Accolades

Real genius

Tara Zahra, an associate professor in the Department of History who focuses on Central and Eastern Europe, received a MacArthur Fellowship in September. The fifth history faculty member at UChicago to receive the fellowship, known as a “genius grant,” Zahra was praised by the MacArthur Foundation as “a historian who is challenging the way we view the development of the concepts of nation, family, and ethnicity and painting a more integrative picture of twentieth-century European history.” Zahra’s first book, Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian Lands, 1900–1948 (Cornell University Press, 2008), won numerous prizes. Her second book, The Lost Children: Reconstructing Europe’s Families after World War II (Harvard University Press, 2011), was awarded the George Louis Beer Prize from the American Historical Association. She is working on a history of emigration from East Central Europe to Western Europe and the United States between 1889 and the present, to be published by W. W. Norton Press in August 2015. Zahra was featured in the Spring/Summer 2014 Dialogo. 

Riding the rails

Graduate student Korey Garibaldi, AM’10 (History), is one of 24 recipients of Amtrak’s Writing Residency. Over the next year, he will work on a writing project of his choice while riding a long-distance train. Garibaldi’s dissertation research focuses on how racial, gender, and sexual formations were challenged, solidified, and reconfigured by material commodities, especially literary texts, over the 20th century. He has lectured in the America in World Civilization College sequence and has also taught post-emancipation African American history and the histories of gender and sexuality in America and Europe. Garibaldi is working on a book, “Different Trains,” with Ben Shepard, AB’08.

Heckman earns education award

In October James Heckman, the Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor of Economics, was presented the Spirit of Erikson Institute Award for his work on the economics of early childhood development, including proving the economic gains of investing in early childhood development. The Chicago-based Erikson Institute trains and educates graduate students to be child development and family service professionals. The award recognizes those who make significant contributions to the education and development of children.

Toynbee goes to Chakrabarty

The Toynbee Prize Foundation selected Dipesh Chakrabarty, the Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor of History, as the recipient of the 2014 Toynbee Prize in July. The prize, given every other year, recognizes a distinguished practitioner of global history. Chakrabarty will formally receive the award at the American Historical Association’s annual meeting in January 2015 in New York, where he will deliver a lecture on global history. Chakrabarty, who has taught at the University since 1995, is a scholar of South Asian history, postcolonial studies, and global history. In 2000 he published Provincializing Europe (Princeton University Press, 2007) and is working on a book about how the science of climate change affects historical and political thinking.

Divisional news

Lear to direct the Collegium

Jonathan Lear, John U. Nef Distinguished Service Professor of Social Thought, Philosophy, and the College, has been appointed the Roman Family Director of the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society. Lear succeeds David Nirenberg, dean of the Division of the Social Sciences. Lear studies philosophical conceptions of the human psyche from Socrates to the present. A graduate of Yale University, Cambridge University, and the Rockefeller University, he also trained as a psychoanalyst at the Western New England Institute for Psychoanalysis. Lear is a recipient of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Distinguished Achievement Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Beilock named vice provost, publishes book

Provost Eric D. Isaacs announced that Sian Beilock, professor of psychology and a member of the Committee on Education, will serve as vice provost for academic initiatives. She will work with the deans, chairs, faculty, and deputy provosts to help coordinate academic programs that span multiple divisions, schools, and institutes, such as urban science, energy, and the environment. Beilock will also publish her latest book, How the Body Knows Its Mind: The Surprising Power of the Physical Environment to Influence How You Think and Feel (Simon and Schuster), in January 2015. In the book she draws on her own research to take on the conventional understanding of the mind, arguing that our bodies “hack” our brains.

New faculty

This year the Social Sciences Division welcomed eight new faculty members.

Department of Economics

After several years at MIT, Michael Greenstone, LAB’87, rejoined the Division as the Milton Friedman Professor in Economics and the College and director of the Energy Policy Institute at Chicago. He received his PhD from Princeton in 1998 and is a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He served as chief economist for President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers in 2009–10. Greenstone studies air quality in developing countries and conducts research to estimate the costs and benefits of environmental quality. Benjamin Brooks, assistant professor, earned his PhD at Princeton earlier this year. A microeconomic theorist, he studies the effects of information and beliefs on economic outcomes. He also investigates the robustness of standard economic models when an assumption of common knowledge is relaxed, and he is developing algorithms to compute the equilibrium values sets of stochastic games. Thibaut Lamadon, assistant professor, focuses on macro labor, equilibrium search, and dynamic contracting. He has recently evaluated the Canadian welfare system’s Self Sufficiency Program and examined how unpredictable events in the workforce affect wage contracts between workers and firms. Lamadon received his PhD from University College London, where he received an outstanding teaching assistant award.

Department of History

Ada Palmer, assistant professor, is a cultural and intellectual historian focusing on the long-term evolution of ideas and mentalities. Palmer specializes in the early modern period, particularly the Italian Renaissance and postclassical reception of classical philosophy. She also studies ancient, medieval, and modern intellectual history. Palmer earned her PhD from Harvard University in 2009.

Department of Political Science

Robert Gulotty, assistant professor, focuses on international political economy and political methodology. He researches the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and the World Trade Organization, global production, and regulatory cooperation against a framework of institutional design, imperfect competition, and property rights. Gulotty will join the University in July 2015 after completing a fellowship at the Stanford Center for International Development. Monika Nalepa, assistant professor, studies institutions of transitional justice, democratic transitions, and legislative politics, with a focus on Eastern Europe. Her book Skeletons in the Closet: Transitional Justice in Post-Communist Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2010), received the American Political Science Association’s Outstanding Book Award and the Best Book Award in the comparative democratization section. Nalepa earned her PhD from Columbia University in 2005.

Department of Psychology

Marc Berman, assistant professor, studies the relationship between individual cognitive, affective, and neural processing and the social and physical environment. He uses computational neuroscientific and statistical models to quantify the person, the environment, and their interactions, hoping to develop a better understanding of those relationships in order to improve human health and well-being. Berman earned his PhD from the University of Michigan in 2010. Jennifer Kubota, assistant professor, uses neuroscience and behavioral research methods to identify the neural and psychological mechanisms of prejudice and discrimination. Her research has received support from the National Institute on Aging and the Ford Foundation. Kubota earned dual PhDs in neuroscience and social psychology from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2010. Alex Shaw, assistant professor, investigates the origins and nature of human social cognition, with a focus on conceptions of fairness, social reputation, and ownership. Informed by theoretical and empirical approaches from social psychology and behavioral economics, Shaw’s research spans development, social psychology, and moral psychology. He received his PhD from Yale University in 2013 and is a research fellow in the Center for Decision Research at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He will join the Division in July 2015.

Alumni news

In March New York state attorney general Eric Schneiderman named Kathleen McGee, AM’96, chief of the state’s Internet Bureau. Before joining the attorney general’s office, McGee was director and lead counsel for the New York City Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement, supervising the city’s legal team and developing policy initiatives on criminal and civil issues, including intellectual property enforcement. McGee also served the Bronx County District Attorney’s Office as an assistant district attorney in the Child Abuse and Sex Crimes Bureau.   In March Richard Weston, AM’71 (History), retired from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention after 15 years in the Washington office and a total of 35 years in the legislative and executive branches. Weston worked for the Secretary’s Panel for the Evaluation of Epidemiologic Research Activities at the Department of Energy. Last year, after the chemical release into Charleston, West Virginia’s Elk River, Weston provided briefings for the state’s congressional delegation about the CDC’s investigation of potential public health effects from exposure to the contaminated water supply. Virginia representative James Moran recognized Weston’s work on the floor of Congress in February. Weston and his wife, Martha Pascale Weston, MST’76, live in Arlington, Virginia. Rolando Herts, AM’97, has become director of Delta State University’s Delta Center for Culture and Learning. Herts, who served as Rutgers University-Newark’s associate director of the Office of University-Community Partnerships, earned a PhD in planning and public policy from Rutgers University Graduate School-New Brunswick for his dissertation on land-grant universities’ increasing role in local tourism planning and development. Most recently he was associate director of Rutgers-Newark’s Office of University-Community Partnerships. The Delta Center serves as the management entity for the Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area. University of Houston visiting associate professor José Angel Hernández, PhD’08 (History), was named a Fulbright Scholar in May. Hernández will use the grant to continue his research on Mexico’s immigration and colonization policies, collecting data in Mexico City, Baja California, and Sonora. As a PhD candidate, Hernández also won a Fulbright Dissertation Fellowship. Hernández is author of Mexican American Colonization during the Nineteenth Century: A History of the US Mexico Borderlands (Cambridge University Press, 2012). Harry Perlstadt, AM’66, PhD’73 (Sociology), received the American Sociological Association’s 2014 Distinguished Career Award for the Practice of Sociology. A professor emeritus at Michigan State University, Perlstadt has evaluated health programs and initiatives funded by agencies including the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, Center for Substance Abuse Prevention, Health Resources Services Administration, and World Health Organization/Europe. Antonio Sotomayor, PhD’12 (History), became an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign library and librarian for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. He also has an appointment in the Department of Recreation, Sport, and Tourism. At UChicago, his dissertation on the history of sport in Puerto Rico was funded by a Social Sciences Division/Mellon Foundation fellowship. Among other projects, he is working on a book on Puerto Rican colonialism, national identity, and international politics.

Faculty books

Digital Paper: A Manual for Research and Writing with Library and Internet Materials (The University of Chicago Press, 2014)

Andrew Abbott, AM’75, PhD’82 (Sociology), the Gustavus F. and Ann M. Swift Distinguished Service Professor in Sociology, has published Digital Paper. The book is intended as a tool for researchers in an age of information abundance, providing tips on research, data evaluation, and project organization. “A joy to read and will be a boon for students. Even veterans of the trade will find much to like,” says Robert J. Sampson, professor of the social sciences at Harvard University.

Neighboring Faiths: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism in the Middle Ages and Today (The University of Chicago Press, 2014)

In October David Nirenberg, Deborah R. and Edgar D. Jannotta Professor of Social Thought, Medieval History, Middle East Studies, and the College and dean of the Division of the Social Sciences, won the Phi Beta Kappa Society’s Ralph Waldo Emerson Award for his book Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition (W. W. Norton, 2013). The award honors scholarly studies that contribute significantly to interpretations of the intellectual and cultural condition of humanity. Also in October Nirenberg published Neighboring Faiths: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism in the Middle Ages and Today (University of Chicago Press). The book examines how Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived with and thought about each other during the Middle Ages and what the medieval past can tell us about attitudes today. “There are no books presently in print that even approach Nirenberg’s in terms of its themes, thoroughness, or interpretive thrust,” says Teofilo F. Ruiz, professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Can Tocqueville Karaoke? Global Contrasts of Citizen Participation, the Arts, and Development (Emerald Group Publishing, 2014)

Professor of sociology Terry Nichols Clark published Can Tocqueville Karaoke? The book outlines a framework for analyzing democratic participation and economic growth and explores how these patterns work around the world. The framework joins together two separate past traditions: democratic participation ideas come mostly from Alexis de Tocqueville, while ideas about innovation driving the economy are largely inspired by Joseph Schumpeter and Jane Jacobs. Joining participation with innovation, Clark explores how arts and culture organizations can transform politics, economics, and social life.

Events

Harper Lectures

See social sciences faculty speak in your city. Sunday, March 1: Arizona Robert Pippin Evelyn Stefansson Nef Distinguished Service Professor of Social Thought, Philosophy, and the College Sunday, May 3: Twin Cities Sian Beilock Professor of Psychology; Vice Provost for Academic Initiatives

UChicago exhibits of interest

October 14–January 2, 2015 En Guerre: French Illustrations and World War I Special Collections Research Center Exhibition Gallery

En Guerre, curated by Neil Harris, Preston and Sterling Morton Professor Emeritus of History and Art History, and Teri Edelstein, examines World War I through the lens of French graphic illustration. Illustrated books, journals, and prints present new perspectives on themes essential to understanding France’s role in the war: patriotism, nationalism, and the soldier’s experience, as well as French home front mobilization encompassing fashion, music, humor, and children’s literature.

March 30–June 15, 2015 Closeted/Out in the Quadrangles: A History of LGBTQ Life at the University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center Exhibition Gallery

From relationships between early female professors to the beginnings of gay liberation on campus, this exhibition examines experiences lived by LGBTQ students and faculty at the University. The exhibition includes selections from oral histories of alumni collected by the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality.