, brown, purple, blue, green, yellow, and red. Materials can be flexible, but this will help to drop into the exercise fully.

Support Black-owned book stores and purchase your book from Estelita's Library.

Jasmine Mahmoud is an urban ethnographer and performance historian who engages contemporary artistic practices, race, policy, and geography. Her fields and interests include: theater and performance studies, political economy, arts and cultural policy, black aesthetics, theories of the avant-garde, feminist/queer of color critique, and anti-racist, decolonial neighborhood processes beyond gentrification/displacement.

Serin Houston is an Assistant Professor of Geography and International Relations at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. Serin D. Houston’s research draws on qualitative methods and a geographic perspective to examine questions of equity and justice from the individual to the global scale. Her book, Imagining Seattle: Social Values in Urban Governance (2019), uses Seattle as a lens to analyze the translation of sustainability, creativity, and social justice from theory into praxis. Studying not only what policies and programs say, but also how they work in practice, Houston finds that racism and classism, matched with market-driven mandates, constrain the realization of these social values within the urban governance of Seattle, Washington.

Reading Redhawks is an online a book club-style learning opportunity full of engaging content and rich discussions, dedicated to inspired literature and our Redhawk community. Open to alumni, students, parents and families, faculty and staff, and friends of Seattle U.

For the 2020-21 academic year we will be focusing on social justice, diversity, equity and inclusion across multiple disciplines.

Look forward to a rotating lineup of topics led by Seattle U faculty, alumni and staff members.

These sessions are in partnership and collaboration with the Arts Leadership Program's 2021-2021 Book Club and the Office of Alumni Engagement at Seattle University.

See the full calendar of upcoming Reading Redhawks here.