Humanities Day

Over 800 alumni and friends flocked to campus on October 20th for the 34th annual Humanities Day. Guests chose from 40-plus lectures, exhibits, and tours offered this year, with scholars representing virtually every department in the Division. Other highlights included tours of the newest physical improvements to the campus - the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts and the Joe and Rika Mansueto Library.

Richard Strier, the Frank L. Sulzberger Distinguished Service Professor of English, delivered the keynote address, “Shakespeare’s Prejudices: Shrews and Jews.” Strier questioned the effect that close reading can have on two of Shakespeare’s most controversial plays, “The Merchant of Venice” and “The Taming of the Shrew.” His talk and others are available online.

Recordings of several of the lectures offered at this year’s event are available on the Humanities Day 2012 website and are linked below.

• Richard Strier: “Shakespeare’s Prejudices: Shrews and Jews”
• Jessica Stockholder: “Art in Context”
• Chris Kennedy: “The Grammar of Subjectivity”
• Niall Atkinson, Hoyt Long, and Richard Jean So: “Digital Humanities Forum”
• Steven Rings: “Here’s Your Throat Back, Thanks for the Loan: On Dylan’s Voices”
• Candace Vogler: “Reason and the Freudian Unconscious”
• Hilary Strang and David Wray: “On Reading Dante’s Vita Nuova”

Humanities Day 2013 will take place October 19, 2013. For more information, contact Carl Nash at csnash@uchicago.edu.

Past Humanities Day Schedules

Humanities Day 2011
Humanities Day 2010
Humanities Day 2009
Humanities Day 2008
Humanities Day 2007
Humanities Day 2006
Humanities Open House 2005