Events

Quirky, at times impossible, yet always fun, Scavenger Hunt—or Scav—has set UChicago students dashing on multiday searches for eclectic lists of miscellany since 1987. Simultaneously a break from coursework and a thinly veiled learning exercise, Scav has become an enjoyable rite of spring for undergraduates, as well as some graduates and alumni.

Beyond the dorms, Scav unifies the student body in a way that sports teams build school-specific spirit at some colleges. Students recognize Scav as uniquely UChicago and players back the game with fierce intensity and school pride.

For nearly four decades, Scavenger Hunt has evolved, adapted with technology, and garnered local, national, and international press, yet throughout time, it has retained its characteristic spirit of humor, playful rigor, and inclusion that reflects core UChicago values and has become an endearing student tradition.

This exhibition features materials donated to the University of Chicago Archive and items on loan from the Scavenger Hunt’s founding members, former judges, past players, and current teams. Notable items include the first Scavenger Hunt list and items used in the 1999 creation of a breeder reactor, along with an array of t-shirts, photographs, and judges’ notes that document the lengths Scavvies will go to in search of fun and to be part of a beloved UChicago tradition.

People in pre-modern cultures wore many objects on their bodies as amulets, such as roots, seashells, or carved images. But at different points in time all of the cultures of the ancient Mediterranean began to inscribe prayers and charms on linen, papyrus, gold foil, or gemstones, and to use them as amulets. At this conference, a group of international scholars will ask and try to answer numerous questions about what happens at this point of transition and why. Does the more permanent nature of a text imply its continual presence, ever repeating? Were textual amulets created and used by literate elites alone? What is the relationship between text and image on amulets? If gods previously listened to prayers, when did they learn to read? This conference stems from a larger project to publish a representative collection of textual amulets from across the Mediterranean and throughout antiquity, facilitating the study of the various traditions, their connections, and transformations.

This conference will be available on livestream via Zoom.

Participants

Clifford Ando (University of Chicago)

Anke Ilona Blöbaum (Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Leipzig)

Korshi Dosoo (University of Würzburg)

Rivka Elitzur-Leiman (Neubauer Collegium, University of Chicago)

Christopher Faraone (University of Chicago)

Anthony Kaldellis (University of Chicago)

Carolina López-Ruiz (University of Chicago)

Margaret Mitchell (University of Chicago)

Árpád Nagy (University of Pécs, Hungary)

Megan Nutzman (Old Dominion University)

Madadh Richey (Brandeis University)

Joe Sanzo (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice; Neubauer Collegium, University of Chicago)

Panagiota Sarischouli (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki)

Sofia Torallas Tovar (University of Chicago)

Erin Walsh (University of Chicago)

Michael Zellmann-Rohrer (Macquarie University / Freie Universität Berlin)

This conference is presented by the Textual Amulets of the Mediterranean World research project at the Neubauer Collegium with the support of the Divinity School and Classics Department at the University of Chicago.

People in pre-modern cultures wore many objects on their bodies as amulets, such as roots, seashells, or carved images. But at different points in time all of the cultures of the ancient Mediterranean began to inscribe prayers and charms on linen, papyrus, gold foil, or gemstones, and to use them as amulets. At this conference, a group of international scholars will ask and try to answer numerous questions about what happens at this point of transition and why. Does the more permanent nature of a text imply its continual presence, ever repeating? Were textual amulets created and used by literate elites alone? What is the relationship between text and image on amulets? If gods previously listened to prayers, when did they learn to read? This conference stems from a larger project to publish a representative collection of textual amulets from across the Mediterranean and throughout antiquity, facilitating the study of the various traditions, their connections, and transformations.

This conference will be available on livestream via Zoom.

Participants

Clifford Ando (University of Chicago)

Anke Ilona Blöbaum (Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Leipzig)

Korshi Dosoo (University of Würzburg)

Rivka Elitzur-Leiman (Neubauer Collegium, University of Chicago)

Christopher Faraone (University of Chicago)

Anthony Kaldellis (University of Chicago)

Carolina López-Ruiz (University of Chicago)

Margaret Mitchell (University of Chicago)

Árpád Nagy (University of Pécs, Hungary)

Megan Nutzman (Old Dominion University)

Madadh Richey (Brandeis University)

Joe Sanzo (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice; Neubauer Collegium, University of Chicago)

Panagiota Sarischouli (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki)

Sofia Torallas Tovar (University of Chicago)

Erin Walsh (University of Chicago)

Michael Zellmann-Rohrer (Macquarie University / Freie Universität Berlin)

This conference is presented by the Textual Amulets of the Mediterranean World research project at the Neubauer Collegium with the support of the Divinity School and Classics Department at the University of Chicago.

How much work does it take to make art seem effortless, the laboring body absent? Works By attempts to answer this question by bringing together four Chicago-based artists who share an interest in the many meanings of “labor.” The centerpiece of the exhibition is a floor drawing by Tony Lewis, performatively produced on site. A sculpture by Devin T. Mays features pallets collected during his wanderings around Chicago’s South Side. Erased: (Unrelated), a 2012 photograph by Bethany Collins, captures a cloud of chalk dust released into a black void—the remnants of the word “unrelated” repeatedly written on a blackboard and then erased. A large photo by Ellen Rothenberg depicts a work boot; another captures a giant lump of crumpled paper that was once a Barbara Kruger mural. The fruits of these artists’ labors will be on view from May 1 (International Workers’ Day) through July 14 (Bastille Day)—two dates that commemorate landmark events in the history of the working class.

Curated by Dieter Roelstraete.

What are the goals, values, and practices of object-based learning, and how can graduate students integrate these into their pedagogy? Come learn how engaging with objects can help to foster curiosity and deepen student learning, and how graduate student TAs and instructors can make use of the resources and collections available at the University, including ISAC, the Smart Museum, the Regenstein’s Special Collections and East Asian Collections, and the Visual Resources Center. 

Ecological Thought and Practice Across the Disciplines

THIS IS AN IN-PERSON EVENT AND WILL NOT BE LIVE STREAMING.

ABOUT THE PROGRAM

Ecology has become a subject of increasing concern among social and natural scientists in Japan as a result of climate change and disaster management. At the same time, the trend toward specialization of fields in university programs has made it rare for researchers in the social and natural sciences to meet and share ideas, let alone work together in the field. This symposium responds to this dilemma by creating a space for dialogue concerning ecology between the natural and social sciences in Japan. Drawing inspiration from thinkers such as Imanishi Kinji, whose research and writings bridged practice and theory, this group aims to develop an interdisciplinary conversation on topics related to ecology and the natural environment in Japan. To this end, the symposium brings together researchers from the social sciences and natural sciences.

PROGRAM SCHEDULE

Friday, May 10 | 10:00 am-5:30 PM | Venue: Joseph Regenstein Library, Room 122 (1100 E. 57th Street, Chicago, IL 60637)

[A reception will be held upon the conclusion of the event and will be open to all registrants]

PHOTOGRAPHY/VIDEOGRAPHY

Please note that there may be photography taken during this educational event by the University of Chicago Center for East Asian Studies for archival and publicity purposes. By attending this event, participants are confirming their permission to be photographed and the University of Chicago’s right to use, distribute, copy, and edit the recordings in any form of media for non-commercial, educational purposes, and to grant rights to third parties to do any of the foregoing.

2024 LAUREN BERLANT 3CT GRADUATE STUDENT CONFERENCE

Friday, May 10, 10:00am–6:00pm
Saturday, May 11, 10:00am–4:30pm

KEYNOTE PRESENTATION: JODI DEAN

Capitalism, endowed with remarkable elasticity and propagandistic power, is a mode of production whose drive aims to devour the planet, subsuming all other forms of life under its logic. It tolerates no antagonistic other alongside itself. However, it is also the first economic form that is unable to stand alone, without a non-capitalist outside as its necessary lifeline: surplus populations, speculative non-market spheres, unpaid labor, the precariat, economies of waste, carceral extraction, money markets, and technoeconomic platforms are only a few illustrative realms.

As Rosa Luxemburg argued more than a century ago, the uneven relation between capitalist and non-capitalist formations is not merely a prerequisite for capital’s genesis but an essential condition for its ongoing accumulation and maturation. Capital draws life from the erosion of its very sine qua non. As it rides varying vectors and velocities, one fraction of capital might undermine the endurance of another, if not interrupt its own conditions of possibility altogether (Gidwani, 2008; Wark, 2019). Capitalism, thus, finds itself in chronic exertion against entropy.

From the viewpoint of such contradictions and excesses, as matters of inner determination (Mészáros, 2012; Saito, 2022) and systematic necessity, how has capitalism’s outside been reconfigured, and what has it come to extrude in the world today? How does it bear upon twenty-first-century capitalist logic, social relations of production, and attendant ideological workings? Given especially shifts in the labor market, ecological rifts on massive scale, phenomena like “cloud capital” (Varoufakis, 2023) and “bullshit jobs” (Graeber, 2018), how can the various manifestations and pressures of capital’s necessary excesses be theorized? Has capitalism perfected its modus operandi, managing so well its own fallout, that it has begun to morph beyond itself? Are we amid fundamental shifts in capitalist regimes of value and their profit-driven logic? Or is this yet another stage of an ever-aging capitalism?

Visit the event page on 3CT’s website for the full conference schedule.

Organized by Hadeel Badarni, Arwa Awan, and 3CT with support from the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture; the Pozen Family Center for Human Rights; the Committee on Environment, Geography, and Urbanization; and the Department of Political Science.

This event is free and open to the public,and registration is recommended.

In this meeting of the Teaching with AI Exploratory Teaching Group, Matthias Staisch (Associate Senior Instructional Professor, Committee on International Relations) will share insights on how to teach students a workflow for conducting independent research (e.g. MA or Honors thesis). After describing the modular research process he provides for students, he will share how a team of MA students who had just completed their research projects reverse-engineered their own research practice by using a whole suite of AI research assistants: ChatGPT, Consensus, Elicit, Jenni, Lateral, LitMaps, Paperpal, Perplexity, Scholarcy, and SciSpace. He will discuss how students judged the utility of these tools and reflect on the principles these students taught him for redesigning his own research pedagogy.

Speakers: Bryan Garcia (PhD Student, Mark Sheffield Lab, UChicago); Michelle Miller (PhD Student, Brent Doiron and David Freedman Lab, UChicago)

Come see modern maps of Chicago’s history by University of Chicago researchers & students