Faculty

UChicago students engage their senses outside the classroom

UChicago scholars Amber Ginsburg (right) and Jennifer Scappettone (second from right) discuss the history of the Chicago River during a class trip on a water taxi. Photo by Jean Lachat

On an unusually warm November day, a group of University of Chicago students walked through Jackson Park in Chicago, listening for natural and unnatural sounds. Bird calls were drowned out by crunching gravel, and the hum of cars mixed with rustling leaves. Though the park appeared a natural oasis, it sounded far from bucolic.

This Autumn Quarter, the course “Sensing the Anthropocene” challenged students to engage senses often dulled in the classroom: hearing, touch, taste and smell. Co-taught by UChicago scholars Amber Ginsburg and Jennifer Scappettone, the course took students across Chicago to grapple with how our built urban environment has transformed the natural one.

Humanities scholar analyzes racial perceptions through architecture and home ownership

Dancers from Kuumba Lynx Youth perform at the opening celebration of the APL Arts Lawn on Oct. 7, 2023. Photo by Anjali Pinto

Assoc. Prof. Adrienne Brown’s groundbreaking research connects the architecture of skyscrapers and the propaganda of home ownership to key transformations in race’s perception. She finds strong evidence to support her argument in political, organizational, and literary sources of the 20th century, with culprits as varied as politicians like Herbert Hoover, organizations such as the National Association of Realtors, and writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Her first book, The Black Skyscraper: Architecture and the Perception of Race (2017), shows the skyscraper’s influence on the shape of modern U.S. cities and the racial perceptions of its residents. For Brown’s insights, her first book won the Modernist Studies Association’s 2018 First Book Award. Her new book, Residential Is Racial: A Perceptual History of Mass Ownership (2024), is equally groundbreaking as she discusses how mass homeownership changed the definition, perception, and value of race in the U.S.

Norman Maclean biography uncovers personal stories of beloved UChicago author

UChicago alumna Rebecca McCarthy, AB'77, wrote a new biography of her professor Norman Maclean. Photo by Clara McCarthy

The late Norman Maclean was many things: the most decorated teacher of undergraduates in UChicago history; author of the first original work of fiction published by the University of Chicago Press; and a sage to literary-minded anglers the world over.

Until now, however, Maclean, PhD’40, was not the subject of a biography. Rebecca McCarthy, AB’77, has changed that with the publication of "Norman Maclean: A Life of Letters and Rivers" (University of Washington Press).

Werewolf books and movies that make us more human

Actor Lon Chaney Jr. on the set of The Wolf Man (1941) Photo by Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images

A full moon rises. A howl pierces the air. At the University of Chicago, a new course explores how scary stories of wolfish transformations can spring from our deepest anxieties about being human.

In “The Werewolf in Literature and Film,” a new College course offered by the Department of Comparative Literature, students explore the fuzzy boundaries between animal and human across time and media. The class is taught by seventh-year doctoral candidate David Delbar, a self-described “amateur lycanthropologist.”

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