Accounting Course Opportunity
There is still time to register for “Accounting Lingo Involved in Current Events,” a Zoom-based course Roman L. Weil, V. Duane Rath Professor of Accounting Emeritus at the Booth School of Business, is offering over six sessions (July 1-August 5, 2021). Attendance for all sessions is not required; missing an earlier session will not affect the ability to benefit from a later session.
The series of free classes will use the principles of accounting to explore current events, news, and controversies. Those who attend will increase their understanding of accounting basics and will come to appreciate the implications of accounting policies and procedures as they apply to business transactions and how regulators, politicians, the press, and the courts view those transactions. Ultimately, Professor Weil promises that “the sessions will make you laugh, entertain you, and teach you things about accounting and corporate finance, which you think you know, but don’t.” The sessions are held on Thursdays 10:00-11:30 a.m. CDT, July 1 through August 5. For more details, please refer to the course description available on Professor Weil’s faculty page; to sign up for the sessions, or ask further questions, please send an email to Roman.Weil@chicagobooth.edu.
Studies in Honor of McGuire Gibson
The Oriental Institute recently published a volume in honor of McGuire Gibson, Professor of Mesopotamian Archaeology Emeritus, who taught at the University from 1973-2018. From Sherds to Landscapes: Studies of the Ancient Near East in Honor of McGuire Gibson (Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 71), edited by Mark Altaweel and Carrie Hritz, is available for download as well as in print. The volume collects seventeen chapters worth of work from students, colleagues, and friends that reflect his interests in landscape archaeology, urbanism, the ancient Mesopotamian languages and history, the archaeology of Iran and Yemen, prehistory, material culture, and more.
Information about other volumes in the Oriental Institute’s Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization series, and many others, is available from the Oriental Institute Publications office.
Monographs, Chapters, and Journal Articles
The University of Chicago Press is publishing two books by emeriti faculty members. Paul Mendes-Flohr, the Dorothy Grant Maclear Professor Emeritus of Modern Jewish History and Thought in the Divinity School and Associate Faculty in the Department of History at the University of Chicago, as well as Professor Emeritus of Jewish thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has authored Cultural Disjunctions: Post-Traditional Jewish Identities, due out this month.
From the Press: “The identity of contemporary Jews is multifaceted, no longer necessarily defined by an observance of the Torah and God’s commandments. Indeed, the Jews of modernity are no longer exclusively Jewish. They are affiliated with a host of complementary and sometimes clashing communities—vocational, professional, political, and cultural—whose interests may not coincide with that of the community of their birth and inherited culture. In Cultural Disjunctions, Paul Mendes-Flohr explores the possibility of a spiritually and intellectually engaged cosmopolitan Jewish identity for our time. Reflecting on the need to participate in the spiritual life of Judaism so that it enables multiple relations beyond its borders and allows one to balance Jewish commitment with a genuine obligation to the universal, Mendes-Flohr lays out what this delicate balance can look like for contemporary Jews, both in Israel and in diasporic communities worldwide. Cultural Disjunctions walks us through the labyrinth of twentieth-century Jewish cultural identities and commitments. Ultimately, Mendes-Flohr calls for Jews to remain “discontent,” not just with themselves but also and especially with the reigning social and political order, and to fight for its betterment.”
Earlier this spring, the Press published Capitalism and the Emergence of Civic Equality in Eighteenth-Century France by William Sewell, the Frank P. Hixon Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in Political Science and History at the University of Chicago.
From the Press: “There is little doubt that the French Revolution of 1789 changed the course of Western history. But why did the idea of civic equality—a distinctive signature of that revolution—find such fertile ground in France? How might changing economic and social realities have affected political opinions?
William H. Sewell Jr. argues that the flourishing of commercial capitalism in eighteenth-century France introduced a new independence, flexibility, and anonymity to French social life. By entering the interstices of this otherwise rigidly hierarchical society, expanded commodity exchange colored everyday experience in ways that made civic equality thinkable, possible, even desirable, when the crisis of the French Revolution arrived. Sewell ties together masterful analyses of a multitude of interrelated topics: the rise of commerce, the emergence of urban publics, the careers of the philosophes, commercial publishing, patronage, political economy, trade, and state finance. Capitalism and the Emergence of Civic Equality in Eighteenth-Century France offers an original interpretation of one of history’s pivotal moments.”
Richard Strier, Frank L. Sulzberger Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus, has published two studies in the last academic year: “King Lear and Social Security,” Raritan 40.2 (Fall, 2020): 63-72 and “Happiness” in Shakespeare and Emotion, ed. Katharine A. Craik (Cambridge U Press, 2020), 275-287.
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.