Faculty

From the Forbidden City to UChicago, Art Historian Searches for 'a Human Perspective'

Wu Hung shows students details of a sculptural relief. Published in 2020, his award-winning book "First Class" uses 24 of his opening class lectures to illustrate how he structures the study of Chinese art history.

When Prof. Wu Hung lived in the Forbidden City as a young scholar in the 1970s, he felt the constant presence of history. The palatial compound was quiet and empty after visiting hours, and Wu could contemplate its ancient art and architecture.

In the evenings, Wu often spent time in the largest open space within the palaces. Surrounded by the ancient architecture, he could see the vast sky and watch the seasons unfold.

“It was like living in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, only these palaces are even more immense and wonderful,” said Wu, a longtime University of Chicago faculty member. “Art was my next-door neighbor. The Forbidden City’s enormous art collections made me want to pursue a career in art history. I sensed a strong continuity in its art and architecture to our time.”

UChicago Film Scholar Jacqueline Stewart Awarded MacArthur Fellowship

Prof. Jacqueline Stewart, a leading film scholar known for her work on silent films and African American cinema, has been awarded a 2021 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 creativity in their work.” As a MacArthur Fellow, Stewart will receive a no-strings-attached grant of $625,000 over five years to support creative pursuits.

Make Film History More Inclusive. That's Jacqueline Stewart's Mandate at Academy Museum

Jacqueline Stewart by Joe Mazza, Brave Lux

Jacqueline Stewart was already one of the nation’s leading film scholars before she took the job of chief artistic and programming director at the new Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. Now she’s helming the presentation of perhaps the most significant museum dedicated to movies in the country.

While Stewart is on leave from the University of Chicago’s department of cinema and media studies, where she taught American film history, she will continue to appear on Turner Classic Movies, where she was the cable channel’s first Black host. She also participated in TCM’s series “Reframed Classics,” which recontextualized long-beloved movies now seen as problematic by some contemporary audiences, such as “Gone With the Wind” and “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”

In New Book, Prof. Martha Nussbaum Examines the Path Forward After #MeToo

As Prof. Martha C. Nussbaum watched the #MeToo movement emerge in a swirl of impassioned testimony several years ago, she was struck not only by the swell of attention being paid to stories of sexual violence and harassment but by the continued dearth of institutional accountability and the onset of “callout culture,” the increasingly common ritual of publicly shaming the accused.

The #MeToo revolution was important and long overdue, she would later write, but it wasn’t yet producing full justice. Nussbaum, the University of Chicago’s Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics, was particularly dismayed by the ways in which three areas of employment—the federal judiciary, performing arts, and college sports—created “sweet spots” for abuse by elevating and protecting powerful men.

What the movement needed, she concluded, was a clearer and deeper understanding of the forces at play: the pride and greed that lead men to objectify women (and sometimes other men), the ways in which criminal and civil laws have evolved (and could continue evolve) to better address sexual assault and sexual harassment, and the dangers of allowing vengeful desires to impede true justice and reconciliation.

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