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Six Humanities Faculty Receive Named, Distinguished Service Professorships
Of the twenty-three University of Chicago faculty members who have received named professorships or have been appointed distinguished service professors, seven were from the Division of the Humanities. Daniel Brudney (Philosophy), Martha Feldman (Music), Frances Ferguson (English Language and Literature), Armando Maggi (Romance Languages and Literatures), Christine Mehring (Art History), Mark Payne (Classics, Comparative Literature, and the John W. Nef Committee on Social Thought), and Robert K. Ritner (Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations) were recognized.
UChicago Humanities Professor Robert Kendrick Is Honored as Knight of the Italian Republic
For his rigorous scholarship of previously unknown Italian sacred music from the Renaissance and early Baroque eras, Robert L. Kendrick was honored as Knight of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, class VI, on Dec. 10 at the Italian Consulate in Chicago. This achievement is the highest ranking honor of the Italian Republic, and it is awarded for “merit acquired by the nation” in the fields of literature, the arts, economy, public service, and social, philanthropic, and humanitarian activities and for long and conspicuous service in civilian and military careers.
Theaster Gates: "Liverpool Has the Complexity of Race In Its DNA"
A work by Theaster Gates might be a performance, or a film, or a sculpture, or a song. It might also be a housing development, or a cinema or a library; in the South Side of Chicago where Gates lives (he’s a professor of visual arts at the University of Chicago), he has pulled off a remarkable transformation, taking over old buildings near his studio – including a former crack house – and transforming them into cultural hubs that celebrate and preserve black culture and its history. It breathed new life into his block, then his neighbourhood, then his city. “We brought some heat,” as Gates put it in his 2015 TEDTalk (for which he received a standing ovation).
Jacqueline Stewart Helps to Add More Diversity to Films in the National Film Registry
The National Film Registry board strove to make the list of 25 new films added annually more representative of a wider spectrum of American life, and two years ago formed a task force on diversity, equity and inclusion.
“The board has been asking, ‘How many more John Ford or Albert Hitchcock films do we put on the registry?,” said Jacqueline Stewart, University of Chicago Professor in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies, who was tapped to chair the task force, told TIME. “It seems like we’ve covered a lot of those bases—and because of the sheer number of films on the registry, we absolutely have to broaden our horizons, and engage with archives and film critics and scholars and the American public to help us bring a wider variety of films into view.”
