Dear Alumni and Friends,
At UChicago, creative writers are readers, film historians make documentaries, music composers are steeped in history, and music historians are accomplished musicians. The walls between scholarship and practice are much more permeable now than in the past.
The division has long been the home of internationally celebrated artists like Augusta Read Thomas and Theaster Gates. In the twenty-first century, we have built distinguished undergraduate programs like Creative Writing, Media Arts and Design, and Theater and Performance Studies (TAPS), which complement our distinguished graduate programs in music composition and visual arts. It is time that the Division of the Humanities recognize the distinction of our artists and our arts curriculum by changing its name to the Division of the Arts and Humanities, a change that will become official in the coming months.
For instance, Emmy-winning set designer Rich Murray, AB’94, got his start as an undergraduate in a UChicago set design course taught by Linda Buchanan, AB’74, a veteran of the Chicago theater scene. Murray once told the University of Chicago Magazine that sets are “a real way of bringing something to life onstage, almost like the set design is another character.” He received Emmys in 2022 and 2023 for his innovative set design on the hit TV show Only Murders in the Building. And he now provides career advice to our students in TAPS.
Award-winning independent filmmaker Kimberly Peirce, AB’90, attributes her success to studying English at UChicago and learning from her mentor, literary scholar and cultural theorist Lauren Berlant, who died in 2021. “[Berlant] gave me permission to dream,” Peirce said, “and to follow my great passion to tell stories.”
Peirce made the surprise hit movie and cultural touchstone Boys Don’t Cry in 1999. She directed and cowrote this real-life story of Brandon Teena to honor the courage and imagination of a trans person who lost his life in pursuit of his true self. Through this Oscar-winning film, Peirce helped shape a national conversation about gender and sexual identity.
In addition to mentoring students who make vital contributions to the world, many of our faculty members will display what’s distinctive about the arts and humanities in unique spaces on the UChicago campus for Humanities Day on October 26, 2024. Ethnomusicologist Philip V. Bohlman, the keynote speaker, will launch the event during a session that features live music in the Logan Center Performance Hall. Poet Srikanth “Chicu” Reddy will lead an arts panel of experts discussing experimentation and critical analysis centered on arts research. Game experts Patrick Jagoda; Heidi Coleman, AM’08; and Marc Downie will present a live interactive media game performance at the Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry.
We hope you will attend Humanities Day sessions in person or virtually. As always, I appreciate your dedication to the arts and humanities.
Deborah L. Nelson
Dean, Division of the Humanities
Helen B. and Frank L. Sulzberger Professor, Department of English Language and Literature