Dear Alumni and Friends,
I’m excited to share with you the latest array of work from the Division of the Arts & Humanities. We renamed ourselves to encompass the breadth of thoughtful artistry and creative scholarship being produced by our students and faculty. But I like to say we’ve effectively been operating as an “arts and humanities” unit for the past 70 years and have finally gotten around to updating our name accordingly.
What distinguishes the arts at UChicago is not simply that we produce remarkable work but that creative practice here is inseparable from critical inquiry. Our new designation better reflects the abundance of world-class arts at UChicago, making explicit the ways these fields are—and always have been—integrated into our research and teaching. It also reflects the intellectually grounded creative work being done in programs such as the Department of Visual Arts, the Program in Creative Writing, the Committee on Theater and Performance Studies (TAPS), the Music Performance Program, and Media Arts and Design.
We recently launched a new website to go with our new name; I encourage you to visit to learn more about what we’ve been up to: artshumanities.uchicago.edu.
In this issue of Tableau, you’ll find a Philosophy alumna bringing complex, provocative topics to public audiences. Professors in English Language and Literature and Linguistics discuss the role of humanities scholarship in biomedicine—how it helps us understand the challenging question of why some people enjoy better health than others, and what it means for our well-being that we exist in environments suffused with noise. You’ll hear from alumni using their training to craft video games, discussing their influential coursework in Critical Videogame Studies, and suggesting games to check out even if you aren’t much of a gamer (yet!). You can explore the work being done by our latest hires in Music, who develop sonic art that engages with biology and physics, examine how music has informed the troubled history of race and eugenics, and trace the internet’s evolving role in popular culture.
You’ll also get a glimpse into the high-tech archaeological research being undertaken by graduate students at the Center for Ancient Middle Eastern Landscapes (CAMEL). Finally, you’ll see coverage of the energizing public events we hosted this past fall: the expanded and tremendously well-attended Arts & Humanities Day and the kickoff symposium for the University’s Year of Games, which celebrated the theory and practice of play in all its forms, from tabletop to console. You’ll find more game recommendations to enjoy as well.
The University of Chicago has always been known for the intellectual rigor of our students and faculty, whether they are engaged in scholarship or creative practice. By bringing the arts formally into the division’s name—and deepening our connections with the arts programs across campus—we acknowledge not only the exceptional artistic works being created here but also the creativity of the research. It is my honor to be dean during this exciting era, and again I encourage you to visit artshumanities.uchicago.edu so you can see what’s next for us.
Deborah L. Nelson
Dean, Division of the Arts & Humanities
Helen B. and Frank L. Sulzberger Professor, Department of English Language and Literature