Offen Poetry Prize Reading by Roger Reeves, 2.8.17 UChicago Division of the Arts & Humanities 2026-09-20 | Offen Poetry Prize Reading by Roger Reeves, 2.8.17
What is Anarchic Opera? | Yuval Sharon, Berlin Family Lectures UChicago Division of the Arts & Humanities 2025-07-23 | Berlin Family Lecturer and Visionary Opera Director Yuval Sharon defines how anarchy can apply to opera.
Sergio Luzzatto, The Dutch Kapo and the Flatness of Characters UChicago Division of the Arts & Humanities 2025-07-18 | Perhaps Primo Levi would have become a writer even without the ordeal of Auschwitz. But he would have been a different writer had the history of the twentieth century not indelibly marked the young Italian chemist’s life with the experience of that abyss. Hence, his works must also be read through the lens of historical analysis—to untangle the complex interplay between documented fact and literary transfiguration. Primo Levi has entered history as the quintessential witness to the Final Solution. Yet, to what extent should his formidable testimony be reconsidered today as being at once a documented historical artifact and a product of literary craftsmanship?
Sergio Luzzatto, “You,” “We,” and “I”: The Pronouns of the Final Solution UChicago Division of the Arts & Humanities 2025-07-18 | Perhaps Primo Levi would have become a writer even without the ordeal of Auschwitz. But he would have been a different writer had the history of the twentieth century not indelibly marked the young Italian chemist’s life with the experience of that abyss. Hence, his works must also be read through the lens of historical analysis—to untangle the complex interplay between documented fact and literary transfiguration. Primo Levi has entered history as the quintessential witness to the Final Solution. Yet, to what extent should his formidable testimony be reconsidered today as being at once a documented historical artifact and a product of literary craftsmanship?
John Cages Europera 5 directed by Yuval Sharon - 2025 Berlin Family Lectures UChicago Division of the Arts & Humanities 2025-06-10 | Visionary opera director Yuval Sharon presents the 2025 Berlin Family Lectures. Picking up on a line from his new book, A New Philosophy of Opera (2024), Sharon explores the question under his theme of "Anarchy at the Opera": Is opera a standard bearer or a pall bearer for the status quo? The final lecture concludes with a rare live performance of John Cage’s Europera 5, directed by Sharon, as a demonstration of the ideas explored in his talks.CastSinger 1: Whitney Morrison+Singer 2: Rolfe Dauz+Pianist: Jacob Reed**Dancer 1: Clara Nizard**Dancer 2: elena rose light**TeamDirector: Yuval SharonAssistant Director: Eleni Lefakis*Production Manager: Brianna Parry++Production Stage Manager: Mia Maccarella++Production Coordinator: Jake Snell+Lighting Designer: Garrett Bell++Assistant Lighting Designer: Will Rehmus*Costume Coordinator: Nathan Rohrer++Scenic & Projections Designer: Rasean Davonté Johnson+++Assistant Scenic & Projections Designer: Jo Selmeczy*Sound Designer: Hannah Foerschler++Props Coordinator: Jenny Pinson++Marketing Liaison: Abby Kane*+ Visiting Artist++ Theater and Performance Studies (TAPS) Staff+++ Assistant Senior Instructional Professor in TAPS* TAPS Major/Minor** UChicago PhD Student
Yuval Sharon John Cages Joyous Anarchy Lecture 3 of 3 - 2025 Berlin Family Lectures UChicago Division of the Arts & Humanities 2025-06-10 | Visionary opera director Yuval Sharon presents the 2025 Berlin Family Lectures. Picking up on a line from his new book, A New Philosophy of Opera (2024), Sharon explores the question under his theme of "Anarchy at the Opera": Is opera a standard bearer or a pall bearer for the status quo?These lectures explore both historic experiments in non-hierarchical creation—John Cage’s Europeras and the history of improvisation in opera—as well as Sharon’s own practical experiences with “anarchic” opera. The final lecture concludes with a rare live performance of John Cage’s Europera 5, directed by Sharon, as a demonstration of the ideas explored in his talks.
Yuval Sharon Burn Down the Opera Houses! Lecture 2 of 3 - 2025 Berlin Family Lectures UChicago Division of the Arts & Humanities 2025-06-10 | Visionary opera director Yuval Sharon presents the 2025 Berlin Family Lectures. Picking up on a line from his new book, A New Philosophy of Opera (2024), Sharon explores the question under his theme of "Anarchy at the Opera": Is opera a standard bearer or a pall bearer for the status quo?These lectures explore both historic experiments in non-hierarchical creation—John Cage’s Europeras and the history of improvisation in opera—as well as Sharon’s own practical experiences with “anarchic” opera. The final lecture concludes with a rare live performance of John Cage’s Europera 5, directed by Sharon, as a demonstration of the ideas explored in his talks.
Yuval Sharon Anarchy at the Opera Lecture 1 of 3 - 2025 Berlin Family Lectures UChicago Division of the Arts & Humanities 2025-06-10 | Visionary opera director Yuval Sharon presents the 2025 Berlin Family Lectures. Picking up on a line from his new book, A New Philosophy of Opera (2024), Sharon explores the question under his theme of "Anarchy at the Opera": Is opera a standard bearer or a pall bearer for the status quo?These lectures explore both historic experiments in non-hierarchical creation—John Cage’s Europeras and the history of improvisation in opera—as well as Sharon’s own practical experiences with “anarchic” opera. The final lecture concludes with a rare live performance of John Cage’s Europera 5, directed by Sharon, as a demonstration of the ideas explored in his talks.
Eric Slauter, Human Being and Citizen: A Hands-on Approach to the Humanities Core UChicago Division of the Arts & Humanities 2024-12-03 | At Humanities Day 2024, University of Chicago Deputy Dean and Assoc. Prof. Eric Slauter presented the session about “Human Being and Citizen: A Hands-On Approach to the Humanities Core.” Slauter began by asking the audience questions like: What is the Humanities Core? Why is it foundational to the University of Chicago’s educational mission? How did it come to be? And how has it changed over time? This session enabled participants to experience just one of the many ways that the Humanities Core Curriculum extends beyond the classroom, to appreciate changing approaches to the Humanities over the past century, and to learn about the depth of undergraduate research engagement with the University of Chicago’s Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center at the Regenstein Library. Slauter showed attendees rare books and manuscripts, including a papyrus fragment of The Iliad, a famous edition of Plato from the 1570s purchased by the first president of the University in 1891, a newspaper printing of the Declaration of Independence from 1776, and original posters from Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1966 speech on campus.
Philip V. Bohlman, On Goodness UChicago Division of the Arts & Humanities 2024-12-03 | University of Chicago Prof. Philip V. Bohlman presented the Humanities Day 2024 Keynote session “On Goodness.” Asked what the primary goal of their teaching and research is, many music scholars, and ethnomusicologists in particular, may answer simply: “to do good in the world.” According to Bohlman, the goodness that motivates music scholars, however, is anything but simple. Rather it takes shape as intersecting experiences of knowledge and practice in the arts and humanities. It is the pursuit of those experiences that leads scholars to empower musical practice and provide a voice for less fortunate people. Bohlman joined with musician colleagues from University of Chicago Asst. Prof. Jessica Swanston Baker and members of the “New Budapest Orpheum Society” and the “Taraf Ensemble” to give voice and sound to goodness for the sites and moments of precarity in today’s world.
James Osborne, Why Archaeologists Love Pottery UChicago Division of the Arts & Humanities 2024-12-03 | In the Humanities Day 2024 session about “Why Archaeologists Love Pottery,” University of Chicago Assoc. Prof. James Osborne examined the pivotal role of ancient pottery in archaeological research, focusing on the methodologies archaeologists use to analyze ceramic vessels and providing insights into the socio-cultural and economic aspects of past civilizations. By using actual pottery artifacts from the ISAC Museum's collection that offer tangible connection to historical contexts, Osborne gave attendees an understanding of the analytical techniques used to study pottery, underscoring the importance of ceramics in reconstructing human history and cultural interactions.
Faculty Panel, Arts and Humanities in Collaboration UChicago Division of the Arts & Humanities 2024-12-03 | Headed up by moderator University of Chicago Prof. Srikanth “Chicu” Reddy, a panel of experts—Assoc. Prof. of Practice Leslie Buxbaum, Prof. David J. Levin, Assoc. Prof. Tina Post, and Asst. Senior Instructional Prof. Julia Rhoads—discussed “Arts and Humanities in Collaboration” during Humanities Day 2024. With the flourishing of new arts programs in theater, creative writing, and media arts and design at the University of Chicago, the Humanities now reimagines itself as a place not only for thinking about art but also for making art. In this session, these five UChicago faculty members discussed how their “Arts Labs” initiatives at the University of Chicago’s Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society seek to shape a culture of experimentation and critical analysis around arts research. Their projects include conceptual and practical workshops in opera; a Movement Theory Lab; a dance-theater adaptation of a classic dramatic text; workshops for a new musical with Court Theatre; diversity initiatives in contemporary literary publishing; and renewed operations of the Black Cinema House.
Paleography and the Book Lecture 2024 with Japanese Manuscript Expert Peter Kornicki UChicago Division of the Arts & Humanities 2024-06-25 | "Why Did Matsudaira Sadanobu Copy the Tale of Genji Seven Times? Manuscript Culture in Edo Period Japan (1600‒1868)"Despite Japan’s Edo period's boom in commercial printing, Matsudaira Sadanobu, Japan's ruler from 1787-1793, hand-copied the Tale of Genji seven times. This highlights a fascinating contradiction: printed books were available, but many, including Sadanobu, clung to the art of manuscript writing. During his lecture, Peter Kornicki, one of the foremost experts in the history of the book in Japan, exposed the underworld of manuscript books, dealing with secret knowledge, shocking scandals, and obscure rituals.
First Day of Issue Ceremony for Postage Stamp Honoring Saul Bellow UChicago Division of the Arts & Humanities 2024-03-12 | Author, University of Chicago professor, and Nobel laureate Saul Bellow was remembered at the unveiling of the new U.S. postage stamp held on February 6, 2024, at the Social Science Research Building Tea Room at the University of Chicago.Speakers included:- Regina Aikens, ’98 (MBA), US Postal Service Manager Customer Relations IL 1- Torsten Reimer, University Librarian and Dean of the University Library, The University of Chicago- Gabriel Richardson Lear, Chair of the Committee on Social Thought, Professor of Philosophy and in the Committee on Social Thought, The University of Chicago- David Wellbery, LeRoy T. and Margaret Deffenbaugh Carlson University Professor of Germanic Studies, the Committee on Social Thought, and in the College, The University of Chicago- Sean Hargadon, US Postal Service Strategic CommunicationsThe Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center at the University of Chicago Library is home to the Saul Bellow Papers, 1926-2015.Bellow was a prolific writer and educator and the recipient of many awards, among them the Pulitzer Prize, the National Medal of Arts, the National Book Award for Fiction and the Nobel Prize in Literature. His best-known novels include The Adventures of Augie March, Henderson the Rain King, Herzog, Humboldt's Gift, Mr. Sammler's Planet, and Ravelstein.The Saul Bellow Papers contains personal ephemera; correspondence; materials related to the creation and publication of his writings; writings by others given to or collected by Bellow; writings about Bellow's life and work; administrative and teaching materials from the University of Chicago and Boston University; awards; photographs and audio recordings; artwork, broadsides, and posters.All interested researchers are welcome to consult the Saul Bellow Papers. You can learn more about how to make arrangements to visit Special Collections and consult collections at https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/scrc/visiting/reading-room-access/
Adriana Cavarero, “‘Speaking from the maternal womb’ with Elena Ferrante,” Lecture 3 of 3 UChicago Division of the Arts & Humanities 2024-01-05 | In the final Virgilio Lecture, titled “‘Speaking from the maternal womb’ with Elena Ferrante”, Adriana Cavarero examines the theme of maternity in the writings of the contemporary Italian novelist, Elena Ferrante, who places the theme of motherhood at the center of her works. Cavarero explores the connection in Ferrante’s texts between the task of rendering in words the literary truth of the dark side of motherhood and that of recounting the relation between mother and daughter—an exploration, thus, of the literary truth of motherhood.
Adriana Cavarero, Women breastfeeding wolf cubs in Euripides Bacchae, Lecture 2 of 3 UChicago Division of the Arts & Humanities 2024-01-05 | In this second lecture of the Virgilio Lecture Series, titled “Women breastfeeding wolf cubs in Euripides’ Bacchae,” Adriana Cavarero examines the imagery around the theme of motherhood in Euripides’ Bacchae. In the Bacchae, there is a distinctive world that exalts the fertility of a female body embedded in a nature which consists of the proliferation and sustenance of the living. How can we understand this maternity, this act of nourishment, when women take to breastfeeding wolf cubs in the Bacchae, in a world outside of the tradition boundaries of domesticity?
Adriana Cavarero, Singing with the sirens: voices of the Mediterranean myth, Lecture 1 of 3 UChicago Division of the Arts & Humanities 2024-01-05 | In this first lecture of the Virgilio Lecture Series, titled “Singing with the sirens: voices of the Mediterranean myth,” Adriana Cavarero explores the collective expression of the singing voice in the myth of the sirens. Through her reinterpretation of the myth, Cavarero investigates the central organizational meaning – the sirens’ singing – through the experience of the sirens themselves. As much as they are objects of sailors’s arousal, the sirens, too, find a pleasure in the act of singing.
W. J. T. Mitchell, From Robots to iBots: The Iconology of Artificial Intelligence UChicago Division of the Arts & Humanities 2023-11-22 | "From Robots to iBots: An Iconology of Artificial Intelligence" explored the current wave of utopian and dystopian speculation about the impact of General Artificial Intelligence on human affairs. Focusing on ChatGPT and the Large Language Models that make it possible to have conversations with a machine in ordinary language, the presentation explored the implications of this new technology for education, business, politics, and the whole relation of the human species to its inventions.
Daisy Delogu, The Afterlives of Joan of Arc UChicago Division of the Arts & Humanities 2023-11-22 | There is no doubt that Joan of Arc—15th-century heroine or heretic, depending on your point of view—led an extraordinary life. No less compelling are her seemingly countless, often contradictory, cultural afterlives. How can one person mean so much? This session examined some of the ways in which the figure of Joan has been invoked and deployed over the centuries since her execution to serve a dizzying array of religious, political, cultural, and artistic ends, from symbol of France, to figure of resistance, to model of personal integrity and courage.
Sarah Nooter, Queering the Classics: When Poetry Looks Back UChicago Division of the Arts & Humanities 2023-11-22 | The ancient Greeks thought that the future was to be found in the space behind (opisthe). To see what is in store for us, we must crane our necks and take a backwards glance. This session examined the work of both modern authors Frank Bidart, Thom Gunn, and Joe Brainard and ancient ones, including Catullus, Plato, and Homer, to suggest that the stance of classical study itself, in looking back to the past, echoes the queer stance of the backward glance to a lost loved one and to one’s own lost past that we find in both ancient and modern poetry.
2024-25 English Admissions: Media Aesthetics UChicago Division of the Arts & Humanities 2023-11-20 | For the 2024-2025 admissions cycle, the University of Chicago English Department is accepting only applicants planning to focus their graduate work on “media aesthetics.” We are looking for students who are asking and answering questions of how distinct mediums (print, performance, film, digital media, etc.) shape aesthetic experience, as well as those studying historical and cultural approaches to media and mediation. This work can be done in any period, and it can be transnational and multilinguistic in scope.
Paleography and the Book Lecture “Where Did Newspaper Typeface Come From?” UChicago Division of the Arts & Humanities 2023-06-30 | UChicago visiting scholar David Ganz discussed how influential scripts such as Caroline minuscule and Italian Humanistic served as models for typefaces like Times New Roman. In the later Middle Ages, Italian humanists rejected the gothic script used to copy manuscripts. They adopted littera antiqua, a script used in twelfth-century Italy, transforming the appearance of letters on the page. In 1932, The Times newspaper in London changed its typeface to Times New Roman, rapidly becoming the world's most influential typeface.To learn more, visit: paleographyandthebooklecture.uchicago.edu.
Mary Beard Fear and Loathing Lecture 3 of 3 UChicago Division of the Arts & Humanities 2023-06-02 | The 2023 Berlin Family Lectures with Acclaimed Classicist Mary Beard "What Can We Learn from the Classics?"Lecture three: "Fear and Loathing"April 26, 2023The Berlin Family Lectures 2023 will challenge some assumptions we may have about Classics. What do we mean by Classics, and what do we hope to get out of it? These lectures puncture some of the myths of the subject, both ancient and modern. In exploring the fun, the dangers, and the heady uncertainties that Classics bring, Mary Beard argues that it can help us to think differently, to look at the world with new eyes, and to understand better where our own assumptions come from.Lecture 3: Fear and Loathing The third lecture takes a more ethical turn. Starting from the days in 1938 when Hitler toured the monuments of Rome, it asks first about the conscription of Classics to the causes of fascism, dictatorship, and far-right politics. But it goes on to ask how we judge the ancient world itself, and how far the crimes of antiquity implicate the modern world too. Are we as far from those who sat in the arena watching human slaughter as we like to imagine?
Mary Beard The Shock of the Old Lecture 2 of 3 UChicago Division of the Arts & Humanities 2023-05-23 | The 2023 Berlin Family Lectures with Acclaimed Classicist Mary Beard "What Can We Learn from the Classics?"Lecture two: "The Shock of the Old"April 25, 2023The Berlin Family Lectures 2023 will challenge some assumptions we may have about Classics. What do we mean by Classics, and what do we hope to get out of it? These lectures puncture some of the myths of the subject, both ancient and modern. In exploring the fun, the dangers, and the heady uncertainties that Classics bring, Mary Beard argues that it can help us to think differently, to look at the world with new eyes, and to understand better where our own assumptions come from.Lecture 2: The Shock of the OldThe second lecture takes (and adapts) its title from Robert Hughes’s book on modern art, The Shock of the New. It asks what is “old” or “new” about Classics, from the art of antiquity to modern times. It is also about the central role of the humanities (of which Classics is the most extreme example) in facing up to the dilemmas of modernity, in celebrating complexity, and in undermining self-confident presentism. One of the most important things that Classics can do is help us to discuss productively questions to which there are no right answers.
Mary Beard A Piece of Cake Lecture 1 of 3 UChicago Division of the Arts & Humanities 2023-05-17 | The 2023 Berlin Family Lectures with Acclaimed Classicist Mary Beard "What Can We Learn from the Classics?"Lecture one: "A Piece of Cake"April 20, 2023The Berlin Family Lectures 2023 will challenge some assumptions we may have about Classics. What do we mean by Classics, and what do we hope to get out of it? These lectures puncture some of the myths of the subject, both ancient and modern. In exploring the fun, the dangers, and the heady uncertainties that Classics bring, Mary Beard argues that it can help us to think differently, to look at the world with new eyes, and to understand better where our own assumptions come from.Lecture 1: A Piece of CakeThe first lecture begins with the piece of cake that was Mary Beard’s first encounter with the ancient world, and the wonderment that it instilled. That one small object launches a series of questions about what Classics is and the contests over its definition that go back centuries. This year is the 50th anniversary of Beard’s entry into the subject as a Classics major, and she uses that occasion partly as an opportunity to reflect on what has changed over the last half-century, and how differently she approaches the piece of cake now.
Kaneesha Parsard, The Friending Plot UChicago Division of the Arts & Humanities 2022-12-01 | "The Friending Plot"University of ChicagoOctober 15, 2022Kaneesha Parsard, Assistant Professor of EnglishWas the marriage plot of 18th- and 19th-century English literature, which saw women characters stake their futures to domesticity, universal? What were the colonies' plotlines? In Trinidad during the 1920s and 1930s, a group of writers penned short stories about working-class women who—amidst a global depression and personal hardship—reject marriage in favor of casual, transactional relationships known as "friending." This session offers the friending plot, in which subsistence, giving and receiving care, and pleasure in the present are the order of the day.
Cacchione, Mehring, Stockholder, Monochrome Multitudes: Art Historic, Curator, & Artist Perspectives UChicago Division of the Arts & Humanities 2022-12-01 | "Monochrome Multitudes: Art Historic, Curator, & Artist Perspectives"University of ChicagoOctober 15, 2022Orianna Cacchione, Curator of Global Contemporary Art, Smart MuseumChristine Mehring, Mary L. Block Professor of Art History and the CollegeJessica Stockholder, Raymond W. & Martha Hilpert Gruner Distinguished Service Professor of Visual ArtsMonochrome Multitudes, an exhibition at the David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, September 22, 2022–January 8, 2023, revisits a notoriously hermetic art to reveal its creative possibilities and conceive pedagogical strategies that make abstraction accessible from multiple perspectives. The exhibition aims to expand existing histories of “the monochrome” in three ways: articulating cultural, social, political, racial, or gendered meanings of monochrome art; emphasizing the hermeneutic significance of materials and media; and engaging North American art in a global dialogue. This session reflects on the exhibition through art historical, curatorial, and artistic points of view.
Kenneth W. Warren, Wealth, Inequality, and the Novel UChicago Division of the Arts & Humanities 2022-12-01 | "Wealth, Inequality, and the Novel"University of ChicagoOctober 15, 2022Kenneth W. Warren, Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor of EnglishAt least since the 18th century, novelists have wrestled with the question of whether the very idea of character—both as a moral quality and a representation of individuality—can withstand the pressure exerted by extreme wealth. To a great extent, however, this question has been raised only to assuage us with an assurance that the integrity of character can survive the erasure of social limits, and restraint made possible by extraordinary riches.
Ahmed El Shamsy, How Muslims Disposed of Books UChicago Division of the Arts & Humanities 2022-12-01 | "How Muslims Disposed of Books"University of ChicagoOctober 15, 2022Ahmed El Shamsy, Professor of Islamic Thought, Department of Near Eastern Languages and CivilizationsDestroying books has a very strong symbolic power. However, sometimes an individual just has to dispose of a text—even a sacred one—so what is one to do in that situation? This presentation provides a window into Muslim practices and debates on the question of what the acceptable ways are by which to retire, recycle, or destroy a sacred text, and trace these practices from the beginning of Islam to today and compare them to similar ones among Jews.
James K. Chandler, The Greatest Lyric in English? Reading Wordsworths Immortality Ode UChicago Division of the Arts & Humanities 2022-12-01 | "The Greatest Lyric in English? Reading Wordsworth's Immortality Ode"University of Chicago October 15, 2022James K. Chandler, William B. Ogden Distinguished Service Professor of EnglishThis session addresses a single poem, Wordsworth's famous “Intimations of Immortality Ode,” a text that has supplied lines and phrases that reverberate in modern literary culture: "trailing clouds of glory," "Shades of the prison-house," "splendor in the grass," "The Child is father of the Man," and "Thoughts that ... lie too deep for tears." Taken in its entirety, the Immortality Ode is a particularly challenging lyric with complex twists and turns, a work that amply rewards the kind of critical patience and close attention we will be bringing to it.
Claudia Rankine, Meanwhile in the Work of Artist and Filmmaker Titus Kaphar, Lecture 2 of 3 UChicago Division of the Arts & Humanities 2022-05-16 | The 2022 Berlin Family Lectures with Poet Claudia Rankine "Meanwhile"Lecture two: "Meanwhile in the Work of Artist and Filmmaker Titus Kaphar"April 13, 2022Artist and filmmaker Titus Kaphar’s depiction of mothers with their children transports Harvard scholar Homi K. Bhabha’s rift on the “risk to life” into the body to the viewer. Kaphar’s paintings stop time—resting on a single moment—while simultaneously harnessing a past and future present. This presentation will consider the ways in which the “risk to living” becomes the living. Rankine will consider how Kaphar ultimately does away with Meanwhile as he visually collapses all time into a continuous present.
Claudia Rankine, Meanwhile: A Work in Process Lecture 3 of 3 UChicago Division of the Arts & Humanities 2022-05-12 | The 2022 Berlin Family Lectures with Poet Claudia Rankine "Meanwhile"Lecture three: "Meanwhile: A Work in Process"April 14, 2022Through the Berlin Family Lectures focused on the concept of "Meanwhile," renowned poet and playwright Claudia Rankine extends historian Tina Campt’s theory of “felt sound,” which she defines as “sound that, like a hum, resonates in and as vibration,” into the realm of “felt time.” Rankine describes "Meanwhile" as the concurrent experience inside the everyday. This concept refuses amnesia given it is the existence that lives alongside and within the simultaneity of lived existence.Conceptually, Rankine asks during this lectures: • What are the consequences of being made to experience time as both distinct and simultaneous? • How can one minute, five minutes, or a symbolic eight minutes and forty-six seconds, affect a lifetime? • How are the moments that are “a risk to life” for a victim concurrently transformed into a “risk to living,” for the witness (to use Harvard scholar Homi K. Bhabha’s risk terminology)?
Claudia Rankine, Meanwhile in the Work of Artist Jennifer Packer, Lecture 1 of 3 UChicago Division of the Arts & Humanities 2022-05-11 | The 2022 Berlin Family Lectures with Poet Claudia Rankine "Meanwhile" Lecture 1: "Meanwhile in the Work of Artist Jennifer Packer"April 6, 2022Though Jennifer Packer’s paintings are frequently described as psychological depictions of interior lives, this first Berlin Family Lecture will consider how her paintings inhabit the processing of historical time. How does trauma live in the bodies that are not its apparent victims? After witnessing and videotaping the murder of George Floyd, Darnella Frazier said: “Everybody is asking me how I feel, I don't know how I feel.” How do utterances such as these sit within Packer’s work? Meanwhile, as we reckon with Frazier’s statement, how do Packer’s paintings manage and communicate traumatic time within the bodies of her subjects? How do her paintings exist in alternate spaces at the same time?
Book as Museum in Eighteenth-Century Museum, the Inaugural Paleography and the Book Lecture UChicago Division of the Arts & Humanities 2022-03-16 | Collections of antiquities depicted in richly illustrated books, many calling themselves museums, flourish in the eighteenth century when the public museum becomes a significant cultural institution in western Europe. These beautiful books mobilize the museum, bringing new forms of knowledge organization to readers far and wide. The books display cultural capital and, often, political power as well. Using case studies from Florence, Paris, and Naples, book historian Michael F. Suarez, S.J., examines this fascinating chapter in cultural and intellectual history.
Danziger Lecture 2021 with Judith Butler at the University of Chicago UChicago Division of the Arts & Humanities 2022-01-03 | Judith Butler, the Maxine Elliot Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley, presented the Danziger Lecture 2021 in Friedman Hall in the David Rubenstein Forum at the University of Chicago on Nov. 11, 2021.
UChicago Division of the Humanities Live Stream of the Danziger Lecture UChicago Division of the Arts & Humanities 2021-11-08 | Judith Butler, the Maxine Elliot Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of California at Berkeley, presents the Danziger Lecture 2021 on Nov. 11 from 5 to 7:30 p.m. in the Friedman Hall in the Rubenstein Forum at the University of Chicago, 1201 E. 60th Street, Chicago, Illinois 60637. She discusses "Fury and Justice in the Humanities."
Wu Hung, In the Name of Art—Destruction and Reconstruction UChicago Division of the Arts & Humanities 2021-11-05 | "In the Name of Art—Destruction and Reconstruction"University of ChicagoOctober 16, 2021Wu Hung, Harrie A. Vanderstappen Distinguished Service Professor of Art History and the CollegeIn human history, works of art are associated not only with creative imagination but also with constant destructive and reconstructive efforts. This presentation reflects on the destruction of Buddhist sites in China during the early 20th century, conducted not as iconoclastic acts but “in the name of art.” Political and economic factors undoubtedly contributed to such events, but was art historical scholarship itself also partially responsible for these tragedies? More important, how should today’s art historians and museum curators deal with this painful past?If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to humanities@uchicago.edu.
Haun Saussy, Tangled Genealogies of a Cultural Identity, Or, What Was Madame Bovary Doing In Haiti? UChicago Division of the Arts & Humanities 2021-11-05 | "Tangled Genealogies of a Cultural Identity, Or, What Was Madame Bovary Doing In Haiti?"University of ChicagoOctober 16, 2021 Haun Sausy, University Professor of Comparative LiteratureJean Price-Mars summed up 10 years of Indigéniste poetics when, in the preface to Thus Spake the Uncle (1928), a pivotal text of Caribbean post-colonial thought, he accused his fellow Haitian writers of “bovarysme,” of fantasizing that they were something that they were not. The passage is familiar—at least to Haitians—but the allusions it builds on are less so. The presenter will track those references backwards to Flaubert and Jules de Gaultier, and forward to Victor Segalen and Édouard Glissant, in hopes of diagnosing one malaise of cultural identity.If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to humanities@uchicago.edu.
C. Riley Snorton, The Wild Man in the Green Swamp and Other Stories about Race in America UChicago Division of the Arts & Humanities 2021-11-05 | "The Wild Man in the Green Swamp and Other Stories about Race in America"University of ChicagoOctober 16, 2021C. Riley Snorton, Professor of English Language and LiteratureNarratives about swamp people and swamp things punctuate the story of the New World, from the maroon communities constituted by Native peoples and formerly enslaved Africans beginning in the early 16th century to the first Asians (Filipinos) to arrive in the US, who settled in the swamps surrounding modern day New Orleans in 1763. As a place that is neither land nor water but both, the swamp functions as the grounds—as the “terra infirma”—for a series of considerations about difference, change, time, life, and death. In this session, the presenter explores each of these themes through tracing a figure who was called by many names but most commonly the “Wild Man of the Green Swamp,” which made national news in 1975.If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to humanities@uchicago.edu.
Kris Trujillo, Queer Medievalism UChicago Division of the Arts & Humanities 2021-11-05 | "Queer Medievalism"University of ChicagoOctober 16, 2020Kris Trujillo, Assistant Professor of Comparative LiteratureA growing body of scholarship has brought important attention to the co-opting of the Middle Ages by white supremacist myths of national origin. But in what ways has or can the medieval offer a resource for political projects of resistance and liberation? This session will explore how and why queer theorists, artists, and writers re-signified the medieval in the face of the AIDS pandemic in the 1980s and 1990s. And it will ask how these aesthetic, political, and even spiritual strategies may inform contemporary responses to the inequities the COVID-19 pandemic rendered more acute.If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to humanities@uchicago.edu.
David Rodowick, Hannah Arendt and the Humanities UChicago Division of the Arts & Humanities 2021-11-05 | "Hannah Arendt and the Humanities"University of ChicagoOctober 16, 2021David Rodowick, Glenn A. Lloyd Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Cinema and Media StudiesIn recent decades, the value of a humanist education has been criticized from all sides with doubts cast upon its relevance in an increasingly precarious world. The presenter defends a philosophical education in the humanities not in terms of canons, methods, or disciplines to be mastered, nor even knowledges and skills to be acquired and transferred. But rather, the humanities are something deeper and more fundamental—the continuous forging of a revisable moral life guided by reason in open and contingent intersubjective conversations with others. In other words, the humanities in its deepest sense conceived as a lifelong education in judgment. Teaching in the humanities has no more important goal.If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to humanities@uchicago.edu.
Ian Bostridge, Mediations on Death, Lecture 3 of 3 UChicago Division of the Arts & Humanities 2021-05-03 | The 2021 Berlin Family Lectures with Ian Bostridge"Musical Identities"Lecture three: "Meditations on Death"April 24, 2021This lecture examines identity's ultimate dissolution—death—and explore some of the ways in which classical composers have confronted it, in private and public mode. The lecture focuses on three works by Benjamin Britten: the song cycle, The Holy Sonnets of John Donne (1945), written shortly after Britten's return from Bergen-Belsen; The War Requiem (1962); and Britten’s last opera based on the novella by Thomas Mann, Death in Venice (1973).This is the third lecture in a three lecture series presented in the spring of 2021 at the University of Chicago.Named for Randy L. and Melvin R. Berlin, the Berlin Family Lectures bring leading scholars, writers, and creative artists from around the world to the University of Chicago. Learn more at http://berlinfamilylectures.uchicago.If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to humanities@uchicago.edu.
Ian Bostridge, Hidden Histories, Lecture 2 of 3 UChicago Division of the Arts & Humanities 2021-04-23 | The 2021 Berlin Family Lectures with Ian Bostridge"Musical Identities"Lecture two: "Hidden Histories"April 17, 2021The hidden history of colonialism in the classical music repertoire is rarely acknowledged in the concert hall. This lecture will explore it by taking as a case study Maurice Ravel's Chansons Madécasses (Songs of Madagascar), a staple of the vocal repertoire, originally composed in the 1920s.This is the second lecture in a three lecture series presented in the spring of 2021 at the University of Chicago.Named for Randy L. and Melvin R. Berlin, the Berlin Family Lectures bring leading scholars, writers, and creative artists from around the world to the University of Chicago. Learn more at http://berlinfamilylectures.uchicago.If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to humanities@uchicago.edu.
Ian Bostridge, Identity in Performance, Lecture 1 of 3 UChicago Division of the Arts & Humanities 2021-04-15 | The 2021 Berlin Family Lectures with Ian Bostridge"Musical Identities"Lecture one: "Identity in Performance"April 11, 2021Classical music offers a fluid and complex perspective on identity. This lecture focuses on three vocal works from disparate eras, which explore and use identity in different ways: Monteverdi's Renaissance work for narrator and instrumental ensemble, Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda (the battle between Tancred and Clorinda); Robert Schumann's 1840 song cycle for voice and piano, Frauenliebe und Leben (A woman's life and love); and Benjamin Britten's 20th century "church opera" Curlew River, inspired by Japanese Noh theatre, in which a female protagonist is played by a male singer.This is the first lecture in a three lecture series presented in the spring of 2021 at the University of Chicago.Named for Randy L. and Melvin R. Berlin, the Berlin Family Lectures bring leading scholars, writers, and creative artists from around the world to the University of Chicago. Learn more at http://berlinfamilylectures.uchicago.edu.If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to humanities@uchicago.edu.
Reinventing Democracy for the 21st Century UChicago Division of the Arts & Humanities 2020-11-23 | "Reinventing Democracy for the 21st Century"University of ChicagoOctober 17, 2020Eric Slauter, Associate Professor, Department of English Language and Literature, University of Chicago Division of the HumanitiesWilliam Howell, Sydney Stein Professor in American Politics, University of Chicago Harris School of Public PolicyTracey Meares, Walton Hale Hamilton Professor and a Founding Director of the Justice Collaboratory, Yale Law SchoolDavid W. Oxtoby, President of the American Academy of Arts and SciencesSusan Stokes, Tiffany and Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor and Director of the Chicago Center on DemocracyDiane P. Wood, Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Chicago Law SchoolWhat can we do to address the prevailing sense of crisis in 21st century American civic and political life? From declining trust in government to increasing economic inequality to the rise of social media, the threats to our democracy seem to multiply, requiring nothing less than a fundamental reassessment of U.S. political institutions, civil society ecosystems, and civic norms. In anticipation of the nation’s 250th anniversary in 2026, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences recently released “Our Common Purpose”—a series of recommendations to strengthen our institutions, heal our civic culture, and achieve empowerment for all. With that report as a backdrop, this session will examine the root causes of these crises and discuss the bold steps necessary to build a more resilient democracy for the 21st century.This video was recorded during the live Humanities Day session on Saturday, October 17th. Reduced video quality is due in part to individual internet speed variability during the live session. If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to humanities@uchicago.edu.
Larry Norman & Richard Neer, Arts and the Academy, Then and Now UChicago Division of the Arts & Humanities 2020-10-17 | "Arts and the Academy, Then and Now"University of ChicagoOctober 17, 2020Richard T. Neer, Barbara E. and Richard J. Franke Distinguished Service Professor in Art History, Cinema & Media StudiesLarry Norman, Frank L. Sulzberger Distinguished Service Professor, Romance Languages and Literatures, Theater and Performance StudiesDoes art have rules? Can it be—should it be—taught, assessed, graded? These questions are very old, but they are more urgent than ever. Although modern art is sometimes seen as a revolt against academic norms, recent years have witnessed tremendous growth in arts instruction on university campuses around the country—including here at UChicago. In this session, a historian of literature and a historian of art will team up to discuss the deep history of this phenomenon: the emergence of state-sponsored academies of art and literature in seventeenth-century Paris. Why did academic art seem like a good idea at the time, what were the pitfalls, and what lessons can we draw for thinking about arts and institutions today?If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to humanities@uchicago.edu.
Veronica Vegna, Women and the Mafia in Italian Cinema UChicago Division of the Arts & Humanities 2020-10-17 | "Women and the Mafia in Italian Cinema"University of ChicagoOctober 17, 2020Veronica Vegna, Senior Instructional Professor, Department of Romance Languages and LiteraturesWhat role do women play within Sicilian mafia? How has this role recently been represented in Italian films? Like a two-headed Janus, women contribute to the existence and continuity of the mafia but can also become a threat to it. Drawing on sociological studies on women and organized crime, this lecture discusses filmic representations of the complex and conflicting relationship of women with Sicilian mafia.If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to humanities@uchicago.edu.
And From the Ruins of Time They Blossom: Jewish Music in Times of Exile UChicago Division of the Arts & Humanities 2020-10-17 | ""And From the Ruins of Time They Blossom": Jewish Music in Times of Exile"University of ChicagoOctober 17, 2020Philip V. Bohlman, Ludwig Rosenberger Distinguished Service Professor in Jewish History, Department of MusicChristine Wilkie Bohlman, Lecturer in Piano in the Humanities Collegiate DivisionThis session looks back at great art accomplished under extreme duress. The presenters will discuss and then perform the final musical work for stage by Viktor Ullmann entitled “The Chronicle of Love and Death of the Flag Bearer Christoph Rilke.” Based on Rainer Maria Rilke’s great prose-poem about the futility and finality of war, the “Chronicle” was conceived for dramatic speaker and piano as a Liebestod, in which love as an external force conquers death. Ullmann composed these musical sketches during autumn 1944 when he was in the Terezín concentration camp before being deported and murdered at Auschwitz. They weave the haunting music into a discussion about themes of exile and diaspora in modern Jewish history.If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to humanities@uchicago.edu.
Re-Imagined Communities UChicago Division of the Arts & Humanities 2020-10-17 | Re-Imagined CommunitiesUniversity of ChicagoOctober 17, 2020Srikanth Reddy, Professor, Department of English Language and LiteratureWill Boast, Associate Professor, Department of English Language and LiteratureSuzanne Buffam, Associate Professor, Department of English Language and LiteratureMitchell S. Jackson, Associate Professor, Department of English Language and LiteratureDaniel Raeburn, Associate Professor, Department of English Language and LiteratureStephanie Soileau, Associate Professor, Department of English Language and LiteratureThis panel gathers poets, nonfiction writers, and novelists on UChicago's Creative Writing faculty to discuss their ongoing projects to re-imagine communities—historical, contemporary, and for the future—in their writing and teaching. What resources do the past and present offer for thinking of literary communities in the classroom, in literature, and in society?If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to humanities@uchicago.edu.
Edgar Garcia, Reading the Popol Vuh in a Time of Crisis UChicago Division of the Arts & Humanities 2020-10-17 | "Reading the Popol Vuh in a Time of Crisis"University of ChicagoOctober 17, 2020Edgar Garcia, Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of EnglishIn these times of social and epidemiological crisis, it is crucial to consider how our historical antecedents faced emergency. In this lecture, Edgar Garcia examines how the indigenous K’iche’ Maya story of creation the Popol Vuh—written in a time of colonial devastation—helps its readers to rethink the crisis we are in and the crisis we have been in colonialism. The Popol Vuh not only gives critical resonance to our present emergency, it also wishes to show its readers how to reframe emergency as a source of possible (social, political, and intellectual) emergence; how to meet crisis with creativity; and, indeed, how to remember the work of creation that has long confronted the devastation of colonial order. This presentation will be split into a lecture and reading from Garcia’s new collection of essays on the Popol Vuh, to be followed by 15 minutes of Q&A.If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to humanities@uchicago.edu.
Martha C. Nussbaum, Animals: Expanding the Humanities UChicago Division of the Arts & Humanities 2020-10-17 | "Animals: Expanding the Humanities"University of ChicagoOctober 17, 2020Martha C. Nussbaum, Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics.In these days of horrible mistreatment of animals, the poaching of elephants and rhinos, and the devastation of their natural habitat through climate change, we need both an ethical revolution and new laws to protect animals. But how do we create a wholly new approach to protect diverse animals? This session examines an approach that the presenter has long put forward, known as the Capabilities Approach, that we share the world with other species, and that what they are able to do and be matters greatly to all of us.If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to humanities@uchicago.edu.
