Cross-Cultural
UChicago writer Ling Ma received 2024 MacArthur Fellowship
Ling Ma, AB’05, an award-winning University of Chicago fiction writer renowned for prose that highlights the similarities between the fantastical and the everyday, has been awarded a 2024 MacArthur Fellowship.
Given each year by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the prestigious grants recognize individuals from across disciplines who show “exceptional originality in and dedication to their creative pursuits.” Fellows receive $800,000 stipends to use as they see fit.
“I am amazed that strangers who have read my work decided to nominate or recommend my fiction,” Ma said. “For someone who spends most of their days alone, that's pretty unbelievable.”
Prof. Philip V. Bohlman to address complexity of "doing good" through music during Humanities Day keynote
A pioneering ethnomusicologist, Prof. Philip V. Bohlman seeks to reveal how music helps human beings deal with critical ideas and look at crucial problems in migration globally. He uses a multidisciplinary approach in which ethnography, historical research and music performance intersect. His work in ethnomusicology spans multiple languages and continents.
“Ethnomusicologists study world music, which often occurs in places where human societies are in danger such as borderlands for migrants,” said Bohlman, the Ludwig Rosenberger Distinguished Service Professor and artistic director of the New Budapest Orpheum Society in the Department of Music at UChicago. “Music crosses borderlands and can connect people.”
Acclaimed UChicago composer's new orchestral composition debuts at the New York Philharmonic
During her lessons, Thomas discusses her students’ work and offers her thoughts such as “this chord is fantastic,” or “the rhythmic syntax needs to be different because the tension dips.” She describes every lesson with her students as different but extremely engaging.
“We often discuss the way incredibly detailed moments can impact the entire formal trajectory of a piece, and vice versa,” said Justin Weiss, a UChicago PhD student in Music. “In her music, I feel such a strong sense of formal trajectory and clarity, yet each note is so clearly crafted.”
Robyn Schiff's epic poem 'Information Desk' draws critical acclaim
When Prof. Robyn Schiff sat at the information desk at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, she felt as if, “I was living my life at the center of the world.” Nearly 30 years later, Schiff transformed her experiences into an epic poem, expertly weaving its collections of visual art and connections to the world into her life’s journey, material world and imagination.
For "Information Desk: An Epic" (2023), Schiff recently received the 2024 Four Quartets Prize from the Poetry Society of America. The international Prize celebrates multipart poems, with the winner receiving $20,000. Previous recipients of the Four Quartets Prize include Courtney Faye Taylor, John Murillo and Dante Micheaux.
