Thanks to the generosity of donors and other supporters, the Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest (CSPN) was able to offer a variety of well-attended events and activities for the 2025/26 academic year, both in Seattle and elsewhere.
In September, before classes even began, we held our annual Cascadia Environmental History Collaborative at Pack Forest, the UW-owned property near Eatonville. The retreat brings together Northwest scholars for a weekend of conversation, workshopping, interdisciplinary learning, and a hike at Mount Rainier. The 30-some attendees this year came from across the Pacific Northwest and beyond.
Maria John from the University of Massachusetts–Boston came to UW in October to discuss her new book, Sovereign Bodies, Sovereign Spaces: Urban Indigenous Health Activism in the United States and Australia (2025). Her visit and talk were the latest in a new series of events supported by the Michael J. Repass Endowed Fund in Pacific Northwest and Western American History.
In November, CSPN along with the Department of History, the Simpson Center for the Humanities, and the Quaternary Research Center hosted a special event celebrating the 30th anniversary of The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River (1995), the landmark work by Richard White (Stanford University, and formerly a member of the UW History faculty) that transformed how scholars think about nature, labor, and technology in the American West. The event featured White in conversation with leading scholars of this region and its environment: Jennifer O’Neal from the University of Oregon, Nathan Roberts from the University of Washington, Jennifer Seltz from Western Washington University, and Coll Thrush from the University of British Columbia. Moderated by Margaret O’Mara (UW), the event helped forge fresh interdisciplinary connections among scholars and students engaged in environmental studies across the University of Washington. The works presented at this event and additional reflections and essays will be published in the summer 2026 (Volume 116) issue of Pacific Northwest Quarterly.
We also celebrated two new Sick Books this year, by Coll Thrush and Aaron Goings. A long-standing collaboration between CSPN and UW Press, the Emil and Kathleen Sick Series in Western History and Biography seeks to deepen and expand our understanding of the West as a region and its role in the making of the United States and the modern world. In October, Coll Thrush, professor of history at the University of British Columbia (PhD, UW), came to campus to talk about his newest work, Wrecked: Unsettling Histories from the Graveyard of the Pacific. In March, Aaron Goings, professor of history at South Puget Sound Community College, discussed his recent book, Red Harbor: Radical Workers and Community Struggle in the Pacific Northwest. Both talks drew large audiences. The center also organized two manuscript workshops for upcoming books in the Sick Series. Contributors to the “Indigenous Crossings” project gathered in Chicago for an event cosponsored by Princeton University, the University of Helsinki, and the University of New Mexico; and other scholars gathered here at UW to meet with the recent UBC graduate Sarah Fox and discuss her forthcoming work, tentatively titled At Home in the Plume: Unruly Waste and Reckoning in the Pacific Northwest. We look forward to celebrating both books’ publications in the next year or so.
The center also continues to collaborate with Pacific Northwest Quarterly. The journal publishes essays by the authors of the Sick Books. This year, it also published a two-part theme issue on Latinx history in the Northwest, edited by Josué Q. Estrada of Central Washington University (and a UW PhD), and is currently preparing a theme issue with material from the Richard White event last fall.
Visit us at sites.uw.edu/cspn to learn about upcoming events or to subscribe to PNQ.