Faculty

Martha C. Nussbaum, Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics, appointed in the Law School and the Philosophy Department, is one of two University of Chicago scholars named a recipient of this year’s Norman Maclean Faculty Award.

The awards, established in 1997 and presented by the Alumni Association and Alumni Board, are named in honor of Professor Norman Maclean, PhD ’40, the critically acclaimed author of "A River Runs Through It" who taught at the University of Chicago for 40 years.

“Martha Nussbaum is a scholar of immense range and influence, and she is also an outstanding and dedicated teacher,” said Dean Thomas J. Miles. “I am thrilled that the Alumni Association and Board are recognizing her incredible impact on students – on both sides of the Midway – with this prestigious award.”

Globally, digital games of all types and persuasions are big business. Industry experts report in 2023 that approximately 3.38 billion people worldwide play games. The global market for the gaming industry in 2023 was expected to reach $187.7 billion in revenue, according to Newzoo. To place this in perspective, movies worldwide generated $26 billion in revenue, and streaming services revenue was approximately $1.1 billion in 2023, according to Grand View Research. In order of their size, China, the U.S., and Japan are the top markets for the gaming industry.

“We’ve seen a growing difference between the size of the gaming and film industries,” said Patrick Jagoda, the William Rainey Harper Professor in the Departments of English Language and Literature, Cinema and Media Studies, and Obstetrics and Gynecology, and faculty director of the Weston Game Lab and the Media, Arts, and Design major at UChicago.

In November 2023, Jagoda traveled to Shenzhen, Hong Kong, and Beijing in China to deliver several lectures about game studies and game design for climate change, host a creative worldbuilding workshop with local peers, and give several interviews to the prominent Chinese news outlets.