Bill Brown, Karla Scherer Distinguished Service Professor in American Culture, Departments of English and Visual Arts, Committee on the History of Culture
Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory, Coeditor, Critical Inquiry
Elisabeth Clemens, William Rainey Harper Distinguished Service Professor of Sociology and the College
Alison LaCroix, Professor of Law, Ludwig and Hilde Wolf Teaching Scholar, Associate Member, Department of History
Shannon Lee Dawdy, Professor of Anthropology and Social Sciences
Allyson Nadia Field, Associate Professor Cinema and Media Studies
William Howell, Sydney Stein Professor of American Politics at Harris School of Public Policy
Richard Rosengarten, Associate Professor of Religion and Literature
James T. Sparrow, Associate Professor of History and Conceptual and Historical Studies
Geoffrey Stone, Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law
Augusta Reed Thomas, Professor of Composition, Department of Music and the College
Kenneth Warren, Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor of American Literature
Faculty Partners
The following is an incomplete directory of University of Chicago faculty with research interests in American topics. We welcome any other faculty who may wish to be listed.
Anthropology
Shannon Lee Dawdy, Professor of Anthropology and Social Sciences; coastal communities of the U.S, Caribbean, and Mexico; archival, ethnographic, and archeological methods to examine how landscapes and material objects mediate human relationships.
Joseph Masco, Professor of Anthropology and Social Sciences in the College; conceptual effects of the technological revolution.
Stephan Palmié, Professor of Anthropology and Social Sciences in the College; Afro-Caribbean cultures (particularly religious formations).
Art History
Darby English, Carl Darling Buck Professor of Art History; Director of the Karla Scherer Center for the Study of American Culture.
Christine Mehring, Professor of Art History; Contemporary art, Post-WWII art and architecture.
Katherine Taylor, Associate Professor, Department of Art History; history of architecture and urbanism in Western Europe and the U.S.
Cinema and Media Studies
Allyson Field, Associate Professor of Cinema and Media Studies; African-American cinema; silent cinema; attention to how media and film represent, promote, or resist social inequities.
Tom Gunning, Edwin A. and Betty L. Bergman Distinguished Service Professor of Art History and the College; Chair, Department of Cinema and Media Studies; international early and silent cinema; American avant-garde cinema; Film and narrative theory; Classical film theory; Early cinema and the experience of modernity.
Kara Keeling, Associate Professor of Cinema and Media Studies; African-American film; race, sexuality, and gender in film.
Jacqueline Stewart, Professor of Cinema and Media Studies.
Comparative Human Development
Eman Abdelhadi, Postdoctoral Fellow; Sociology of religion, gender, and identity; Muslim-American women.
Micere Keels, Associate Professor; Race-ethnicity; poverty; integration of quantitative and qualitative methods.
Richard Shweder William Claude Reavis Distinguished Service Professor of Human Development; Pluralism and the multicultural challenge in Western liberal democracies
Divinity
Curtis Evans Assistant Professor of the History of Christianity; Modern American religion; Race and religion in US history; Slavery and Christianity
Richard Rosengarten Associate Professor of Religion and Literature; Genres of narrative (especially the novel); Hermeneutics, literary theory, and aesthetics; religious thought through the “long” 18th-century
English
Bill Brown Karla Scherer Distinguished Service Professor in American Culture; Departments of English and Visual Arts; Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality; Deputy Provost for the Arts; Principal Investigator, Object Cultures Project at the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory; Coeditor, Critical Inquiry
James Lastra Associate Professor; Surrealism both in Europe and in the United States; Silent film comedy; American experimental film; Luis Buñuel
W.J.T. Mitchell Gaylord Donnelley Distinguished Service Professor, Departments of English, Art History, and Visual Arts; Visual Culture and Iconography; Critical Race Studies; History of Ideas; Marxism; 18th- and 20th-Century British Literature
John Muse Associate Professor of English & Theater and Performance Studies; Committee on Theater and Performance Studies; Modern and contemporary drama and literature
Deborah Nelson Helen B. and Frank L. Sulzberger Professor of English; Late 20th-century U.S culture and politics; American literature; gender and sexuality; photography; Cold War history.
Srikanth (Chicu) Reddy Professor of English & Race, Politics, and Culture; Modern American poetry, literature and visual art; global and transnational literature; Contemporary Asian American writing
Lawrence Rothfield Associate Professor; Departments of English and Comparative Literature; Cultural Policy Center Literature and epistemic and political struggles; Cultural policy studies; Politics of taste; 19th-century European fiction
Eric Slauter Associate Professor; Early American cultural, intellectual, and literary history; Legal history; History of political thought; Book history; Visual and material culture studies; Quantitative analysis; History of slavery, abolition, and emancipation; Atlantic history
William Veder, Professor of English; American literature; psychoanalysis; gender theory
Kenneth Warren, Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor of English, Race, Politics, and Culture; American literature; political and social change; politics of race; form and genre
Harris School
Christopher Berry Assistant Professor, Harris School of Public Policy Political economy of American local government and the politics of federal spending
William Howell Sydney Stein Professor in American Politics; Co-Director, Program on Political Institutions; Professor, Department of Political Science and the CollegeSeparation-of-powers issues and American political institutions
Leora Auslander Professor; European Social History; Founding Director of the Center for Gender Studies; Professor, Committee on Jewish Studies 19th- and 20th-century European Social and Cultural History; Material Culture and the Built Environment; Culture and Politics; Jewish History; Gender History and Theory; Colonial and Post-colonial Europe
History
Mark Bradley Professor; Twentieth-Century U.S. International History; Global History of Human Rights Politics; Postcolonial Southeast Asia
Paul Cheney Assistant Professor; The Atlantic World; History of Political Thought; and Early Modern Capitalism; French History; The Enlightenment; French Revolution
Jane Dailey Associate Professor; Modern United States social and political history; African American history; the American South; Legal history
Ramon A. Gutierrez Preston and Sterling Morton Distinguished Service Professor in United States History; Chicano History; Race and Ethnicity in American Life; Chicano/Latino Studies; Indian-White Relations in the Americas; Social and Economic History of the Southwest; Colonial Latin America; Mexican Immigration
Emilio Kouri Professor; Modern Mexico; Social and economic history of Latin America; Agrarian studies; History of ideas; Cuba and the Spanish Caribbean; US Latino history
Julie Saville Associate Professor; United States History; African-American and Caribbean History; Comparative Slavery and Emancipations
James T. Sparrow Assistant Professor; Modern United States political and social history; War and society; Social science and the state; Technology; History and new media
Amy Dru Stanley Professor; Nineteenth-century United States; slavery and emancipation; capitalism and political economy; legal and gender; cultural, social, and human rights
Christine Stansell Stein-Freiler Distinguished Service Professor in United States History; Women’s and gender history; Antebellum U.S. social and political history; American cultural history; History of human rights and post-catastrophic societies
Law
Emily Buss Mark and Barbara Field Professor of Law; Children’s and parents’ rights and the legal system’s allocation of authority and responsibility for children’s development among parent, child, and state
Richard Helmholz Ruth Wyatt Rosenson Distinguished Service Professor of Law; Natural resources law; Legal history; Roman and canon laws to the development of the common law
Dennis J. Hutchinson William Rainey Harper Professor in the College; Constitutional law; Elements; Legal history
Alison LaCroix Assistant Professor of Law, The Law School Legal history; Federalism; Constitutional law; Federal jurisdiction; Law and literature
Eric Posner Kirkland and Ellis Professor of Law; International law; Immigration law; Foreign relations law
Geoffrey Stone Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law; Constitutional law
David Strauss Gerald Ratner Distinguished Service Professor of Law; Constitutional law
Linguistics
John Goldsmith Edward Carson Waller Distinguished Service Professor of Linguistics Technology; Artificial Intelligence; Linguistics; Humanities
Salikoko Mufwene Frank J. McLoraine Distinguished Service Professor, Department of Linguistics; The Committee on Evolutionary Biology; The Committee on the Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science Morphosyntactic and semantic characteristics of Gullah, African-American Vernacular English, Jamaican Creole, and English
Alan C.L. Yu Associate Professor of Linguistics; Language documentation and revitalization in North America; Native American linguistics; Phonological theory; Speech perception and production; Historical linguistics
Music
Phillip Bohlman Mary Werkman Distinguished Service Professor of Music; Performance and research; Jewish music and modernity
Berthold Hoeckner Associate Professor of Music; 19th and 20th-Century music; Aesthetics; Adorno; Music and literature; Film music and visual culture; Psychology and neuroscience of music
Travis A. Jackson Associate Professor of Music; Ethnomusicology; Jazz
Shulamit Ran Andrew MacLeish Distinguished Service Professor of Music Composition
Paula Harper Assistant Professor of Music; Virality, digital platforms, media and mediation, circulation, sound studies, gender, fandom
Philosophy
Dan Brudney Professor of Philosophy; Associate Faculty in the Divinity School; Associate Faculty, MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics Political philosophy; Philosophy and literature; Bioethics and philosophy of religion
James Conant Chester D. Tripp Professor of Humanities and the College; Professor and Chair, Department of Philosophy Philosophy of Language; Philosophy of Mind; Aesthetics; German Idealism; and History of Analytic Philosophy
Political Science
John Brehm Professor of Political Science; Compliance; Political Psychology; Public Opinion
Michael Dawson John D. MacArthur Professor of Political Science; African American political behavior, identity, and public opinion; Political effects of urban poverty; African American political ideology
Mark Hansen Charles L. Hutchinson Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science; Legislative Politics; Interest Group Politics; Rational Choice Models
Patchen Markell Associate Professor of Political Science; Modern European and American political thought and philosophy; Democratic theory; Critiques of capitalism; Classical political thought and its modern receptions
Eric Oliver Professor of Political Science; Contemporary American politics; Suburban and racial politics; Political psychology; Politics of science
John Padgett Professor of Political Science; American Politics; Organizational Theory; Mathematical Models; Co-Evolution of States and Markets
Gerald Rosenberg Associate Professor of Political Science; Lecturer, The Law School American Politics; Public Law; Civil Rights and Civil Liberties
Nathan Tarcov Professor of Political Science; History of political theory; Education and family in political theory; Principles of U.S. foreign policy
Social Service Administration
Harold Pollack Helen Ross Professor at the School of Social Service Administration; Faculty Chair, the Center for Health Administration Studies; Co-Director, University of Chicago Crime Lab Poverty policy and public health
Social Thought
Ralph Lerner Benjamin Franklin Professor Emeritus in the College and of Social Thought; American Political Thought; Tocqueville; 17th- and 18th-Century British Political Thought; Maimonides and Medieval Muslim Political Philosophy
Mark Payne Associate Professor, the Committee on Social Thought, Department of Classics; The culture of North American plains Indians; Pastoral poetry; Ancient and modern lyric poetry; Poetry of ancient Greece and modern Europe
Robert Pippin Evelyn Stefansson Nef Distinguished Service Professor of Social Thought, Philosophy; Political philosophy; Theories of self-consciousness; Nature of conceptual change; the problem of freedom
Sociology
Andrew Abbott Gustavus F. and Ann M. Swift Distinguished Service Professor of Sociology; Sociology of occupations, professions, and work; Sociology of culture and knowledge; Social theory