Hubble spacescapes
Part of a visual tradition that reaches back to Romanticism, images from the Hubble Space Telescope awe as they inform. Plus: “Scope of Inquiry.”
Mexico City
On walks across Mexico City, historian Mauricio Tenorio Trillo finds a path to the past.
Grave concerns
An alumna mortician, medievalist, and video sage tries to change the way Americans think about death.
Indian art
The Sahmat collective galvanizes artists across India to create work that resists divisive politics. A Smart Museum exhibition tells its story.
Gertrude Himmelfarb
Social critic and Victorian historian Gertrude Himmelfarb, AM’44, PhD’50, looks back on her Chicago education.
Vaccine testing
The road to safe, reliable bioweapon vaccines for children is fraught with ethical peril. On campus last fall, experts began to plot it out. Plus—The Soul of Medicine: For ethicist and doctor Daniel Sulmasy, medical progress is about more than the body.
Austria to Pakistan
In 1956, two new PhDs drove a Land Rover from Austria to India to begin the research that would be their life’s work. Notes from their journey.
Book covers
Isaac Tobin’s designs for University of Chicago Press books provoke readers to take a deeper look.
Light
Exploring the attributes of low light, an architect and a physicist try to cultivate a dim awareness.
Benjamin Mays
Benjamin Elijah Mays, AM’25, PhD’35, was the conscience of the civil rights movement.
Bird by bird
An Oriental Institute Museum exhibit traces the ubiquity of birds in ancient Egyptian culture to geographical accident, avian behavior, and human fascination.
Dean Boyer’s new term
With a historian’s attention to the founding ideals of the College, Dean John W. Boyer, AM’69, PhD’75, implements an ambitious vision for the decades to come.
Personal art history
Peter Selz, AM’49, PhD’54, looks back on a life in modern art through the works that most inspired him.
National Women’s Hall of Fame
A corporate career led Beverly Ryder, MBA’74, to the board of the National Women’s Hall of Fame and back to the public schools in her hometown of Los Angeles.
Malaria
Every year malaria infects hundreds of millions around the globe. Geneticist Thomas Wellems, PhD’80, MD’81, tries to stay one step ahead of the parasite. Plus: An interview with malaria-exhibit photographer Adam Nadel, AB’90.
Faces of the Logan Center
Onward and upward with the arts: a glimpse into the inner workings of the towering new facility south of the Midway.
Presidential power
Presidents since FDR have extended their reach beyond constitutional boundaries, raising fears of a dictatorial executive branch that the Law School’s Eric Posner dismisses as “tyrannophobia.”
Patsy Mink
Patsy Mink, JD’51, was a tenacious and determined politician.
Girl Scouts chief of staff
New Girl Scout chief of staff Nhadine Leung, AB’90, bleeds green.
Corner canvas
Artist Jessica Stockholder brightens a Loop intersection for the summer.
Comics conference
The Comics: Philosophy and Practice conference drew 17 cartoonists and hundreds of observers, in person and online, for three days in May of intense discussion of the field.
Goolsbee’s return
Austan Goolsbee has left behind his DC battle armor, but he can still mail in a good barb or two.
Documenting the Co-op
As the Seminary Co-op moves from its underground origins into the light of day, the bookstore’s denizens bid the beloved space farewell.
Neuropsychologist Muriel Lezak
Muriel D. Lezak, PhB’47, AM’49, has spent her career trying to help humanize the young field of neuropsychology.
Fairy tales
Believing that fairy tales have lost their magic, Renaissance scholar Armando Maggi, PhD’95, calls for a new kind of happily ever after. Plus—Told and retold: An interview with writer and tale-teller Robert Coover, AM’65.
First gay ambassador
Law School graduate and administrator James Hormel, JD’58, seemed to have a storybook family and career. His secret life, however, could undo it all. Plus—Public by choice: Hormel on beginning a new life.
Molecular engineering
With the new Institute for Molecular Engineering, the University fills a historical void and hopes to shape the scientific future.
Feast: The exhibit
The Smart Museum’s exhibition Feast explores hospitality and welcoming gestures.
Social work matriarch
Jessie Taft, PhB 1905, PhD 1913, was a matriarch of modern social work.
Squashed legal career
“Are you a member of the Communist Party?” George Anastaplo, AB’48, JD’51, PhD’64, refused to answer that question, a refusal that shaped his life.
Nepotism in primates
How monkeys, the Mafia, Italian academia—and, increasingly, American society—illustrate the biological impulse and social peril of nepotism.
Sensual UChicago
Some sights, sounds, smells, touches, and tastes can send you back to the quads.
Celebrity book editor
Fresh off simultaneous No. 1 New York Times best sellers, editor Gretchen Young, AB’84, AM’84, continues to find new authors with big stories to tell.
Sleep lab
For nearly a century, Chicago scientists have explored the deep universe of sleep.
Education: UChicago time line
The University’s focus on the aims and methods of education has led to discussion, experiment, and innovation. Our time line notes a few milestones.
Incentives
An ambitious economic field experiment studies how financial incentives for students, teachers, and parents affect academic performance.
After the classroom
Students often continue to collaborate with professors after earning their degrees. Sometimes, as in these four examples, those relationships move beyond collegial to true professional and personal friendships.
Charter school principals
For the leaders of the University of Chicago Charter School, being in charge means being in the thick of change.
Charter school murals
The murals decorating the University of Chicago Charter School campuses tell stories of success.
Vivian Gussin Paley
Retired Laboratory Schools teacher Vivian Gussin Paley, PhB'47, writes about the importance of play in early schooling.
The future of PhDs
How can we better prepare PhD students for nonacademic careers?