| The
Committee on the History of Culture  |
History of the Committee
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| Program
Faculty Students Courses Admissions |
The Committee
on History of Culture was created sometime during the Nineteen Thirties, at the same time
when the Committee on Comparative Literature and the Committee on Analysis of Ideas and
Methods were also legislated into existence. The Graduate Faculty of the Humanities
Division, organized strongly along specific disciplinary departments, wanted, by this
action, to provide for some academic units, which would allow faculty and students to
pursue interdisciplinary studies for which less room existed within the departments. The
Committee on History of Culture was expected to provide for very specific topics chosen
within a cultural context and having a historical dimension. Aside from a common
"methods course" for all Committee students, every individual's program was to
be tailor-made for its specific needs. A long written examination over some seventy-five
books was meant to assure the candidate's competence in the broader subject area of the
chosen topic for a scholarly dissertation. The faculty serving this Committee has by
tradition rendered its services beyond the departmental obligations and many excellent
faculty members have always done so. The number of students was never very large and only
those were admitted who submitted clearly formulated plans for their chosen subject.
Before the Humanities Division (joined by the Social Science Division) created specific
departments during the Nineteen Sixties for the study of Slavic Languages and Literatures,
South Asian culture, Islamic culture, etc., the Committee on History of Culture was the
academic home for persons with specific dissertations in such cultural and historical
studies. Before topics in film and "popular culture" were welcomed within
respective departments, these also were pursued under the aegis of the Committee. It thus
has been providing for very individually conceived topics with historical and cultural
dimensions and has also served the Humanities Division by being a home for new approaches
and subjects. From 1964 to 1992, Karl Joachim Weintraub, who wrote the above, served as
the chair of the Committee. In the spring of 2001, Professor Weintraub retired, having
entered the Univesity of Chicago as a student in 1948 and staying to teach and to serve as
Dean of Humanities from 1973 to 1984. University of Chicago || Humanities Division || Committee on the History of Culture |