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Alumni
Recent Alumni News
Amal Eqeiq (PhD 2013), Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and current Chair of Arabic Studies at Williams College, has published a new book, Indigenous Affinities: Toward Solidarity Across the Global South, due out this December from Fordham University Press.
We received news from CMS alumni Shea Formanes (BA, 2023) who won a 2025 Project Arts Grant through 4Culture for her upcoming short film, DIWATA. The film is a Filipino-American fantasy drama about a grandmother who ditches her 80th birthday (and toxic family) to resurrect her dead granddaughter, only to discover that her granddaughter has transformed into a diwata, a Filipino supernatural nature spirit that now guards the place where she died. Now reunited, both granddaughter…
Writer and poet Lena Khalaf Tuffaha (UW Comparative Literature alumna) was longlisted for the 2024 National Book Award for poetry for her latest collection, "Something About Living". Her recent interview with the Seattle Times is available here.
CMS graduate Mawahib Ismail (BA in CMS, 2023) was recently featured in an article on Real Change. Read about her project here: “A very unequivocally Somali story”: “Hooyo Macaan” depicts a tale rarely told on the silver screen.
Alumna Kenna Fojas (BA, CMS) wrote about her experience directing her first short film, "Peach Fuzz", and how it ignited her passion for filmmaking as a conduit for self-discovery in an article published in the November issue of Lifestyle Asia. An excerpt of article is available on the Lifestyle Asia site.
We received an update from Nobuko Yamasaki (Ph.D., Comparative Literature) that she has been appointed to a 5 year term on the executive committee of the LLC Japanese since 1900 forum for the Modern Language Association. Congratulations Nobuko!
Yamasaki is currently faculty at Lehigh University.
Lo Brown Major: Cinema and Media Studies (previously Comparative Literature) & Drama Class of 2007 Hometown: Tulsa, Oklahoma Favorite films: Nights Of Cabiria, The Conformist Current occupation and past experiences: Lo is currently a Producer at Daylighter Films where she works on developing stories from concept to production. In the past, she has worked at Netflix and multiple Creative Agencies. Lo took part in the production process of TV shows such as …
“Freedom’s Path” is an ambitious Civil War film with genuinely impressive production quality, but quite a few narrative missteps. The film, which took over 10 years to make, is writer, director, and UW alum Brett Smith’s first feature film. Read contributing writer Justin Shen's full film review.
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M.A. program alumnus Long Hoàng Trần (M.A. 2021) was selected to receive the Graduate School's 2022 Distinguished thesis award. His M.A. project titled “Việt Film Fest, Little Sài Gòn, U.S.A." is a study of Vietnamese films, with a particular emphasis on Vietnamese filmmakers living outside of Việt Nam that have participated in Việt Film Fest (formerly known as the Vietnamese International Film Festival). The thesis will be forwarded to the Western Association of Graduate…
Our first M.A. student in Cinema & Media Studies, Long Tran completed his graduate degree in Spring 2021. He immediately landed a job teaching media studies at Orting High School in western Washington, where he began teaching this fall. We are so proud of him! And can’t wait to see what he does next.
His short film “With Whom Shall We Live?” was selected for SEAxSEA (Southeast Asian X Seattle) Film Festival earlier this year.