News

Josephine McDonagh, Professor of English, elected to the British Academy

Arts & Humanities scholar honored with the UK’s highest distinctions in the humanities and social sciences, recognizing scholarship that advances knowledge across continents and disciplines.

Hexacago Health Academy marks ten years of game design education

A group of students playing a board game

With research-backed learning tools and serious fun, UChicago faculty and South Side students transform public health education through games.

C.M. Naim, pioneer of Urdu studies and beloved mentor, 1936–2025

Choudhri Mohammed Naim, better known as C.M. Naim, passed away in Hyde Park, Chicago, on July 9, 2025. Naim—called Naim Sahib by his students and colleagues, using the Urdu honorific—was 89. An emeritus professor in the Department of South Asian Languages & Civilizations (SALC), which he first joined more than 60 years ago before retiring in 2001, Naim was a prolific author, cultural critic, and mentor to many across his long career, and widely regarded as the founder of Urdu studies in North America.

UChicago Arts & Humanities Day Announces Speakers, Partnership with Chicago Humanities

UChicago Arts and Humanities Day, Oct. 18

UChicago’s 45-year tradition of celebrating arts and humanistic scholarship partners with Chicago Humanities Festival—to showcase the work of scholars, writers, artists, philosophers, and other luminaries.

Building the Future of Arts & Humanities at UChicago: Responses to Frequently Asked Questions

Deborah Nelson, Dean of the Division of the Arts & Humanities and Helen B. and Frank L. Sulzberger Professor of English and the College

What is the scope of work in the arts and humanities at UChicago?
UChicago’s research and teaching in the arts and humanities is conducted at a scale and level of impact with very few peers. The Division of the Arts & Humanities is home to more than 200 tenure-track faculty members and 200 specialists in language teaching and many forms of arts practice—one of the largest arts and humanities faculties in the world. The division teaches 50 languages or more in any given year. In 2025, a third of all undergraduate degrees at UChicago included a major or minor in the arts and humanities.

How is UChicago’s Arts & Humanities Division planning for the future?
During the summer of 2025, more than 50 faculty and staff within the division began working to plan for the long-term vitality of the arts and humanities at UChicago. This faculty-led work has generated ideas to help us discuss ways to ensure our academic community can continue to produce the kinds of humanistic knowledge that is essential to engaging the pressing issues we face as a species, such as: How can cultural and historical insights inform how we navigate the impacts of climate change? How does our understanding of language shape artificial intelligence, and how does AI change understandings of language, truth and other concepts at the core of the humanities? And even first-order questions about how we live together in a pluralistic society with shared but limited resources, in a global milieu with increasingly fluid boundaries. These are questions our students want to pursue, too.

What is the status of the faculty-led planning work that began in summer 2025?
I have shared with all faculty and staff within the Division of the Arts & Humanities the reports produced by the faculty-led committees convened during the summer of 2025. The findings and recommendations of those reports have provided a starting point for ongoing discussions and long-term planning within the division and with university leadership.

Curating Care: UChicago alum organizes Lifeblood, an international exhibition on Munch and medicine

Blurry figure walking between two paintings

Art History alum Allison Morehead (PhD ’07) expands connections between Edvard Munch’s art and the history of modern medicine.

During Year of Games, UChicago invites everyone to play

Year-long celebration of games launches with library exhibition and three-day symposium featuring game makers, writers and scholars

Gray Center launches Portable Gray issue honoring artist Pope.L’s “Chicago Years”

Pope.L’s impact at UChicago extended far beyond the classroom—through his groundbreaking performances, scholarship, and deep ties to Chicago’s art scene. On Aug. 27, the Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry honors his legacy with a launch event for Portable Gray: The Chicago Years, featuring Theaster Gates, Mami Takahashi, and a DJ set in his honor.

Five gems from the South Side Home Movie Project

A 1950s float at Chicago's historic Bud Billiken Parade from the Ramon Williams Collection

The South Side Home Movie Project exhibition at the Logan Center for the Arts runs through August 24. Explore five surprising gems from the 20-year-old archive dedicated to preserving and digitizing the rich tapestry of home movies created by Chicago's South Side residents.

Arts & Humanities faculty member Hoyt Long receives named professorship

Twenty-six members of the University of Chicago faculty have received distinguished service professorships or named professorships, including Hoyt Long who has been named the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations and the College.

Grant funds Smart Museum-Divinity School partnership to research religious objects

UChicago’s Smart Museum of Art featuring ‘Give the Drummer Some!’, an installation by artist Robert Earl Paige

The University of Chicago has received a $2.45 million grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. through its Religion and Cultural Institutions Initiative. The grant will support the four-year project, Afterlives: Engaging Objects of Religious Origin in Museum Collections, a collaboration between the Smart Museum of Art and the Divinity School’s Martin Marty Center for the Public Understanding of Religion.

UChicago announces 2025 winners of Quantrell and Ph.D. teaching awards

UChicago annually recognizes faculty for their incredible teaching and mentoring of undergraduate and graduate students through the Llewellyn John and Harriet Manchester Quantrell Awards for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, believed to be the nation’s oldest prize for undergraduate teaching; and the Faculty Awards for Excellence in Ph.D. Teaching and Mentoring, which honor faculty for their work with graduate students. Two recipients are faculty members in the Division of the Arts and Humanities: Lenore Grenoble, the John Matthews Manly Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Linguistics; and Timothy Harrison, Associate Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature and the John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought.

Three UChicago scholars receive 2025 Guggenheim Fellowships

Guggenheim Fellowships have been awarded this year to three University of Chicago scholars, including two from the Division of the Arts & Humanities, and several alumni. The distinguished artists, writers and scientists join the 100th class of Guggenheim Fellows honored for “prior career achievement and exceptional promise.” Prof. Theaster Gates, Lect. Richie Hofmann and Prof. Marcus Kronforst are among the 198 distinguished individuals selected from a pool of nearly 3,500 applicants.

Visionary Opera Director Yuval Sharon to Deliver Berlin Family Lectures

Berlin Family Lectures: Anarchy at the Opera - May 6, 13, and 20

On May 6, 13, and 20, visionary opera director Yuval Sharon will present this year’s Randy L. and Melvin R. Berlin Family Lectures, produced by the Division of the Arts & Humanities at the University of Chicago. Sharon’s three lectures are titled “Anarchy at the Opera” and will explore reimagining opera not through modes of nostalgia or imitation, but through experimentation and collaboration. Sharon’s third and final lecture on May 20 will include a rare performance of John Cage’s Europera 5. The lectures and performance will be offered both for in-person and online attendance—at 6 p.m. CDT at the Logan Center for the Arts, and on Zoom.

UChicago Arts Co-Hosts EXPO CHICAGO’s South Side Night April 22, 2025

FaceTime Dreams, 2020 by Brandon Carlton; Photo by Alyssa Gregory

For the fifth consecutive year, UChicago Arts showcases arts excellence across the University of Chicago and throughout neighboring south side communities.

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