Dear Emeriti Colleagues,

We hope your 2022 is off to a good start. We’re enjoying snow on campus but are also glad for the lengthening days and promise of slightly warmer weather in the Chicago forecast. If you are looking for a new way to count the days this year, you might want to download the University's new 2022 digital calendar for your desktop computer or phone or an academic digital calendar from the Oriental Institute, “Birds of the Month” (highlighting birds in the OI collection).

It is good to have students back on campus. The University returned to in person instruction on January 24 after a delayed start to the quarter and two weeks of remote courses. In preparation for the resumption of more in-person activities, Provost Ka Yee C. Lee and Executive Vice President, Katie Callow-Wright recently sent out a message with information about updates to COVID-related campus protocols. A summary of steps taken in response and additional precautions can be found on the UChicago Forward website.

Below please find highlights of resources, events, and emeriti publications.

Unfortunately, the official opening of the Emeriti Lounge at Alumni House (5555 S. Woodlawn Ave) has been delayed due to COVID-related restrictions, but Spring Quarter looks looking promising! We intend to open the lounge on March 28th when Spring Quarter begins.

During staffed hours (12-5pm daily), amenities will include:

• Wifi
• Newspapers and magazines
• Coffee and snacks (when protocols allow)
• Printing, copying, and scanning
• Temporary storage lockers

The lounge will also host regular events and open houses when conditions allow. More information will be included in future newsletters and updates to the Emeriti Faculty website.

The Library detailed its hours for the remainder of Winter Quarter in a January 21 announcement. A full listing of hours for all campus libraries, circulation desks, Special Collections access, and the ID & Privileges Office can be found on their Libraries and Hours page. An FAQ about the Library’s changes to the food and drink policy also has been updated and is available for review before your next trip to the stacks.

The University recently introduced a new public safety campaign: UChicago Always Think Safety. The campaign and related efforts were outlined in a recent message from Provost Lee and Eric Heath, Associate Vice President for Safety and Security. More information is available at the Department of Safety and Security website, where you can find updates, FAQs, and additional resources.

Josef Stern, William H. Colvin Professor of Philosophy Emeritus, has written Quotations as Pictures (MIT Press, 2022) which will be released in February. From the MIT Press description:

“In Quotations as Pictures, Josef Stern develops a semantics for quotations using explanatory notions drawn from philosophical theories of pictures. He offers the first sustained analysis of the practice of quotation proper, as opposed to mentioning. Unlike other accounts that treat quotation as mentioning, Quotations as Pictures argues that the two practices have independent histories, that they behave differently semantically, that the inverted commas employed in both mentioning and quotation are homonymous, that so-called mixed quotation is nothing but subsentential quotation, and that the major problem of quotation is to explain its dual reference or meaning—its ordinary meaning and its metalinguistic reference to the quoted phrase attributed to the quoted subject.

Stern argues that the key to understanding quotation is the idea that quotations are pictures or have a pictorial character. As a phenomenon where linguistic competence meets a nonlinguistic symbolic ability, the pictorial, quotation is a combination of features drawn from the two different symbol systems of language and pictures, which explains the exceptional and sometimes idiosyncratic data about quotation. In light of this analysis of verbal quotation, in the last chapters Stern analyzes scare quotation as a nonliteral expressive use of the inverted commas and explores the possibility of quotation in pictures themselves.”

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.

UChicago Public Arts: 100 View of Lake Michigan

If you find yourself on campus you may notice new banners around the Quads featuring pictures of Lake Michigan as part of a new project – 100 Views of Lake Michigan – from UChicago Public Arts. It is part of Public Arts’ inaugural design challenge, and they are asking for photo submissions that will be used for future student-designed public arts installations.

The Smart Museum of Art

The Smart Museum of Art has shared an update about two upcoming exhibitions: Bob Thompson: This House Is Mine (February 15–May 15) and Porcelain: Material and Storytelling (February 15–March 6).

“Organized by the Colby College Museum of Art, where it debuted last summer, Bob Thompson: This House is Mine is the first museum exhibition dedicated to this visionary painter in more than twenty years. Through 85 paintings and works on paper the exhibition traces Thompson’s brief but prolific transatlantic career, examining both his formal inventiveness and his engagement with themes of collectivity, jazz, love, bearing witness, struggle, and justice.

Also on display for a limited time will be Porcelain: Material and Storytelling (February 15–March 6), a small exhibition organized by Professor Wu Hung in conjunction with Ballet des Porcelaines, an eighteenth-century French pantomime-ballet reimagined for the twenty-first century that will be performed at the University on March 2 and 3.”

Tickets will be made available in the coming weeks; remember to make a reservation to visit the exhibitions. More information about visitor policies and protocols is available online.

International House

A variety of events and programs (in person, hybrid, and virtual) are coming up at International House throughout the Winter and Spring Quarters, including the 62nd Annual University of Chicago Folk Festival taking place over February 11th and 12th and the return of The Chicago Ensemble for the first of a series of concerts on February 20th. Additional information about these events and more is available on the I-House events calendar.

Big Brains Podcast

Jacqueline Stewart, Professor in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies and the College, and chief artistic and programming officer at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, joined the Big Brains podcast for a recent episode, “The Overlooked History of Black Cinema (Episode 84).” Previous episodes, including “Unlocking the Secrets of Black Holes” with Nobel-Prize winner and UCLA Professor of Physics and Astronomy Andrea Ghez and “Revolutionizing Technology at the Nanoscale” with UChicago President Paul Alivisatos, are available at the Big Brains website.

Institute for the Formation of Knowledge

Throughout Winter Quarter, the Institute for the Formation of Knowledge will host its “Cultures and Knowledge” workshop series, which features a wide range of scholarship across historical and disciplinary boundaries. This Winter’s workshops include an upcoming talk delivered by Clara del Junco, IFK Faculty Research Fellow 2021-22 and Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of Chicago's Knowledge Lab, on “Utopian Vectors,” at 12pm on February 28.   

Recordings of past IFK workshops, lectures, and events are also available on its YouTube channel, including the most recent event in the Meeting of the Minds series, a collaboration between the Institute for the Formation of Knowledge and the Booth School of Business: “The Impact of Effective Storytelling.” The event featured a conversation with Vu Tran,Associate Professor of Practice in the Arts at the University of Chicago and Guy Rolnik, Clinical Professor of Strategic Management at Chicago Booth moderated by Allison Cuddy, Director of the Chicago Humanities Festival. You can watch the conversation and read a transcript of the event online.

Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation

On February 18, the Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation is hosting Jonathan Patz, the Tony J. McMichael Professor and John P. Holton Chair of Health and the Environment and Director of the Global Health Institute at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, as part of its Distinguished Speaker Colloquium on Biological Sciences and Climate Change. Professor Patz will present his lecture, “Actions on the Climate Crisis Offer Major and Immediate Health Gains,” from 12-1pm over Zoom. More information is available on the event registration page. Information on additional events the Mansueto Institute is hosting, virtually, hybrid, and in-person, as well as recordings of past events, can be found on the events calendar.