Crossing Sonic Borderlands
Humanities Scholar Receives Prestigious Award for Analyzing India's Art Cinema
Originally starting her career as a South Asian historian of gender, Prof. Rochona Majumdar has expanded her research to encompass Indian cinema. She recently received the 2023 Chidananda Dasgupta Award for Best Writing on Cinema for her book, "Art Cinema and India’s Forgotten Futures: Film and History in the Postcolony" (2021).
In the Award’s citation from the Chidananda Dasgupta Memorial Trust, Majumdar’s book is recognized for not only its discussion of film practice and film societies in Bengal, but for its intriguing questions about how art cinema offered new insights into postcolonial Indian culture, history, and politics.
“With her detailed background in South Asian 20th-century culture, Rochona Majumdar has a particular insight into the role cinema has had, not only in social change, but in creating social networks,” said Tom Gunning, professor emeritus in the Departments of Cinema and Media Studies, Art History, and the College at UChicago.
William Pope.L, Renowned Interdisciplinary Artist and Scholar, 1955–2023
William Pope.L, an acclaimed interdisciplinary artist and professor in the Department of Visual Arts at UChicago, died on Dec. 23 at his home in Chicago. He was 68.
In the international art world, Pope.L was best known for his provocative performance art, which included crawling through the streets of New York City and Lewiston, Maine in a business suit or Superman costume and eating columns of financial news from the Wall Street Journal while smearing mayonnaise all over his torso to achieve an artificial whiteness. In addition to performance, his art also encompassed writing, photography, painting, sculpture and theater.
“Pope.L was a dedicated student of the human condition, a marvelous interlocutor and a kind soul,” said Matthew Jesse Jackson, professor in the Departments of Art History, Theater and Performance Studies, Visual Arts, and the College and chair of Visual Arts at UChicago. “He ceaselessly challenged us to think. His art is humane, generous, combative and among the most important bodies of work in the 21st century.”
Modern Language Association and College Art Association to Honor W. J. T. Mitchell with Lifetime Achievement Awards for English and Writing on Art
Freida High's painting "Hypericons: Homage to W. J. T. Mitchell," 2007. © Freida High. Photo by Jim Escalante.
By Sara Patterson
Prof. W. J. T. Mitchell may be the only living iconologist on the planet. He draws on ideas from ancient and modern mythology that treat pictures as living things. As a historian of cultural images, Mitchell studies the relationship between words and images, cultivating visual and verbal literacy.
For his immense scholarly work in iconology and his 42 years as the editor of UChicago’s well-known humanities journal, Critical Inquiry, Mitchell will receive the Modern Language Association’s Award for Lifetime Scholarly Achievement on Jan. 5, 2024, in Philadelphia. He will be given the 2024 CAA Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award for Writing on Art on Feb. 14, 2024, in Chicago. It is also a fitting finish to his teaching career at UChicago, which officially ends in January 2024. He has promised, however, to hang around Hyde Park, showing up for lectures, teaching an occasional course, and skating on the Midway.
UChicago Fourth-Year Student Earns Marshall Scholarship
On Dec. 11, it was publicly announced that Ethan Ostrow received the prestigious Marshall Scholarship, which will enable him to study at the University of Oxford, where he will advance his work on incarceration reform by pursuing a graduate degree in socio-legal studies next fall.
He is the 29th person affiliated with UChicago, since 1986, to win a Marshall Scholarship, which recognizes academic excellence, leadership and ambassadorial potential.
"Ethan's willingness to question the status quo and apply problem solving to the complexities of our justice system is inspiring, and exemplifies so many of the unique qualities that distinguish students here at UChicago," said Melina Hale, dean of the College. "We are so proud of Ethan, and this well deserved honor."
