Dear UChicago Emeriti and Friends

Recent events in Hyde Park have left us, like many of you, shaken and saddened. We join with the entire UChicago community in mourning the death of recent UChicago graduate Shaoxiong “Dennis” Zheng, SM’21, who was shot and killed in Hyde Park. Mr. Zheng recently completed the master’s program in statistics. 

President Paul Alivisatos expressed his sympathy for Zheng’s family and loved ones in a video message, and the University held a memorial on November 18.

During a webinar on public safety held November 17, President Alivisatos and Associate Vice President of Safety and Security Eric Heath were joined by Chicago Police Department Superintendent David Brown to address campus safety and security following recent shootings in the Hyde Park neighborhood. University leaders outlined new measures put in place, including increased patrols, increased use of cameras, and expanded coordination between the UCPD and the Chicago Police Department. More information about campus safety and security is available on a new website the University has developed. 

As President Alivisatos and Provost Ka Yee Lee said in their message to the community, it is vital to support the University community during this time of grief. Assistance for faculty, including emeriti, and staff is available through Perspectives, which can be reached any time at 800-456-6327. More information about Perspectives and services available is provided on the Human Resources website.

The Emeriti Lounge, located at Alumni House, will open officially with the start of Winter Quarter on Monday January 3, 2022. The lounge will provide a place for socializing, special activities, an emeriti hub on campus, and the home for special engagement opportunities and lectures throughout the year. More information on hours and lounge activities will be emailed closer to that date.

Ahead of the opening, there are several opportunities to visit the new Emeriti Lounge at Alumni House (5555 South Woodlawn Avenue) following Thanksgiving. Come for a sneak peek of the lounge and meet with us (Vice Provost Melina Hale and Assistant Provost Phil Venticinque) during one of the three open houses scheduled: 

• Monday, November 29, 3–5pm
• Wednesday, December 1, 3–5pm
• Thursday, December 9, 1–3pm

If you or a guest plan on attending one of the sessions, please register in advance. Space is limited to 25 attendees.

Open Enrollment Reminders

The 2022 Retiree Medical Plan Guide, open enrollment letters, forms, and information on the plans are available online at the Benefits Office Retiree Medical Plan site. Any new elections and all changes will become effective January 1, 2022 and continue through December 31, 2022. Enrollment forms for any changes are due November 30, 2021 for emeriti and other retirees. 

If you have not received your materials or have any questions, please contact the Benefits Specialists at 855.822.8901 or retiree@uchicago.edu.

The Library has reopened Regenstein, Mansueto, Crerar, and Eckhart libraries to visitors—including alumni, partners of UChicago users, researchers from affiliated institutions, and visiting researchers and members of the public. Pre-pandemic borrowing services for various groups will also resume. More information about visitor access at the Regenstein and other locations is available on the Library’s news page. Note that faculty emeriti already have access to the Library following the same protocols outlined by the University that apply to all University of Chicago faculty.

In order to provide broad and safe access, all visitors will be asked to provide proof of COVID-19 vaccination or a recent COVID-19 test (as detailed below), consistent with University policies and protocols. These procedures do not apply to University of Chicago faculty, students, and staff, who are following separate protocols outlined by the University.

The UChicago Press Journals division is now home to more than 80 journals published in print and electronically with the addition of several new journals in 2022: Environmental History, the American Journal of Archaeology, and the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes. Environmental History, jointly published by the American Society for Environmental History (ASEH) and the Forest History Society (FHS), features research examining the relationship between humans and the environment and includes perspectives from anthropology, geography, history, and the natural sciences; it will join the UChicago Press journal program in January 2022 with the first issue of volume 27. The scholarly journal of the Archaeological Institute of America, the American Journal of Archaeology (AJA) features research on the ancient Mediterranean as well as Western Asia, North Africa, and Europe and has a broad impact, reaching more than 40 countries, 700 universities, learned societies, museums, and antiquities departments. An annual journal that began publishing in 1937, the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes features the work of scholars specializing in cultural history, art history, and intellectual history.

Celebrating 60 years this year, the Seminary Co-op invites emeriti faculty to engage with its stores and celebrate the life of the mind wherever they might be reading. Named in honor of the Co-op’s beloved Front Table, the Front Table Newsletter continues to deliver armchair browsing at a distance, and the publication The Front Table provides an extended catalogue of new and enduring Co-op book selections. Click through to browse new faculty publications and recent scholarly releases, or drop by their stores to browse in person. Learn more about the Front Table Subscription Service, which delivers recent releases from UChicago faculty, among others, to discerning readers throughout the world. For more information on their programming, refer to their events calendar, which continues to grow; you can also tune in to hear a new season of their podcast, Open Stacks, wherever you may listen. 

Ramón A. Gutiérrez, the Preston and Sterling Morton Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of U.S. History, along with Kathleen Belew, Assistant Professor of History, edited A Field Guide to White Supremacy, published in October 2021 by the University of California Press. From the Press: 

Gathering together a cohort of researchers and writers, A Field Guide to White Supremacy provides much-needed connections between violence present and past. This book illuminates the career of white supremacist and patriarchal violence in the United States, ranging across time and impacted groups in order to provide a working volume for those who wish to recognize, understand, name, and oppose that violence. The Field Guide is meant as an urgent resource for journalists, activists, policymakers, and citizens, illuminating common threads in white supremacist actions at every scale, from hate crimes and mass attacks to policy and law. Covering immigration, antisemitism, gendered violence, lynching, and organized domestic terrorism, the authors reveal white supremacy as a motivating force in manifold parts of American life. The book also offers a sampling of some of the most recent scholarship in this area in order to spark broader conversations between journalists and their readers, teachers and their students, and activists and their communities. 

Richard Strier, Frank L. Sulzberger Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in the Department of English, has published two chapters in edited volumes and has two more slated to come out in the next year: “A Field Guide to Robert Hass” in Evaluations of U.S. Poetry since 1950, ed. Robert Faggen and Robert von Hallberg (forthcoming from University of New Mexico Press, 2021), 2: 119-43; “Happy Hamlet” in Positive Emotions in Early Modern Literature and Culture, ed. Cora Fox, Bradley J. Irish, and Cassie M. Miura (Manchester University Press, 2021), 21–43; “‘Devout Humanism’ and Its Problems: George Herbert and François de Sales” in Contentious Communion: Edward and George Herbert in the European Republic of Letters, ed. Greg Miller and Anne-Marie Miller-Blaise (forthcoming from Manchester University Press, 2022); and “Freedom” in Shakespeare and Virtue: A Handbook, ed. Julia Reinhard Lupton and Donovan Sherman (forthcoming from Cambridge University Press, 2022). 

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. 

Logan Center

Carrie Mae Weems: A Land of Broken Dreams will be on display at the Logan Center through December 12. The exhibit is presented by Logan Center Exhibitions in conjunction with the multi-site exhibition Toward Common Cause: Art, Social Change, and the MacArthur Fellows Program at 40, which explores the extent to which certain resources—air, land, water, and even culture—can be held in common. Raising questions about inclusion, exclusion, ownership, and rights of access, this project considers art’s vital role in society alongside its calls for vigilance in defending shared resources. Deploying the MacArthur Fellows Program as an “intellectual commons,” Toward Common Cause features new and recontextualized work by 29 visual artists who have been named Fellows since the award program’s founding 40 years ago. 

UChicago Arts and Media Arts, Data, and Design Center

Metapictures, a new public art exhibition, opened on October 28 and runs through December 8, at the Media Arts, Data, and Design Center, located on the first floor of the John Crerar Library. The exhibition is curated by W. J. T. Mitchell, Gaylord Donnelley Distinguished Service Professor of English Language and Literature, Art History, and the College, and anchored by his fall seminar “Metapictures,” which was cross-listed in several departments: English, Cinema and Media Studies, Art History, and Visual Arts. Metapictures consists of more than 100 posters, videos, and an interactive display. The exhibition is sponsored by the Feitler Center for Academic Inquiry at the Smart Museum of Art and UChicago Public Art. More information about Metapictures, and other events and programing across campus, is available at the UChicago Arts site.

Doc Films

Doc Films is once again presenting screenings of films throughout the quarter: themes for Autumn Quarter 2021 include Cops and Robbers: The Evolution of the Heist, Psychedelic Children’s Films, New Releases, and Special Screenings; additional details and full schedule is available on the Doc Films calendar. Tickets are available at the door (cash only) or online in advance. Admission is $7 per screening for UCID holders; passes are $35 per quarter. Please visit Doc Films online for more information about visiting the theater and COVID-19 protocols.