Dear UChicago Emeriti and Friends,

We hope you have been enjoying spring and having more opportunities to connect with others as the numbers of vaccinated increase. We are pleased to share updates on emeriti publications as well as recent and upcoming campus activities (in person and virtually) to enjoy this spring and in the coming months.

Judith Farquhar, Max Palevsky Professor Emerita of Anthropology and of Social Sciences, has co-authored Gathering Medicines: Nation and Knowledge in China’s Mountain South (UChicago Press, April 2021), with Lili Lai, Associate Professor of Anthropology at the School of Health Humanities, Peking University. From the publisher: “In the early 2000s, the central government of China encouraged all of the nation’s registered minorities to ‘salvage, sort, synthesize, and elevate’ folk medical knowledges in an effort to create local health care systems comparable to the nationally supported institutions of traditional Chinese medicine. Gathering Medicines bears witness to this remarkable moment of knowledge development while sympathetically introducing the myriad therapeutic traditions of southern China. Over a period of six years, Judith Farquhar and Lili Lai worked with seven minority nationality groups in China’s southern mountains, observing how medicines were gathered and local healing systems codified. Gathering Medicines shares their intimate view of how people understand ethnicity, locality, the body, and nature. This ethnography of knowledge diversities in multiethnic China is a testament to the rural wisdom of mountain healers, one that theorizes, from the ground up, the dynamic encounters between formal statist knowledge and the popular authority of the wild.”

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

Harper Lectures

The University Alumni Association will once again be hosting a series of its signature Harper Lectures throughout the Spring Quarter. Upcoming speakers include Reuben Jonathan Miller, Assistant Professor, Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice, who will offer a Harper Lecture on Wednesday, May 12 at 7 p.m. titled “Halfway Home: Race, Punishment, and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration,” and Constantine Yannelis, Assistant Professor of Finance, Booth School of Business, who will offer a lecture on Wednesday, May 26 at 7 p.m. titled “Student Loans and Policy Options.”

These sessions are free to emeriti. To register for the lectures, please email Andrea Hodgman, Associate Director, Intellectual Engagement & Travel, Alumni Relations at ahodgman@uchicago.edu. In case you missed them, the Winter 2021 lectures are available online at the Harper Lecture archive, where you can explore all the recorded lectures since 2012.

Nora and Edward Ryerson Lecture

Neil Shubin, Robert R. Bensley Distinguished Professor of Organismal Biology and Anatomy, delivered the 2021 Ryerson Lecture, “Finding Your Inner Fish: Fossils, Genes and the History of Life,” on April 20. You can view a recording of the lecture, which was held before a small audience at the Rubinstein Forum. The Ryerson Lecture has emerged as one of the signature academic traditions of the University since the first lecture was delivered in 1974 by John Hope Franklin; for more on the Ryerson Lecture as well as a complete list of past lecturers, please consult the information collected on the Ryerson Lecture webpage maintained by the Office of the President.

Oriental Institute

The OI Museum has opened a new special exhibition, “Antoin Sevruguin: Past and Present,” featuring the late nineteenth-century photographs of Antoin Sevruguin, which will run through December 2021. This exhibition presents the OI Museum’s collection of over 150 photographic prints, attributed primarily to this acclaimed photographer of Qajar Iran, to the public for the first time. The opening lecture from the exhibition’s curator, Tasha Vorderstrasse, Research Associate at the Oriental Institute, is available online. Please join Polina Kasian for the next online gallery talk, “Antoin Sevruguin in the Context of Russian Culture in the Caucasus”, on May 19 at 5 p.m.

To reserve a ticket to visit the museum and view the exhibit, please refer to the OI visit guidelines. The OI is also providing a virtual tour of the exhibit for those who are unable to attend in person as well as an online virtual exhibit.

Neubauer Collegium Gallery

Pope.L’s My Kingdom for a Title will conclude its time at the Neubauer Collegium Gallery on May 16. If you would like to schedule an appointment to see the exhibition, please contact the curator, Dieter Roelstraete, at roelstraete@uchicago.edu. As described by the Collegium: “My Kingdom for a Title is the first exhibition to be organized at the Neubauer Collegium since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The global health emergency has unavoidably cast a shadow over the project, which contains allusions to the crisis with a degree of directness that is unusual in Pope.L’s work. Visitors enter an immersive installation under a cloud of objects that have come to symbolize our current socio-medical predicament. The centerpiece is a selection of works chosen from Pope.L’s Skin Set Project, an ongoing series of text-based drawings and paintings featuring elliptical aphorisms that call attention to the way color is deployed to categorize people. An arrangement of medicine cabinets with mirrored doors left ajar are lit from the inside, inviting visitors to get a better look at the works contained within. The subtle play of prompts and references animates the gallery as a space where notions of access — to art, to meaning, to health care — are entangled with those of color as conventional markers of identity.”

Healthy at Home Webcasts

Aetna has created the Healthy at Home Webcast Series with a variety of topics that focus on maintaining a healthy lifestyle. This series is designed to inform and engage participants and to help address social isolation created by the pandemic environment.

Each webcast is specifically chosen with Medicare members in mind. Join in to hear from well-known speakers, experts in their respective fields, as they provide valuable information on topics such as supporting a healthy lifestyle, new world of virtual medicine, being fit at home, cooking healthy meals, staying connected with technology, and maintaining a positive outlook.

Please continue to reach out to us with questions or concerns at emeritifaculty@uchicago.edu and remember to check the Emeriti Faculty website, which contains a variety of useful information, resources, news, and announcements.

As always, for the most complete information about returning to campus, facilities resources, the campus response to COVID-19, and action steps if you are returning to campus, please consult the UChicago Forward website. The University continues to encourage all eligible individuals to be vaccinated at their first opportunity, whether through the University or another authorized provider. Additional vaccine information and resources are also available on the UChicago Forward website; please reach out to coronavirusinfo@uchicago.edu if you have questions.