Events

Speaker: Robert Barro, Harvard University
Topic: TBA

Hiroaki Kaido, Boston University
Topic: TBA

2024 Distinguished Alumni Lecture
TreaAndrea M. Russworm, Ph.D.
Professor in the Interactive Media & Games Division at the University of Southern California
“Utopian Funk: What Video Games Can Teach Us About Failed Utopias and Black Arts”

Where is utopia in games? While games are now considered to be works of art, video games have also long been considered escapist fantasies—convenient distractions, even. If such accusations could possibly be true, where do we go when we escape in the art worlds of contemporary games? When we retreat to slay dragons and zombies, conquer as soldiers of war, best our friends in games of skill and strategy, do we ever find ourselves in the classically theorized worlds that comprise the “good no places” of utopia? This lecture embarks on an earnest—and urgent—search to locate utopia in games while taking a high concept detour through the Black arts traditions of funk music, Blaxploitation film, and speculative fiction. Put another way, what can Black arts teach us about games, play, and our ever-elusive visions of utopia? Come along and ride on a fantastic voyage as we explore digital dreams, sights, and soundscapes together.

TreaAndrea M. Russworm (PhD, English, 2008) is the Microsoft Endowed Chair and a Professor in the Interactive Media & Games Division at the University of Southern California. She is also the founder of Radical Play (a games-based public humanities initiative and afterschool program), and she has been a professor and Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at UMass Amherst. A prolific author and editor, Russworm is a Series Editor of Power Play: Games, Politics, Culture (Duke University Press). She is the author or editor of three books: Blackness is Burning; Gaming Representation; andTheorizing Tyler Perry. With research expertise in digital culture, video games, and popular African American media, Professor Russworm’s scholarship and interviews have also been shared on CNN, The History Channel, Turner Classic Movies, in podcasts, and on streaming platforms like Twitch. She is a video game Hall of Fame voter, and she is currently writing a new monograph on The Sims and a book on race and the politics of play.

2024 Distinguished Alumni Lecture
TreaAndrea M. Russworm, Ph.D.
Professor in the Interactive Media & Games Division at the University of Southern California
“Utopian Funk: What Video Games Can Teach Us About Failed Utopias and Black Arts”

Where is utopia in games? While games are now considered to be works of art, video games have also long been considered escapist fantasies—convenient distractions, even. If such accusations could possibly be true, where do we go when we escape in the art worlds of contemporary games? When we retreat to slay dragons and zombies, conquer as soldiers of war, best our friends in games of skill and strategy, do we ever find ourselves in the classically theorized worlds that comprise the “good no places” of utopia? This lecture embarks on an earnest—and urgent—search to locate utopia in games while taking a high concept detour through the Black arts traditions of funk music, Blaxploitation film, and speculative fiction. Put another way, what can Black arts teach us about games, play, and our ever-elusive visions of utopia? Come along and ride on a fantastic voyage as we explore digital dreams, sights, and soundscapes together.

TreaAndrea M. Russworm (PhD, English, 2008) is the Microsoft Endowed Chair and a Professor in the Interactive Media & Games Division at the University of Southern California. She is also the founder of Radical Play (a games-based public humanities initiative and afterschool program), and she has been a professor and Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at UMass Amherst. A prolific author and editor, Russworm is a Series Editor of Power Play: Games, Politics, Culture (Duke University Press). She is the author or editor of three books: Blackness is Burning; Gaming Representation; andTheorizing Tyler Perry. With research expertise in digital culture, video games, and popular African American media, Professor Russworm’s scholarship and interviews have also been shared on CNN, The History Channel, Turner Classic Movies, in podcasts, and on streaming platforms like Twitch. She is a video game Hall of Fame voter, and she is currently writing a new monograph on The Sims and a book on race and the politics of play.

We cordially invite you to join us next Wednesday, May 1, at 4:45-6:45pm CT, CWAC 152 for our next VMPEA workshop. This workshop features:

Sizhao Yi, PhD Candidate, Art History, UChicago

Who will be presenting the paper titled:

“Melancholic Things in Chen Hongshou’s Sixteen Views of Living in Reclusion”

Discussant: Yun-chen Lu

Assistant Professor, History of Art and Architecture, DePaul University

This workshop will take place in-person. Please see the abstract and bios for this workshop below.

Abstract:

In this talk, I will explore the affective effect of things in the visual repertoire of Chen Hongshou (1599-1652) through two paintings from the painter’s late masterpiece, the Sixteen Views of Living in Reclusion album. In these works, objects – a group of inkstones and a covered zither – are portrayed with rich yet peculiar details, interacting intimately with the figures. By closely attending to the pictorial details and analyzing them within the historical context, I will suggest that these objects and their interactions with the figures delineate the nuances of the yimin sentiments towards the fallen Ming Dynasty among early Qing scholars. In fact, these objects are painted with such intentionality, subtlety and vividness that they visualize, materialize, and even animate the abstract mental state of melancholy. Through these objects, the viewer is not only reminded of but also let to reflect upon and even feel the past and its vestiges.

Bios:

Sizhao Yi is a PhD candidate specializing in the visual and material culture of Late Imperial China. Her dissertation engages with issues of material and materiality, image making, intermediality, and the agency of things through the lenses of Chen Hongshou’s artistic practices and his engagements with material artifacts.

On the eve of Scav 2024, find out how it all started in 1987 from the founders themselves. Chris Straus, Cassie Hallberg, Diane Kelly, Rick Jeffries, and Nolan McCarty will tell us how it all began.  

This panel discussion is held in connection with the exhibition Scav Hunt at UChicago: Seeking Fun—Finding Tradition at Regenstein Library.

Free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be provided.

This event will be recorded.

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.

The Center for Digital Accessibility is celebrating the 13th annual Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) this April and May, focusing on digital equality for the one billion people in the world living with a disability.

The CDA and more than 50 Digital Accessibility Advocates will celebrate one academic year of learning, sharing, and promoting digital inclusion across campus. We are so proud of the progress being made. For in-person attendees of this hybrid event, cupcakes will be served. If you’re not an Advocate, we would love to have you join us to learn more about becoming part of this network of committed peers.

This virtual meeting will include Zoom’s automated closed captions.

Undergraduate Honors in Psychology poster session

Please join us in celebrating the undergraduate Psychology majors who completed an honors project.  View the posters and enjoy a reception on the first floor of the BPSP building, 970 E. 57th Street.