Department of Visual Arts professor Laura Letinsky’s exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art received high marks from a Chicago Tribune reviewer who called Letinsky “a seductress of remains …. luring viewers to gaze intently at those pictures, finding in them the richness of detail and metaphor that once clung to the painted vanitas of Dutch minor masters.”
The exhibit, “Ill Form and Void Full,” is on view at the MCA until April 17.
From the Chicago Tribune:
If there could be such a thing, Letinsky would be a Dutch master of the present, employing a 4×5 camera instead of paintbrushes to capture the bittersweet scent of life crumpling away, into the remains of food eaten but also food cooked simply for the sake of a Bon Appetit photo shoot. The drippy, crackly gorgeousness of what results never fails to surprise. But what doesn’t glow more as a memory?
To read the entire review, visit the Tribune website. Letinsky was also interviewed by WBEZ’s Julie Rodriguez as part of their Culture Catalyst series after the exhibit opened on Feb. 14. You can listen to the interview and view a video of Letinsky at work on WBEZ’s website.
“The U.S.-Israeli Relationship” was the topic of a discussion held at International House on April 9, with the Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren the featured speaker.
Co-sponsored by the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, the Consulate General of Israel to the Midwest, and the International House Global Voices program, the discussion was part of the Global Voices Lecture series, which brings prominent speakers to Chicago and organizes round table discussions and seminars.
A graduate of Princeton and Columbia, Ambassador Michael Oren has received fellowships from the U.S. Departments of State and Defense, and from the British and Canadian governments. Formerly, he was the Lady Davis Fellow Hebrew University, a Moshe Dayan Fellow at Tel-Aviv University, and the Distinguished Fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard, Yale, and Georgetown.
The program was moderated by Fred Donner, professor in Near Eastern History and the Director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. Donner is also the President the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), a national, non-political association that fosters the study of the Middle East.
John D. Kuhns, author of China Fortunes: A Tale of Business in the New World, will be at International House on Thursday, April 5 at 5:15 p.m.
China Fortunes is the fictional story of the opportunities that accompanied the opening of China to Western investors. The novel is based on Kuhns’s twenty-five years of experience in China as a financier and industrialist.
Kuhns founded the Catalyst Energy Corporation in 1984 and was the first American to acquire commercial hydroelectric generating equipment from China. He powered the company to its successful IPO and listing on the New York Stock Exchange and followed with four more companies. He serves as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer for China’s largest owner of small hydroelectric projects.
Kuhns received a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Chicago in 1975. He was also the art and culture critic for the Chicago Maroon.
A reception will follow the event. For more information on Kuhns and his book click here.
Lauren Berlant’s latest book, Cruel Optimism, has been the focus of considerable attention. The book won the 2012 René Wellek Prize, has been featured in The New Inquiry and Bitch magazine, and on BBC Radio’s “Thinking Allowed.”
Berlant, the George M. Pullman Professor in the Department of English, was awarded the Wellek Prize by the American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA). The Wellek Prize recognizes an outstanding work in the field of literary and cultural theory.
In this trenchant analysis of the affective dimensions of the precaritization of life under neoliberalism in the late 20th- and early 21st centuries, Berlant gives us the conceptual tools to understand how and why extended crisis becomes indistinguishable from the rhythms of daily survival. She argues eloquently that trauma is a genre for viewing the historical present. Her scrupulous readings of contemporary art, film, and literature render visible the slow time of undramatic attrition and absorption—the temporality of our perseverence in attachments that do us no good.
Berlant doesn’t leave us with the instructive “Life sucks, eat some snacks,” but rather urges us to find our way out of the psychological burrow. How do we extricate ourselves from the irreparable and “cramped” fantasy of the good life, toward a “better good life?” How do we get out of relationships of cruel optimism, out of this prolonged sense of crisis, this sustained and boring code red? It is not a cul-de-sac of excess fat, blackened lungs, or wandering eyes but rather the structural impasse of capitalism we must fantasize our way out of.
Cruel Optimism is less brutal analysis than a dark, lush still-life of American fantasies and our Quixotic lunges toward them. An affective portrait of the 99%.
Berlant and her book were also featured on BBC Radio’s “Thinking Allowed” with host Laurie Taylor.
The Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts opened its doors on Monday, March 26, kicking off a six-month preview period as construction is completed on the innovative building. The campus community and wider public will get a first look at a facility that represents a milestone for the arts at the University of Chicago. Many portions of the facility have begun to host classes and exhibitions, while other parts will be finished in the coming months. Artists and scholars across disciplines will make use of the Logan Center, providing opportunities for students, faculty, staff, visiting artists, and the public to experience the arts.
From the University News Office:
“The Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts will enrich and inspire arts education, scholarship, and creative practice at the University of Chicago,” said President Robert J. Zimmer. “We are now seeing the fruits of the vision of the late David Logan, whose commitment to the arts and culture made an historic impact on the University. The Logan family’s legacy is manifest in this new facility, and in the creativity and collaborations that will unfold there.”
Arts programming already is beginning, with select classes and more than 40 performances, exhibitions, and conferences scheduled for the preview period.
The arts critic for the Chicago Tribune suggested that “the Logan Center could become an important catalyst for the performing and fine arts in Chicago . . . . and you can see the potential for arts activity in practically every corner.”
To learn more about the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, read the University News office article here. To read the Chicago Tribune article, click here. For a schedule of upcoming events at the center visit the Uchicago arts website.
A review of the Oriental Institute Museum’s latest exhibit Picturing the Past: Imaging and Imagining the Ancient Middle East was called “compact, well-edited, and engaging” by the Chicago Tribune. The article features interviews with the exhibit’s co-curators Jack Green, who is also the museum’s chief curator, and special exhibits coordinator Emily Teeter.
The exhibit opened February 7 and continues through September 2. It presents paintings, architectural reconstructions, facsimiles, casts, models, photographs, and computer-aided reconstructions that show how the architecture, sites, and artifacts of the ancient Middle East have been documented. The show also examines how the publication of those images have shaped our perception of the ancient world, and how some of the more “imaginary” reconstructions have obscured our real understanding of the past.
From the Tribune article:
… [the] exhibit at the Oriental Institute Museum asks visitors to think twice about the images they see of ancient worlds. A painting or a model may look authoritative, but before you accept it as truth, ask yourself what assumptions the artist or archaeologist is making to complete the image, what gaps might he or she be filling in? And then, bigger picture, consider how much of what we think we know about earlier times might be based on images that blend the factual and the fanciful.
“Picturing the Past: Imaging and Imagining the Ancient Middle East” is up at the University of Chicago’s splendid temple to Middle Eastern research and culture through Sept. 2, and it is a compact, well-edited and intellectually engaging show.
Update – The University of Chicago News Office has a video of Field’s February 8 talk at the Chicago Humanities Forum, “From Stagg to Fukushima: A History of Nuclear Power”
Norma Field, the Robert S. Ingersoll Distinguished Service Professor in Japanese Studies in East Asian Languages and Civilizations, was interviewed on WBEZ’s Worldview Thursday, March 8. In anticipation of the one year anniversary of the earthquake in Japan, Field was questioned on the impact and lessons of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Field spoke with Worldview‘s about how the disaster has altered life in Japan.
To listen to Norma Field’s interview on Worldview, click here.
This weekend, a two-day symposium honoring Field – who is retiring this year – will be held in Swift Hall. What March 11 Means to Me takes place March 10-11 and will feature five public intellectuals and activists from Japan, each speaking about the personal and social impact of last year’s earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster.
For more information on the symposium, visit the The Center for East Asian Studies’ website.
Richard Strier, the Frank L. Sulzberger Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of English, has been awarded the 2011 Robert Penn Warren-Cleanth Brooks Award for Literary Criticism for his book The Unrepentant Renaissance: From Petrarch to Shakespeare to Milton.
From the University of Chicago Press:
The Unrepentant Renaissance counters the prevalent view of the period as dominated by the regulation of bodies and passions, aiming to reclaim the Renaissance as an era happily churning with surprising, worldly, and self-assertive energies. Reviving the perspective of Jacob Burckhardt and Nietzsche, Strier provides fresh and uninhibited readings of texts by Petrarch, More, Shakespeare, Ignatius Loyola, Montaigne, Descartes, and Milton. Strier’s lively argument will stir debate throughout the field of Renaissance studies.
This marks the second consecutive year that the prize has been awarded to a faculty member in the Division of the Humanities. Mark Payne received the 2010 award for his book The Animal Part: Human and Other Animals in the Poetic Imagination.
Jessica Stockholder has been selected to create a dynamic art installation in the Chicago Loop this summer.
Stockholder, Professor and Chair of the Department of Visual Arts, is the third artist commissioned by the Chicago Loop Alliance (CLA) for this prestigious annual project. Titled Color Jam, her three-dimensional piece will fill an intersection – including buildings, sidewalks, and roadways – with colorful geometric shapes.
“My idea is to fill an intersection with color,” Stockholder told the Chicago Tribune of the installation. “That will include the road and the sidewalk and up the building so there’s a cubic volume of color in the intersection wedged between four corners and four buildings.” Stockholder says the work is meant to create a landscape that looks like an animated film.
The installation will be unveiled in June.
Read the Chicago Tribune’s article here, and to view the CLA’s video on Color Jam click here.
Shadi Bartsch-Zimmer, the Ann L. and Lawrence B. Buttenweiser Professor in Classics and the College, has been named the Helen A. Regenstein Distinguished Service Professor in Classics and the College.
Bartsch-Zimmer has written four books and has three edited volumes.
From the University News Office:
Bartsch-Zimmer, whose research focuses on Roman literature and culture, has been honored for her teaching and scholarship with a Faculty Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching, a Llewellyn John and Harriet Manchester Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, and received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2007.
Bartsch-Zimmer is a graduate of Princeton University and received her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, where she taught before joining the UChicago faculty in 1998.
Read the University News Office story, which features six other University of Chicago faculty members who also received named professorships, here.
Laura Letinsky, Professor in the Department of Visual Arts, was featured in the February issue of Chicago magazine. Letinsky has two exhibitions currently open. Ill Form and Void Full (2010-11) is on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art from February 7–April 17, and Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art is on view at the Smart Museum from February 15–June 10.
The remains of a meal are never as appealing in real life as they are when photographed by Laura Letinsky, whose light-drenched images make melon rinds, lipstick-stained wineglasses, and even fast-food wrappers oddly enticing. The U. of C. professor gives us more to drool over in February, with two new exhibits: Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art, a group show at Hyde Park’s Smart Museum that celebrates the connection between artistic output and the act of sharing food, and a solo show at the Museum of Contemporary Art.
An internationally renowned photographer, Letinsky is known for her elegantly composed and emotionally evocative still-life compositions. Her work is featured in the permanent collections of a number of major museums.
Philip Gossett and donors Brian and Karen Heckman Copp
Philip Gossett, the Robert W. Reneker Distinguished Service Professor in Music and the College, accepted the gift of a rare piano-vocal score of Rossini’s opera Guillaume Tell from donors Brian Copp and Karen Heckman Copp. The Copps met as students during the 1970s when singing together in the Rockefeller Chapel Choir, and Mrs. Copp took a course with Prof. Gossett.
Last summer, the score came to light when Mrs. Copp was cleaning out a closet. Mrs. Copp’s mother was an antique dealer and her father an opera lover, and the Copps believe the score may have been acquired at an auction. Prof. Gossett explained that although piano-vocal scores are common today, they were printed in small numbers during the early nineteenth century. “This score is in beautiful condition and will be a valuable addition to our research collection,” said Prof. Gossett.
The score will be housed in the Special Collections Research Center of the Regenstein Library.
The 2011 American Publishers Awards for Professional and Scholarly Excellence has recognized Frederick de Armas, the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities, Spanish Literature, and Comparative Literature. Professor de Armas received an Honorable Mention in the Literature awards for his book, Don Quixote Among the Saracens: A Clash of Civilizations and Literary Genres (University of Toronto Press, 2011).
The annual PROSE Awards honors “the very best in professional and scholarly publishing” in 40 categories. The nominated books are are judged by a panel of publishers, librarians, and medical professionals.
From the University of Toronto Press:
The fictional Don Quixote was constantly defeated in his knightly adventures. In writing Quixote’s story, however, Miguel Cervantes succeeded in a different kind of quest — the creation of a modern novel that ‘conquers’ and assimilates countless literary genres. Don Quixote among the Saracens considers how Cervantes’s work reflects the clash of civilizations and anxieties towards cultural pluralism that permeated the Golden Age Spain.
Last week’s theatre review in the Chicago Tribune placed the Court Theatre’s production of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man at the top of it’s “must see” list for 2012. Kenneth Warren, an Ellison scholar at the University and the Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of English, was interviewed by Chicago magazine about the adaptation of the novel and the world premiere of the critically lauded play alongside director Christopher McElroen.
While Tribune critic Chris Jones called the play “a magnificent achievement for Court and the creative team,” the Chicago SunTimes pronounced it an “enthralling three hour odyssey . . . exquisitely choreographed, so that the story blazes with as much heat, energy and action as talk.”
From the Tribune:
“This production features Teagle F. Bougere, who turns in the kind of performance that Chicago actors will be trying to better for the rest of 2012. It’s more than three hours, sure, and complicated to boot, but it moves well and touches the heart as much as the mind.
The Invisible Man runs through February 19. Read reviews from the Chicago Tribune, SunTimes, and WBEZ. Chicago Magazine’s interview with director Christopher McElroen can be read here.
Dean Martha Roth and Joint Secretary in India's Ministry of Culture Sanjiv Mittal
Thanks to a $1.5 million gift from India’s Ministry of Culture, the University of Chicago has established a new chair in Indian Studies commemorating the legacy of the Hindu spiritual leader Swami Vivekananda. The Indian Ministry of Culture Vivekananda Visiting Professorship will be given to distinguished scholars from a variety of disciplines with an interest in the fields of study most relevant to the teachings and philosophies of the Swami, such as Indian philosophy, politics and social movements. The professorship, which the Division of the Humanities will administer, includes a teaching commitment as well as an annual public lecture.
From the University News Office:
“The Ministry’s generous support will allow us to expand on the University’s tradition of rigorous scholarship in Indian studies,” said University President Robert J. Zimmer. “This pledge, as well as the upcoming visit from Indian leaders, stand as a testament to the importance of the relationship between the University of Chicago and India, and the mutual commitment to scholarship.”
Several of the talks from October 22nd’s Humanities Day 2011 are now available on the Division of the Humanities website. In addition to the keynote address by Shadi Bartsch, the Ann L. and Lawrence B. Buttenwieser Professor of Classics, “The Wisdom of Fools: Christianity and the Break in the Classical Tradition,” seven other lectures are available for viewing. Watch presentations by David Wellbery, Christina von Nolcken, David Bevington, James Chandler, Ted Cohen, Michael Silverstein, and Armando Maggi.
The Humanities Division would like to thank the Office of Alumni and Development and the Office of the Vice-President for Communications for making these recordings possible.
Candace Vogler, the David B. and Clara E. Stern Professor of Philosophy and Professor in the College and Chair of the Philosophy Department, was invited to dine with Michelle Obama, Mayor Rahm Emanuel, and former Mayor Richard Daley as one of eight guests participating in artist Mary Ellen Carroll’s “Open Outcry.” The lunch is part of Itinerate Gastronomy, an ongoing project in which Carroll creates site-specific conversations around meals. Vogler, the First Lady and the current and former mayors dined January 23 at the financial gallery in the Chicago Board of Trade in a viewing room high above the active trading floor around a sculptural table designed by architect Simon Dance. The meal, the setting, and the seating are all intended to “catalyze useful conversation about the intersections of food, power, finance, policy, and art,” according to artist Mary Ellen Carroll.
The project was commissioned for the Smart Museum of Art’s upcoming exhibit, Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art, which opens February 16. A video of the luncheon will be on display. Feast runs until June 12 and presents the work of more than thirty artists and artist groups who have transformed the shared meal into a compelling artistic medium. To read more about the upcoming Feast exhibit visit the Smart Museum of Art’s website and the Feast Project blog.
A panel discussion moderated by WBEZ’s Eight Forty-Eight host Alison Cuddy on the beloved behemoth of language, The Chicago Manual of Style, featured two familiar University of Chicago faces.
Among the four panelists were Jason Riggle, Assistant Professor of Linguistics and Director of the Chicago Language Modeling Laboratory, and Ben Zimmer (AM’98, Division of the Social Sciences), former writer of the New York Times Magazine’s “On Language” column and Executive Producer of Visual Thesaurus and Vocabulary.com.
Additional panelists included Carol Saller and Anita Samen from University of Chicago Press.
Along with this discussion, part of the International House Global Voices Program, other videos of interest can be found on the UChicago YouTube channel.
The world premiere of “double helix,” a composition by University Professor of Composition in the Department of Music and the College Augusta Read Thomas, is available on the university’s YouTube channel:
Composed as a tribute to the new Joe and Rika Mansueto Library, the piece was performed by musicians Janet Sung and Yuan-Qing Yu at the library’s dedication.
Welcome to the Division of the Humanities news page, your place for news, multimedia, and feature stories about the Division. If you’re a member of the press, you might also visit our press page and our list of faculty experts. If you have news you would like to see featured here, please contact
Carl Nash.
Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor Department of English Committee on African & African-American Studies Committee on Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities
"My scholarship and teaching focuses on American and African-American literature from the late nineteenth century through the middle of the twentieth century. I am particularly interested in the way that debates about literary form and genre articulate with discussions of political and social change."
Department of Visual Arts professor Laura Letinsky’s exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art received high marks from a Chicago Tribune reviewer who called Letinsky “a seductress of remains …. luring viewers to gaze intently at those pictures, finding in them the richness of detail and metaphor that once clung to the painted vanitas of Dutch minor masters.”
Update – The University of Chicago News Office has a 
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