Dear Emeriti Colleagues,
 
Spring is here! As we begin seeing budding trees and sunny weather, we hope those of you in the Chicago area can get out and enjoy being on campus. If you are up for a fun April first evening, check out the UChicago Guild of Carillonists for what they describe to be an “un-BELL-ievable recital of fun music, refreshments and punny jokes.”
 
If you are looking for virtual ways to get involved in what’s happening at the University, you can browse through the select UChicago podcasts including Big Brains. For more events, you can also visit the UChicago calendar of events.

Please stop by the Emeriti Center - we hope to see you there! The Center is located in the Klowden Family Library (Room 106) of the Alumni House on 5555 S Woodlawn Ave. You will need your UChicago ID card to access the building. For more information about the Emeriti Center and events, visit the emeriti faculty website.

Through the Spring Quarter, the Center will be open and staffed from 9am-5pm for emeriti and their guests. If you need a space to meet with colleagues or students, have lunch with friends or just read and work, the Center offers an ideal place. Drinks and snacks are available and the graduate students who staff the Center are happy to help.

Also consider joining us for regular engagements with our campus partners at Benefits Office, Information Technology and Academic Technology Solutions (ATS). See below for more specifics, including dates and times. These sessions will also be available on zoom for those who are away from campus or who prefer to connect virtually.

Desktop Support and Tech Bar

Desktop Support Specialist Gordon Dickson will be on hand to answer questions and provide technology support on Thursday, March 30 and Thursday, April 27 from 1:00-2:00pm. You can also attend virtually through zoom.  

Academic Technology Office Hours 

ATS staff will be at the Center on alternating Tuesdays from 2:00-3:30pm to answer any questions you may have about the different technological tools you use in your pedagogy. Office hours are a chance for emeriti faculty to ask any questions they may have about Canvas, Zoom, Panopto, or other tools for teaching with technology. Upcoming sessions are scheduled for April 4, April 18 and May 2. Attend in person or virtually through zoom.

Benefits

Benefits Office Hours in April will be virtual! Please join UChicago’s Retiree Benefits Specialist Estephany Arroyo who will be available on zoom to meet with emeriti and answer questions on Wednesday, April 12, from 10-11am.

The Winter 2023 Emeriti Faculty Steering Committee meeting was held on February 28. We hosted Kemal Badur, Assistant Vice President and Chief Technology. Kemal talked about the ways IT Services support the emeriti and asked for feedback from the committee to improve and streamline their services. Currently, IT Services provides help in using campus-supported technology online, via chat, in person, or via email or telephone.

Outgoing provost and David Lee Shillinglaw Distinguished Service Professor Ka Yee Lee also stopped by to talk about her transition into her new role as the Executive Vice President for Strategic Initiatives in Spring 2023. In her role as Provost, Executive Vice President Lee supported the establishment of the Emeriti Center, securing the Center space and the emeriti activity grants.

Fred Donner, Peter B. Ritzma Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern History in the Oriental Institute and the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, will offer a talk titled “Islam's Origins: How Much Do We Know?” on Tuesday, March 28; 4:30. Reception to follow. Professor Donner received an emeriti activity grant in Summer 2022 to attend the International Qur’anic Studies conference in Italy in September.

If you have a new or forthcoming publications, let us know!

The Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality
The Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality is hosting an online panel titled Gender, Policing and State on April 24. The panel seeks to explore and make sense of the status of women today in the U.S., following insights offered by multi-generational group of sociologists, whose essays were featured a special issue of the American Journal of Sociology in 1973. The essays took up the changes to American gender norms ignited by the feminist and civil rights movements that were challenging and reshaping institutions, organizations, and occupations alongside social life and family life.

Institute on the Formation of Knowledge
Institute on the Formation of Knowledge is sponsoring the upcoming Science and Liberalism conference to be held on April 7-8, 2023. The conference aims to interrogate the ways “science” furnishes the liberal world with many of its key features, including for example individuality, diversity, autonomy/choice, and security, and attempt to make explicit the decidedly liberal contexts in which our fields have taken shape, with the aim of understanding how this context may have limited our collective understanding of the histories of science, technology and medicine. 

The Oriental Institute
As part of the ongoing research project Ruins, Rubble, and Renewal: Co-existent Ruins—Exploring Iraq’s Mesopotamian Past through Contemporary Art, OI is opening a new exhibit, Artifacts Also Die on April 5. This long term, interdisciplinary, expanded-media, and collaborative project seeks to address how it might be possible to have renewed engagements with four ancient Mesopotamian heritage sites (Babylon, Nimrud, Nuffar, and Ur), as well as the Iraq Museum in Baghdad, by local Iraqi artists in post-conflict Iraq. Among other things, the project explores the capacity for a form of artistic research that attends to political and social context, and a new aesthetic where the heritage of ancient Mesopotamia—a region known as ‘‘the cradle of civilization”—is reclaimed for Iraq’s current traumatic identity, and for its people’s future.
 
If you want to celebrate Earth Day by learning about sustainability and the ancient world, join the OI’s Ancient Earth Day events on April 22, including gallery talks, tours, a themed scavenger hunt and puzzle. The events will conclude with a community conversation featuring Blacks in Green.

Neubauer Collegium
The Chicago Cli-Fi Library exhibition will be open until June 11, 2023. Curated by Dieter Roelstraete and featuring recent works by Chicago-based artists Beate Geissler & Oliver Sann, Jenny Kendler, Inigo Manglano-Ovalle, and Dan Peterman, this exhibition is a modest attempt to make sense of the paralysis that sets in when artists try to fashion a response to the complexity and enormity of climate change.

Rockefeller Chapel
On April 27 at 7:30pm, Rockefeller Chapel will host a Music for Celebration event. The program will feature the Rockefeller Chapel Choir and Orchestra, directed by James Kallembach with a performance of Bach’s Easter Oratorio and coronation anthems of Handel. For more events from Rockefeller, visit their events page.

If you have news or information about publications, accolades, or upcoming lectures and events, we would love to hear about them. Please contact us at emeritifaculty@uchicago.edu.

The Emeriti Center is located in the Alumni House (5555 S. Woodlawn Ave.).