Events

Radio / Rauhfaser / Television offers a provisional summation of Christopher Williams’s ongoing research into contemporary mutations of social realism. The exhibition is centered in part on the politically engaged theater of the German playwright Franz Xaver Kroetz. Williams recently recorded Kroetz’s 1972 radio play Inklusive using vintage audio equipment from both East and West Germany, and the play will be broadcast on Chicago’s Lumpen Radio (105.5 FM) at several points during the show’s run. The strong sense of class consciousness in Kroetz’s work is hinted at in Williams’s use of Rauhfaser, a brand of German wallpaper steeped in social semantics. A single photograph and four hand-painted glass signs hang in the gallery alongside historical documents displayed in six purpose-built vitrines. Its modest scale notwithstanding, the exhibition has an almost manifesto-like quality to it, outlining Williams’s abiding interest in interrogating the way our visual culture is both staged and seen.

This exhibition is free and open to the public. Gallery hours: M–F, 9–4.

April 15, 2024 3:00 PM 315 Haskell Hall “A Rubbish Dump of Love”: Artifacts and Historical Experience in Cyprus Dr. Elizabeth A. Davis Princeton University

ABSTRACT: This talk addresses public secrecy and evidence in Cyprus in the context of radical social division that has endured for half a century. I explore how material remains of war such as bones and archival images gather meaning, political force, and orientations to the future in scientific and artistic knowledge production about a shared history of violence. In the context of long-enduring division, and the long-enduring co-existence of incompatible narratives about the past, memory and historical knowledge are especially fragile and falsifiable. I introduce the concept of artifactuality to comprehend how forensic and documentary epistemologies and practices may work to stabilize that knowledge. Artifactuality describes an experience of time, and an interpretation of that experience, anchored by material objects that survived the conflicts and remain available for study, re-use, and re-contextualization. In this talk, I frame bones and archival images as artifacts that play a central role in Cypriots’ knowledge projects about the past as they work to countervail deeply entrenched political secrecy. I pay special attention to the complex operation of recursive time in Cypriot documentary films: in their visualization of ruins and bones, in their incorporation of archival images to represent memories, and in their treatment of archival photographs and film as materials subject to damage, decay, and doctoring. I argue that, when we consider archival images as artifacts in these ways, we may better sense the resonances between forensic and documentary knowledge projects, which entail specific processes of destruction in the very practices by which knowledge is produced; and I consider how ethnographic storytelling may synergize with those practices. 

BIOGRAPHY: Elizabeth Davis is Associate Professor of Anthropology, where she teaches psychological anthropology, sensory and visual anthropology, social theory, and ethnographic methods of research and writing. Her research focuses on the Levant and the eastern Mediterranean: Greece, Cyprus, and Turkey. Her first book, Bad Souls: Madness and Responsibility in Modern Greece (Duke University Press, 2012), is an ethnographic study of responsibility among psychiatric patients and their caregivers in the “multicultural” borderland between Greece and Turkey. Her most recent book, Artifactual: Forensic and Documentary Knowing (Duke University Press, 2023), addresses public secrecy and knowledge projects about the violence of the 1960s-70s that led to the enduring division of the island, including forensic investigations and visual archives. She has another book in press, coming out this fall from Fordham University Press, entitled The Time of the Cannibals: On Conspiracy Theory and Context, addressing conspiracy theory and presidential power in Cyprus and beyond. Beyond these projects, she has written on economic crisis and suicide in Greece, and she is currently studying Orthodox and heterodox death rituals and burial practices in monastic and worldly contexts of “crisis” and austerity. She is also collaborating on a documentary film about the public life of sacred bones in Cyprus.

Please join us for a reception on Haskell’s mezzanine immediately following Dr. Davis’s talk.

Janet Currie, Princeton University Topic: TBA

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

Monday, April 15, 2024 - 5:00pm

International House, 1414 East 59th Street Assembly Hall Chicago, IL 60637

Held in conjunction with the Meiji Modern: Fifty Years of New Japan at the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art, join the Center for the East Asian Studies for an exciting evening of Japanese storytelling (rakugo) by rakugo-kaSan’yūtei Ponta II. For this event, Ponta has specially prepared a thrilling piece by San’yūtei Enchō I [1839-1900], the most influential rakugo storyteller of the Meiji period whose stories captured the atmosphere and dynamism of Japanese society at the end of the nineteenth century. This performance (in Japanese with English subtitles) will be followed by a Q&A with the performer.

This event is co-sponsored with the International House’s Global Voices Program, the Japan Business Society of Detroit, and is supported with a Title VI National Resource Center Grant from the U.S. Department of Education.

Join the University of Chicago Language Center on the first floor of Regenstein Library to learn more about their work on campus.

How can library resources benefit your research in the College? This workshop will explore introductory research methods like developing a research strategy, using the library catalog, finding subject-specific databases, and locating articles and materials.

CHD Colloquium - Ming-Te Wang, Professor, University of Chicago

Title: Just Discipline in Schools: Promoting Engaging and Inclusive School Climates through Research-Practice Partnerships

Abstract: Racial disparities in school discipline and achievement have engendered an equity crisis within American schools. The urgent need for collaborative efforts to tackle educational inequality has never been more pronounced. But what constitutes a productive research-practice partnership? In this presentation, Prof. Ming-Te Wang will illustrate how the partnership between university researchers and community partners has effectively addressed disciplinary issues in school settings. Specifically, Wang will (a) discuss two empirical studies on the impact of exclusionary discipline on students’ perceptions of school climate and academic achievement, and (b) showcase the Just Discipline Project, a school-wide intervention program that integrates principles of restorative justice, socioemotional learning, and community building into disciplinary policies and practices.

Bio: Dr. Ming-Te Wang is a Professor at the University of Chicago’s Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice and serves as the Faculty Director of the Urban Education Institute. Wang’s work investigates how systemic inequalities contribute to differential educational, socioemotional, and health outcomes among minoritized and marginalized youth. His research takes an integrative sociocultural approach to understanding youth development within and across school, family, and community contexts with an emphasis on issues of diversity, inclusion, and equity. His work is uniquely positioned to address developmental challenges in sociocultural contexts that may differentially influence children and adolescents of historically stigmatized groups. Wang’s scholarship has been nationally and internationally recognized with Early- and Mid-Career Distinguished Contribution Awards from multiple professional organizations in child development, education, and psychology.

Are you a Ph.D. student planning to graduate in Spring 2024? Come to this session for information about the procedures for submitting your dissertation. We will review University policies and formatting requirements and discuss open access for dissertations via the institutional repository, Knowledge@UChicago. Register to receive the Zoom meeting login information.