Two Perspectives on Video Games
Library Digitizes Jazz Age Magazine
The University of Chicago Library launched a website last month allowing visitors free access to The Chicagoan, an arts and culture magazine fashioned after The New Yorker. Neil Harris, Preston & Sterling Morton Professor Emeritus of History and Art History, discovered the nearly complete run of the magazine in the Regenstein Library in the late 1980s. He later edited a book, The Chicagoan: A Lost Magazine of the Jazz Age, exploring the magazine’s ambitions and situating it in the historical context of 1920s Chicago.
The magazine was digitized using the Joe and Rika Mansueto Library’s Digitization Laboratory’s new Zeutschel overhead scanner, which allowed the library to scan bound volumes in house, in a face-up position. “As an online, searchable resource, the Chicagoan facilitates new avenues of study and the ability to zoom in and out on images, while preserving the original print volumes from excessive handling,” said Alice Schreyer, Assistant University Librarian for Humanities, Social Sciences & Special Collections and Curator of Rare Books.
Digital copies of The Chicagoan, which lasted from 1926 to 1935, can be found here.
Visual Arts Alumna to Publish Work on Cloistered Nuns
While researching Dedicated to God: An Oral History of Cloistered Nuns, Abbie Reese, MFA'13, spent six years learning and recording the individual stories of a community of cloistered monastic nuns living in a 25,000-square-foot enclosure outside Rockford, Illinois. Those stories and Reese's accompanying photographs will be published in November as part of the Oxford University Press's Oxford Oral History series, and mark one of the first times an author has been allowed access to an enclosure where nuns observe monastic silence. Reese graduated from the Department of Visual Arts in 2013, and has included photos and video from the project on her website. Her photos were also shown in the 2013 MFA Thesis exhibition, which can be found here.
Robert Morrissey Named to French Legion of Honor
Robert Morrissey, Benjamin Franklin Professor in Romance Languages and Literatures, was recently named a Chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur of the French Republic. In order to receive the distinction of Chevalier, one must have a minimum 20 years of public service or 25 years of professional activity, in addition to achieving distinction in one's field. Morrissey serves as Executive Director of the France Chicago Center and is the Director of the Project for American and French Research on the Treasury of the French Language (ARTFL).
Janice Knight Featured on City-Wide "Lit 50" List
Janice Knight, Associate Professor in English Language and Literature, received the #11 spot on Newcity Lit's 2013 "Lit 50" list for her accomplishments as Chair of the Committee on Creative Writing as well as her work on Early American colonialism, religion, and gender. The annual list recognizes leaders in the Chicago literary scene, with a special focus this year on "celebrating not so much the writers who occupy the center stage, but those who operate behind the scenes to make sure the stage itself exists."
