UChicago Division of the Arts and Humanities

10/09/2026

In Intentionality, 1960: Whose Dreams?—a new exhibition by 2024 Arts and Public Life Artist-in-Residence Candace Hunter—photographic collage, architectural fragments, archival materials, and other media highlight the ways in which the construction of the Dan Ryan Expressway has displaced Black communities on Chicago’s South Side. The exhibition echoes how social and spatial disruption of Black communities in the name of “progress” takes place across America. The exhibition runs through December 12 at the Arts Incubator Gallery.

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Arts + Public Life at the University of Chicago presents Intentionality, 1960: Whose Dreams? a new exhibition by Chicago artist Candace Hunter cent...

10/07/2026

Save the Date! The 46th Annual UChicago Arts & Humanities Day falls on November 7. In collaboration with Chicago Humanities, the Division of Arts & Humanities brings together voices from across disciplines to discuss the questions and topics shaping our world.

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Now in its 46th year, UChicago Arts & Humanities Day 2026 celebrates the writers, artists, and public intellectuals grappling with the questions and concerns that shape our world. In partnership with Chicago Humanities, UChicago Arts & Humanities Day 2026 features an array of visiting luminaries in....

10/05/2026

A rite of passage for first years in the College is their introduction to the UChicago Core Curriculum: their Humanities course. As Eric Slauter, Deputy Dean of the Division of the Arts and Humanities, puts it, students across the Humanities sections are united by this “passport to the world’s ideas, arts, languages, and cultures.” Read Slauter's advice for the Class of 2030 and his personal reflection on his own relationship to the HUM Core, in this recent piece for the The Chicago Maroon.

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Arts and Humanities Deputy Dean Eric Slauter offers advice to incoming students on approaching the humanities Core with curiosity, seriousness, and an open mind.

10/02/2026

On October 7, UChicago scholars and public figures will gather at International House to discuss The Declaration of Independence, its origins, its consequences, and its enduring significance. Speakers include Eric Slauter, Alison LaCroix, Steven Pincus, John Kirby, and NPR’s Steve Inskeep. The event is the first in a series of conversations about seminal Democratic Texts.

Register here: http://ms.spr.ly/6181a9tRf

09/30/2026

On Nov. 17, five UChicago faculty members will read The Odyssey in five different directions, tracing the epic from ancient Greece to modern readers brought its stories into conversation with contemporary life. The Odyssey Across the Centuries, co-sponsored by the Center for Hellenic Studies and the Department of Classics, takes place at Swift Hall.

Learn more: http://ms.spr.ly/6183a9t3l

09/28/2026

CWAC Exhibitions presents Literal Speed, a small exhibition offering a deliberately opaque window onto Our Literal Speed, an art-and-text undertaking based in Selma, Alabama, since 2006. Built around a local collection of art-adjacent artifacts produced during the “Obama Years,” the exhibition invites viewers to consider the relationship between art, text, objects, and the cultural worlds that surround them. On view September 18-October 9 at Cochrane-Woods Art Center.

Learn more: http://ms.spr.ly/6189a9ty3

09/25/2026

The Grossman Ensemble opens its 2026–27 season October 3 with Poetic Inspirations, featuring world premieres by Alexandre Lunsqui, Ana Lara, Jonathan Bailey Holland, Leah Reid, Juri Seo, Pierce Gradone, and Zoë Martlew.

The Chicago Center for Contemporary Composition concert brings new chamber works inspired by written language, visual art, the natural world, and more. Stay after for an audience party with the musicians, composers, and conductor.

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Fresh off their first touring performances in Washington, D.C. and New York City, the Grossman Ensemble returns to its home at the UChicago Center ...

09/23/2026

On October 18, Kalapriya Foundation Center for Indian Performing Arts Inc presents “Lessons in Ethical Leadership” at the Obama Presidential Center, with an introduction by Professor Whitney Cox, Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations.

The program explores ethical leadership through Ashoka, the ancient Indian emperor whose transformation from conqueror to advocate of nonviolence continues to shape conversations about leadership and moral responsibility.

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Join us - October 18, 2026 Get Tickets At a time of deepening division and growing questions about the exercise of power, conversations about ethical leadership feel especially urgent. More than 2,000 years ago, Emperor Ashoka grappled with questions that remain strikingly relevant: How should leade...

09/21/2026

Patrick Jagoda, Director of the Media Arts and Design program and Weston Game Lab, weighs in on the design of the Monopoly board and the game’s nostalgic pull in TIME’s new Monopoly special edition.

Pick up the issue: http://ms.spr.ly/6181ad46d

09/18/2026

Professor Benjamin A. Saltzman, Department of English Language and Literature, University of Chicago joins The Dissenter podcast to discuss Turning Away: The Poetics of an Ancient Gesture, his popular book on the history and meaning of looking away.

The conversation ranges from Timanthes’s Sacrifice of Iphigenia and Augustine’s Confessions to Hitchcock’s Psycho and Michelangelo’s Fall and Expulsion of Adam and Eve, exploring turning away as a gesture of grief, shame, disgust, respect, and reflection.

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Dr. Benjamin Saltzman is a Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Chicago. His research interests include poetry and poetics, visual studies, hermeneutics, gesture, theory, language, and environmental humanities. He is the author of Turning Away: The Poetics of an Ancient....