University of Washington

6  U N I V E R S I T Y O F W A S H I N G T O N Liora Halperin is joining the UW this fall as the inaugural holder of the Rebecca and Jack Benaroya Chair in Israel Studies in the Jackson School of International Studies. She earned her PhD in history from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2011. Her book, Babel in Zion: Jews, Nationalism, and Language Diversity in Palestine, 1920–1948, was published by Yale University Press in 2014. Halperin will hold a joint appointment with the Jackson School and the Department of History. Star Murray joined the Department of History as the new Assistant to the Chair in October 2016. Murray has almost ten years of administrative experience at the UW, most recently with the School of Social Work, where she implemented two federally funded professional training grants. NEW FACES Scott Kurashige is a professor in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington Bothell. He earned his PhD in history from the University of California, Los Angeles. Kurashige's scholarship is centered on the comparative and intersectional study of race and ethnicity, with a focus on the United States in the twentieth and twenty first centuries. He is the author of The Shifting Grounds of Race: Black and Japanese Americans in the Making of Multiethnic Los Angeles published by Princeton University Press in 2008 and the recently released The Fifty-Year Rebellion: How the U.S. Political Crisis Began in Detroit published by the University of California Press. Kurashige will be an adjunct faculty member of the Department of History. resource studies and administrative histories for parks, primarily in the Pacific Islands, as well as oral history projects, grant reviews, and a park reconnaissance survey. In 2016, in partnership with University of Oregon faculty, Johnson organized and participated in a workshop on the island of Pohnpei in the Federated States of Micronesia on the topic of climate change adaptation strategies for cultural landscapes. According to Johnson, "This work, especially in the Pacific Islands, has been challenging and profoundly humbling. I am extremely fortunate to have had the opportunity to visit and get to know so many incredible places. It is especially rewarding to have been able to work with diverse groups of people including managers and park staff, academics from a variety of disciplines, and community members to find ways to best protect and interpret important historical and cultural sites." In addition to Johnson, other former UW students Christine Avery (MA, 2004) and Frederick Brown (PhD, 2010) have also been active in the Seattle office. David Louter (PhD, 2000) is the Cultural Resources Program chief and the author of Windshield Wilderness: Cars, Roads and Nature in Washington's National Parks, published by the University of Washington Press in 2006. Several current students have connections to the NPS as well. Cyrus Forman, a PhD candidate, served as the lead interpretive ranger at the African Burial Ground National Monument in New York City for five years, providing and devising interpretive programming for hundreds of thousands of visitors. In his time there, he personally witnessed how challenging, complicated historical narratives spurred public engagement and was inspired to develop his own research along similar lines. While pursuing his doctorate, Forman has continued to consult with NPS units he has been involved with, backpack in natural sites, and maintain a deep interest in public lands and public history. Rachel Lanier Taylor, also a PhD candidate, spent this summer as a historian with the agency. She worked with the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) on documenting the boiler room and steam plant at the hospital on Ellis Island. Based in Washington, DC, Rachel spent several weeks on-site in New York. Finally, the PhD candidate Eleanor Mahoney worked for several years as the assistant national coordinator for the National Heritage Areas Program. Later, she directed programs for a Chesapeake Bay–based NPS friends group. More recently, Mahoney taught a course on the history of the National Park Service during the 2016 summer session. PHD CANDIDATE ELEANOR MAHONEY HELPED DIRECT THE NATIONAL HERITAGE AREAS PROGRAM AND TAUGHT A COURSE ON THE HISTORY OF NATIONAL PARKS. PHOTO: MARC STUDER (UW BOTHELL) 6  U N I V E R S I T Y O F W A S H I N G T O N

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