
Winter Dean's Salon: February 25, 2025
Media Mentions January 2025
The latest media mentions, quotes, profiles, and writings from Division of the Humanities faculty, students, staff, and alumni. Visit us on X, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Facebook for more updates.
Commitment to History
Anandabazar Patrika
Rochona Majumdar (South Asian Languages and Civilizations) pays tribute to Shyam Benegal, who began his career at the height of the Indian new wave. She highlights his work in film, television, and documentary highlighting his commitment to history, radical cinema, and social critique. From Ankur (1974) to Mammo (1994), his films expose systemic oppression while exploring India’s evolving identity.
Snehalata Mukhopadhyay: The teen whose dowry death shook 20th-century Bengal into action
The Indian Express
Rochona Majumdar (South Asian Languages and Civilizations) is featured in the article through her book Marriage and Modernity: Family Values in Colonial Bengal. In it, she examines Snehalata Mukhopadhyay's tragic suicide, which stemmed from her family's inability to afford the dowry required for her marriage, as one of the most debated cases in Bengali and Indian history. Prof. Majumdar provides critical historical context and analysis, linking this personal tragedy to broader themes of family values, societal expectations, and gender oppression in colonial Bengal.
Thomas ‘Tom’ Mapp, visionary arts educator and administrator at UChicago, 1936‒2024
Thomas 'Tom' Mapp, a transformative leader in arts education and administration at the University of Chicago, passed away on Nov. 11, 2024. He was 88.
Mapp worked at UChicago for 26 years, beginning in 1975. He served as the second director of Midway Studios, part of the Committee on Art and Design within the Department of Art History, which also oversaw the Master’s in Fine Arts program. Over his tenure, he helped reshape the program to focus on intellectual rigor and artistic innovation. By 1996, Mapp had overseen its evolution into the Committee on the Visual Arts, independent from Art History with its own faculty chair and budget, laying the groundwork for what is now the Department of Visual Arts.
Humanities Day, in brief
The UChicago Division of the Humanities showcased the depth and impact of arts and humanities research during our annual signature event, Humanities Day, on Oct. 26, 2024.
'UChicago Magazine' highlighted faculty presentations, including Derek Kennet’s exploration of ancient shipwrecks and early globalization, Jason Salavon’s insights on AI’s influence on creativity, and Eric Slauter’s talk, which focused on the Humanities Core, and how faculty, including himself, have introduced students to primary texts and to the task of confronting them collaboratively as an academic community.
Meet the Staff: Anna Hornsby
More than 100 staff members work in the Division of the Humanities. We’ll introduce you to our staff in this continuing series.
Anna Hornsby
Department Administrator
Classics Department
What do you like most about your job?
My educational background and interests are well aligned with the Classics Department, with an MA in Archaeology focused on Viking Age Scandinavia. So it is nice to be back around faculty and students who are teaching and researching in areas I am also interested in.
What was the last good book you read?
I finally read Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel Persepolis over the break. It's gorgeous, and I highly recommend it.
You might work with me if …
Your department works closely with Classics, overlapping with courses or events amongst our departments.
What are you looking forward to in 2025 and why?
In August of 2024, I moved from Austin, Texas, to Chicago. I’ve lived in several states and a couple of countries over the years, and so while large moves aren’t new, this one was a part of a bigger life-changing experience. With it also came my move from The University of Austin to UChicago!
2025 will be my first full year in Chicago, so I’m looking forward to exploring the city more, watching it change with the seasons, and finding new things to try (like the Silent Book Club and Queer Soup Kitchen at Dorothy’s).
Five UChicago Humanities Faculty Members Receive Named, Distinguished Service Professorships
Five University of Chicago Humanities faculty members have received distinguished service professorships or named professorships.
Profs. Josephine McDonagh, Sianne Ngai and Jacqueline Najuma Stewart have received distinguished service professorships.
Profs. Hans Thomalla and Ming Xiang have received named professorships.
Theaster Gates's House Museum Gone Wild
Theaster Gates’s latest exhibition, When Clouds Roll Away: Reflection and Restoration from the Johnson Archive, would give all but the most radical archivist a heart attack.
International scholars recognize UChicago professor's original thinking
UChicago Prof. Eric Santner does not belong to one discipline. Instead, he has explored different fields, which has led him to develop diverse concepts that combine literature, philosophy, psychoanalysis, and religious thought.
In tribute to his intellectual contributions, the "Angelaki, Journal of the Theoretical Humanities," recently devoted an entire special issue to him called “Politics of the Flesh.” The issue contains articles written by an international group of philosophers, theologians, legal scholars, political theorists, and literary scholars who have found in Santner’s work resources for rethinking problems in their own areas of research. The authors presented many of these papers at an international conference called “The Weight of All Flesh” held in Munich in June 2023 at the Hochschule für Philosophie.
Welcome to Haven Academy
Throughout your exploration of this world, you discover a number of mysteries and solve puzzles, all while interacting with characters and your fellow students en route to discovering deeper truths about the university—and working together to make a big decision.
This is Haven Academy, a multimedia role-playing game created by UChicago scholars and students to help orient first-year College students to the Core curriculum, university life and the Chicago Principles of free expression. This summer, more than 1,000 incoming first-years engaged with Haven during Orientation—and the game has been made available to all undergraduates to play and experience over winter break.
UChicago students engage their senses outside the classroom
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.