2024 College Summer Institute Closing Symposium: Proceedings

Jiayue Wang, "Investigating Settlement Patterns in Southeast Anatolia from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age"

This study investigates settlement patterns in Southeast Anatolia from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age, focusing on three regions defined through hotspot analysis: Original Center, New Center, and Previous Center. Using Geographic Information System (GIS)-derived environmental parameters—slope, elevation, river distance, and river size—the research investigates the potential impact of climatic and political changes on settlement dynamics. This region was selected due to its significant cultural developments after the collapse of the Hittite Empire, which led to the rise of new cultural and political entities. Preliminary findings suggest that the Original Center, located in the Adana Plain, remained relatively stable, while the New Center saw possible settlements at higher elevations and steeper slopes, which might indicate strategic adaptations. Conversely, the Previous Center appears to have experienced abandonment, potentially due to drought and the collapse of the Hittite Empire.  Conversely, the Previous Center appears to have experienced abandonment, potentially due to drought and the collapse of the Hittite Empire. These observations suggest that water resources and strategic location are important for the sustainability of settlements, and the Adana region’s close proximity to the sea may continue its ongoing importance. This study offers insights into the relationship between environmental elements and human settlement choices during periods of major change, with a focus on geographical aspects.

Research Mentor: James Osborne, Associate Professor of Anatolian Archeology

Benny Wild, "The Poet as 'Wise Master-Builder': George Herbert and the Tropes of Medieval Memory"

How did 17th century English poets understand the activity of thinking? My project attempts to answer this question by examining George Herbert's usage of the spatial and structural tropes of medieval and early modern monastic memory practice in his magnum opus, The Temple. Through a close reading of one of Herbert’s more overtly spatial poems, “The Church-floor” I situate his work in the Christian mnemonic tradition that contextualizes memory not as something purely reproductive, but also as something deeply generative. Herbert’s poems, and consequently the larger “Temple” they work to describe, become the conceptual and mnemonic architecture in which readers can remember, rediscover, and finally reenact their devotion, becoming (in Augustinian terms) good citizens of the City of God. Herbert thus functions as the “wise master-builder” that St. Paul discusses in his first letter to the Corinthians. By doing the work of conceptual “building” through his composition of The Temple, Herbert constructs the necessary architecture for his readers to further build their own internal “temples.” He erects for them an immaterial, but nonetheless durable place to open their hearts and minds and connect with the spirit of the Lord.

Research Mentor: Timothy Harrison, Associate Professor of English

Zuri Cofer, "Navigating the Policy Landscape: The Influence of Cumulative Impact Assessments on Environmental Justice in Chicago"

Cumulative impact assessments are becoming essential tools in the pursuit of environmental justice, offering a nuanced understanding of how layered environmental and social stressors—such as pollution exposures, health conditions, and social factors—intersect and accumulate over time to shape an individual’s quality of life. My research investigates the development, implementation, and evaluation of a cumulative impact assessment in Chicago, following the city’s 2023 assessment to map how environmental burdens and public health stressors differentially affect various areas and communities. As environmental justice has evolved to address the intricate relationships between these stressors and social vulnerabilities, cumulative impact assessments have become a promising approach for achieving more equitable outcomes for marginalized populations. I aim to understand how these assessments are being integrated into public policy and their potential to drive meaningful change. To achieve this, I employ a mixed-methods approach that combines a comprehensive literature review with case studies of cities that have implemented cumulative impact assessments. Additionally, I analyze city documents, legal reviews, and policy reports. I argue that cumulative impact assessments, while offering a more comprehensive approach to addressing environmental justice issues, require careful implementation and community engagement to be truly effective. Their integration into municipal planning in Chicago represents a promising step, but also highlights ongoing challenges in standardizing methodologies and ensuring equitable outcomes. By examining the real-world application of these tools, particularly in Chicago’s complex socio-environmental context, my research aims to bridge the gap between environmental justice theory and practice, offering insights on how to create more just and sustainable communities while avoiding the pitfall of perpetuating historical inequities under a new guise.

Research Mentor: Mary Beth Pudup, Instructional Professor and Director of Community Studies, Committee on Environment, Geography and Urbanization (CEGU)

Katheryne Dwyer, "The State, Surveillance, and Geopolitical Power: Where and How the U.S. Built Intelligence Infrastructure in the Cold War Period"

How does a nation build out the surveillance infrastructure it needs to become a global power? More specifically, how did the United States cultivate its extensive network of intelligence technology during the cold-war era? It is well known that states utilize surveillance to collect knowledge about their adversaries and advance geopolitical goals, but what is much less well known is the logistical process of building and maintaining the physical infrastructure necessary for the collection of that intelligence. This project responds to that deficit through a focus on coding a dataset of all U.S. overseas physical intelligence facilities, or “intelligence infrastructure” in use during the cold-war period. Through digital archival research in U.S. government databases, I assisted in collecting declassified documents confirming the existence and intelligence function of several intelligence installations around the world. My work focuses on recognizing the many euphemisms official government documents used to refer to classified intelligence activities and finding multiple primary source confirmations of each respective site to add it to a growing, comprehensive database of the U.S. 's intelligence infrastructure during the cold-war period. These sites, and where they are located, have geopolitical implications and are obtained through complex processes that draw upon alliances, negotiations, and sometimes even coercion. This informs our study of the relationship between nations, and the unintuitive types of interests that states balance in their interactions with each other. Additionally, this work provides great insight about the contemporary security and international relations environment. Through a contrast of the physical built environment the U.S. military and intelligence agencies cultivated during the cold-war period to that of present day states, it is possible to analyze whether rising powers like China or India have sufficient infrastructural surveillance capacity to reach great power status.

Research Mentor: Austin Carson, Associate Professor of Political Science; Director, Committee on International Relations

Arnie Campa, "Weft: Critical Making as an Art Historical Practice"

While art historians are concerned with art objects, they rarely make them. I employ critical making to produce weavings from their historic drafts which helps me relate craft theory and hands-on object creation to produce nuanced ways of thinking about art, design, and social relations. Given the tactile nature of weaving, using critical making enables me to explore the art historical impact of the Little Loomhouse, a weaving center in Louisville, Kentucky. Working out of the Chicago Weaving School, a space like the Little Loomhouse, I wove a set of napkins and two table runners. I argue that weaving the drafts from the Little Loomhouse not only granted me insight into the innovative work of the women weavers, but replicated a similar experience of labor, mutuality, and creation. From my critical making practice, I better understand the art object and the social context in which it was produced. I synthesized my findings into an exhibition, Weft, which presents objects and publications from the Little Loomhouse alongside my weavings. While critical making is typically applied to technology and design fields, my research suggests that weaving grants me a nuanced insight into the history of the Little Loomhouse, emphasizing the necessity for art-making in art historical research.  

Research Mentor: Bridget Madden, Associate Director, Visual Resources Center

David Hall, "The Experimental Image: How Participatory Is New Media, Really?"

How does new media artwork fit into the modern museum? As artists adopt new technologies, the ways that audiences and museums engage with artwork changes, too. The rapid rate of technological development since the mid-twentieth century has allowed artists the tools to experiment with multimedia performance and digital technologies, posing questions of modality and interactivity that create a distinctly contemporary aesthetic. My research focuses on the analysis of two new media artworks that will be on display in the Smart Museum’s 50th anniversary exhibition: first, Song Dong’s Breathing, which represents an emergent embrace of digital technology; and second, teamLab’s Ever Blossoming Life – Gold, which is a fully digital work. Despite being created roughly twenty years apart from each another, these two artworks are bridged by their shared focus on experimentation in the museum space they inhabit. By comparing them and the contexts in which they were created and previously displayed, we can hope to understand their place in marking the Smart Museum’s 50th anniversary and in the contemporary museum at large. I also use examples from Nina Simon’s The Participatory Museum and Rhizome’s The Art Happens Here: Net Art Anthology to further illustrate strategies for engaging museum visitors and the general public alike with new media artworks. Ultimately, the experimental image embodied by Breathing and Ever Blossoming Life works toward a new mode of engagement that challenges the way that contemporary museums tell stories, inviting the storytelling practices of the outside world into the museum space.

Research Mentor: Berit Ness, Associate Director and Curator of Academic Engagement, Smart Museum and Feitler Center for Academic Inquiry

Keshav Malik Kapoor, "Smart to the Core"

‘Smart to the Core’ is a biennial exhibition series at the Smart Museum of Art that seeks to make a class from the University of Chicago’s famed undergraduate Core curriculum accessible to the general public. With the experience of having taken the course, my research involved identifying the central themes of the dense texts we read in the ‘Power, Identity, Resistance’ sequence. I identified four key ideas: sovereignty, individual liberties, the common good, and class struggles. I researched the Museum’s collection to identify works that invited museum visitors to observe these themes, while simultaneously serving as an aid to professors as they teach the class. After creating a checklist of 45 works, ranging from 17th-century French satirical prints to contemporary Native American collages, I selected three works for which to write labels. The first was a collection of photographs by Danny Lyon from ‘Conversations with the Dead’, capturing the brutality and hopelessness of the Texas penitentiary system. Being confronted with the stark power imbalance, the viewer is invited to question the liberties they consent for the state to seize from them. The second was a collection of photographs titled ‘Improbable Borders’ by Alan Cohen. The pictures are abstract without context. The viewer is welcomed to question the stochasticity of the construction of borders in forming nation-states. The third was an etching by Francisco de Goya titled ‘No One Has Seen Us (Nadie nos ha visto)’. It aims to capture the similarity between a state of disorganized nature that humans reside in outside organized society, and a life basking in the excesses of capitalism within society, both characterized by extreme degeneracy. This research aims to assist museum visitors engage better with society through a developed understanding of its construction while presenting visual aids for students to better comprehend complex historical texts.

Research Mentor: Berit Ness, Associate Director and Curator of Academic Engagement, Smart Museum and Feitler Center for Academic Inquiry

Avivit Ashman, "Monumental Light: Dan Flavin at the Munich Olympics"

In 1971, Dan Flavin, a minimal artist known for his fluorescent light works, proposed designs for stadium, tunnel, and interred pathway lighting in the Munich Olympiapark. The plans were ultimately rejected. Flavin is known as being an artist of space, using light to illuminate and obscure architectural forms and sculptural lines; his works are despatialized and detemporalized, creating voids of light foregrounding an “inactive history.” They are at the same time remarkably situated, with keen attention to the specificities of a given space and the histories that haunt it, an approach particularly relevant to the space of the Olympiapark, which formerly served as a Luftwaffe air base and a rubble hill post-war. Despite Flavin’s later insistence that his work was meaningless outside of itself, the “nationalistic” reasons for his rejection suggest a reading of his Olympic work as politically and historically charged. As his museum works challenged the notion of the gallery as neutral space, so too do his Munich plans confront the supposed neutrality and ahistoricity of Olympic architecture; the passageway and tunnel as transitional structures highlight the liminality of Olympic space as historically multidimensional.

Research Mentors: Christine Mehring, Mary L. Block Professor of Art History and Visual Arts; Sean Keller, Associate Professor and Associate Dean, Illinois Institute of Technology College of Architecture

Anna Bonnem, "Novel Computational Modeling of the Roof at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich"

The 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, while unfortunately known for a terrorist attack, were also the site of landmark architectural feats made possible by the unique circumstances of the Munich Olympics: namely, recent mathematical and computational advancements, government support of construction, and innovative formal vocabulary to create distance from the recent Berlin Olympic Games held under National Socialism. In support of research carried out by Sean Keller and Christine Mehring towards a book analyzing the art, architecture, landscape, and design of the Munich Olympics, I explore the modeling processes behind the roof structure which spans multiple Olympic buildings. The methods used for the cable-net roof structure’s shape-finding were among the first and certainly the most ambitious uses of computational modeling in architecture at the time, and paved the way for the field as it exists today, relying completely on computational modeling. To elucidate these methods and situate the case of the Munich roof within the technical context which enabled its creation, I have examined sources published by the research teams developing the computational methods, contemporary journal articles, and official Olympics documents. I have also used educational resources on Finite Elements to properly understand and convey the analytical and computational methods used. Through this analysis, physical and computational iterative modeling methods have emerged, as well as two key research teams operating out of the University of Stuttgart, helmed by John Argyris and Klaus Linkwitz, respectively. My research identifies the specific methods used by both teams, and the ways in which they differ while both succeeding in elaborating different sections of the roof. It also identifies aspects of the field of architecture which researchers in these teams anticipated with their work, and which were realized in the following decades to enable novel architectural forms.

Research Mentors: Christine Mehring, Mary L. Block Professor of Art History and Visual Arts; Sean Keller, Associate Professor and Associate Dean, Illinois Institute of Technology College of Architecture

Erika Yan, "The Presence of Site in Carl Andre’s Sculpture"

Carl Andre was a prominent American artist in the late 20th century and became a key figure in the minimalist art movement in the 60s. His work took an innovative approach to sculpture and is characterized in part by his materiality and the viewer’s spatial engagement. His pieces often consisted of arranged metal plates, bricks, or wooden blocks placed directly on the floor, inviting viewers to interact with the pieces in new ways. One of his pieces, a grid of steel cables covering a hill, was a rejected submission for the '72 Munich Olympics. In my research, I want to explore how the different sites of his sculptures, as well as his childhood in Quincy, Massachusetts, influenced his work, as well as how various forms of historical and locational context can be discerned within his work. Though they may appear deceptively simple, Andre’s works rethink the relationship between art, space, and audience.

Research Mentors: Christine Mehring, Mary L. Block Professor of Art History and Visual Arts; Sean Keller, Associate Professor and Associate Dean, Illinois Institute of Technology College of Architecture

Avah Harris, "The Aesthetics of Artificial Intelligence: A Historical Discourse Analysis on Media Portrayals of AI from the 1950s to the Present Day"

The extensive history of artificial intelligence (AI) is chronicled through media narratives that both reflect and shape public opinion and prevailing attitudes toward AI. Understanding the media’s influence on and portrayal of generational metaphors surrounding AI discourse allows for reflection on the sociopolitical trends that have driven the advancement of AI over time, adding more context to the macro-discourse analysis that this multi-year research project advances. By examining linguistic choices in historical and current newspapers (ranging from the 1950s to the present), I develop a timeline of dominant themes in reporting about AI, further contextualizing these narratives within periods of heightened optimism and skepticism. These themes are identified using the method of grounded theory coding. Instead of taking a hypothesis-driven approach, grounded theory coding allows thematic patterns to emerge from the dataset based on an iterative and process-oriented engagement with empirical evidence of the linguistic choices found within the narratives. The generational metaphors identified in my data expose broader societal values surrounding imaginings of AI, elucidating the tensions in the relationship between humans and machines. This project provides a snapshot of a macro-discourse analysis that will be expanded through a more diverse scope of media platforms to encourage further qualitative analysis.

Research Mentor: Andre Uhl, Postdoctoral Researcher and Instructor, Institute for the Formation of Knowledge

Leo Kupperman, "Imaginary Intelligence: Comparing AI in Transhumanism and Posthumanism"

Artificial Intelligence has been considered by writers and intellectuals even before the term was thrust into the popular imagination in the 1950s. Emerging in the 1990s, the philosophical traditions of Posthumanism and Transhumanism have both responded to the technology and contributed to understandings of it. As part of a broader critical discourse analysis of artificial intelligence, I have produced a comparative account of two vastly different academic accounts of AI, contending with Posthumanism as a possible new paradigm and Transhumanism as an extension of the humanist subject. To conduct this analysis, I surveyed about one hundred fifty important or exemplary academic works related to these traditions and AI, especially those focusing on design, research, and ethics. My goal is to catalog and map the methods, metaphors, and approaches that each tradition utilizes to contend and influence Artificial Intelligence, both real and imagined. Though not a fully comprehensive account of two highly heterogeneous traditions, I claim to dissect specific data points which can be incorporated into a broader discourse analysis and provide valuable ways to compare Posthumanism and Transhumanism broadly, chiefly by analyzing their utilization of future imaginings of AI and the liminality of AI. My work also points towards innovations of this discourse, so called “boundary work”, and identifies gaps. I give a nuanced account of important academic voices which form a theoretical undercurrent to larger discussions of Artificial Intelligence at the center of the Aesthetics of AI project. 

Research Mentor: Andre Uhl, Postdoctoral Researcher and Instructor, Institute for the Formation of Knowledge

Sage Martinez, "Affective Mapping of Artificial Intelligence Discourse"

My work stream focuses on developing data visualization techniques for a Zotero-based tagging system, part of a multi-year research project, “The Aesthetics of Artificial Intelligence.” The goal of my work stream was to develop prototype models of visual maps that contextualize tag categories based on thematic patterns in AI discourse, while incorporating psychology theories on emotion classification. With the help of research librarians, digital scholarship librarians, computer science specialists, and my peers, I was able to create multiple visualizations of the Zotero database’s tagging system. Visualization methods included a tag and citation network, tag co-occurrence network analysis, a prototype circumplex model of primary themes in the database (based on James Russell’s circumplex model of affect), and spider charts based on the results of AI-based emotion analysis tools. The integration of both human-created and AI-generated analyses offered multiple approaches to identify and represent affective patterns in public attitudes towards AI. My findings will contribute to the expansion of the Aesthetics of AI research project and inform policymakers, educators, and technologists on prevailing attitudes and conceptualizations of Artificial Intelligence. 

Research Mentor: Andre Uhl, Postdoctoral Researcher and Instructor, Institute for the Formation of Knowledge

Eli Naftulin, "Jung, Jungians, and Post-Jungians on the Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious"

While the word “archetype” has existed for centuries, the concept made its debut in the modern field of psychology with Carl Jung. Put as simply as possible, Jung’s archetypes are abstract forms that reside in the psyche of every individual and manifest in consciousness as concrete images when triggered by external stimuli. Together, the archetypes make up the “collective unconscious,” a region of the psyche that is genetically encoded; is identical in all humans; and prompts patterns of religious, mythical, literary, and cultural imagery. In his upcoming project, my mentor, Dr. Andre Uhl, aims to uncover trends in socio-cultural perceptions of artificial intelligence across time and space—a task for which Jung could be a guiding voice. To capture the potential of Jung’s archetype framework for use in Dr. Uhl’s scholarship, I perform a literature review that illustrates the range of reactions that Jung’s framework has elicited in the fields of psychology and literary criticism. I discuss journal articles by admirers of Jung that showcase common accolades his archetype model has earned, as well as articles by those who have criticized him for the racism, sexism, and cultural normativity that abound in his writing. Using primary source material, I also juxtapose his model with that of the so-called “post-Jungian” scholars who have taken archetypal literary criticism in an alternative direction. Finally, I provide many examples of recent articles and dissertations that have applied Jungian archetypes to literary criticism. Ultimately, I show that the Jungian collective unconscious cannot be taken for granted as a scientific or metaphysical framework, but that its potential utility means it should not be dismissed without consideration of its merits. While much of the content of Jung’s writing should not be used, the premise of cross-cultural motifs can be productively applied to literature and media as long as the subjectivity of the author is sufficiently embraced.

Research Mentor: Andre Uhl, Postdoctoral Researcher and Instructor, Institute for the Formation of Knowledge

Arjan Batth, "The Statics of Motion: Engaging with Landscape in Alpenrosen’s Reiseschilderungen"

German language almanacs and Taschenbücher (pocket books), whose publication sparked social and intellectual transformations at the end of the 18th and into the 19th century, remain unparalleled in the European literary landscape. However, Alpenrosen is particularly notable for belonging to a much smaller number of Taschenbücher published in Switzerland as opposed to Germany or Austria. A large portion of Alpenrosen’s prose contributions are Reiseschilderungen, or travelogs written by contributors traveling through the alps. To understand the “pattern of movement” within Reiseschilderungen, I analyze instances of verweilen or lingering along an alpine journey, and its relationship to an observer’s engagement with the landscape through descriptions of alpine vistas. To undertake this research, I examined intellectual developments in the 19th century and surveyed secondary literature. I also completed close readings of Alpenrosen in UChicago’s Special Collections Library. Upon analysis, I argue that verweilen allows for the initiation of the observer’s “gaze” of an alpine landscape, establishing a relationship between the observer and the view, a relationship in which both the observer and the view have degrees of agency over one another. Verweilen then allows for a more direct engagement with the landscape, affording an observer to exercise mental faculties to appraise and interpret the view. I also posit that verweilen is not actually a cessation of movement, but movement beyond the physical plane to a visual one. Ultimately, through close readings of Reiseschilderungen, I argue that the development of the Swiss imagination of the landscape was concurrent with the development of novel ways of moving through the spaces that were conceived. Indeed, Alpenrosen’s Reiseschilderungen reconfigure the notion of being “in motion” through the concept of verweilen. By studying Alpenrosen, I hope to contribute to an understanding of Swiss Taschenbücher, which until now have been significantly less studied than their German counterparts.

Research Mentors: Elizabeth Frengel, Curator of Rare Books, The Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, The University of Chicago Library; Catriona MacLeod, Frank Curtis Springer and Gertrude Melcher Springer Professor in the Department of Germanic Studies and the College; Christopher J. Wild, Peter B. Ritzma Professor in the Department of Germanic Studies and the College

Tommy Hughson, "Reading Rage"

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a German middle class engaged in the commercial practice of purchasing taschenbücher, which were customized pocket books that could be ordered to include almanacs, genealogical information, essays, fictional stories, and detailed engravings. Published annually from 1842 to 1877, the Deutscher Volks-Kalender features all such characteristic features, while additionally displaying a notable presence of beggar imagery within the included engravings. To explore how these visual representations of vagrancy reinforce particular identity traits of and attitudes towards the homeless, I examine twenty-five related engravings within the thirty-five volumes of the Deutscher Volks-Kalender possessed by the University of Chicago special collections. To properly contextualize these engravings, I examine each piece through a lens consisting of Romantic idealism, which characterized much of the period’s use and interpretation of symbolic representation, the poor laws of the industrializing states of Europe, and the class-conscious attitude of the emerging German middle class. To further understand the intended messages of these emblematic images, I analyze the use of caricature in the engravings to exaggerate appearances and actions, as well as focusing on the usage of physical spacing by the depicted characters. I argue that the beggar imagery within the Deutscher Volks-Kalender uses stereotypical homeless appearance and an associated crude– and suspicious– idleness to justify the harsh societal treatment of the unproductive vagrant outcast. As a related effect, I argue that the proliferation of these images by the middle class helped to reinforce their own high position in the evolving German social structure. While only providing an analysis of a particular type of engraving found within the Deutscher Volks-Kalender, my research emphasizes the ability of such imagery to both reflect and reaffirm bourgeois attitudes held by the consumers of the taschenbücher.

Research Mentors: Elizabeth Frengel, Curator of Rare Books, The Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, The University of Chicago Library; Catriona MacLeod, Frank Curtis Springer and Gertrude Melcher Springer Professor in the Department of Germanic Studies and the College; Christopher J. Wild, Peter B. Ritzma Professor in the Department of Germanic Studies and the College

Aria Petrella, "Feminine Patriotism: National Identity Formation in the Cornelia Taschenbuch Series"

The German Taschenbuch, or "pocket book," a flexible literary genre which appeared with the Enlightenment transformation of the media-ecosystem in Germany, proved to be one of the most notably female-marketed genres. Providing a fundamentally new site of female identity formation, the Taschenbücher worked to further the development of a feminine public sphere while emphasizing social barriers. During the rise of the Taschenbuch as a literary medium, early 19th century Germany faced the Napoleonic Wars, which spurred governmental and social calls to arms, requiring the mass mobilization of patriotic-national identity and duty for both men and women. Through a focused analysis of the 58-volume Cornelia Taschenbuch series for German women, I questioned the relationship between the unique medium of the Taschenbuch and the feminine social idea of privately fulfilling public duty that was forefronted during and immediately following the Napoleonic Wars. I highlighted the differences in editorial content and marketing of this series over its first volumes in the early 19th century. Through this inquiry, I unexpectedly found that the Taschenbuch, a media format that afforded women expanded roles as readers, writers, and editors, actually reinforced stereotypically “feminine” roles. Blurring the lines between public and private, the Taschenbuch pushed gender boundaries as women in Germany were called upon to privately fulfill their new public patriotic duty. The development of the Taschenbuch series reflects the post-war use of national identity as a means of stabilizing gender roles, as private integration was faced with fears of public "overstepping." This scholarship suggests that the Taschenbuch, as an ephemeral and imprecise category of book, can provide unique insights into the cultural condition of Germany, specifically in relation to German women, when properly utilized and researched.

Research Mentors: Elizabeth Frengel, Curator of Rare Books, The Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, The University of Chicago Library; Catriona MacLeod, Frank Curtis Springer and Gertrude Melcher Springer Professor in the Department of Germanic Studies and the College; Christopher J. Wild, Peter B. Ritzma Professor in the Department of Germanic Studies and the College

Rohan Cooppan-Boyd

This spring, college students nationwide launched encampment protests surrounding the war in Gaza; protests topped national news and ignited intense debate from all political lanes, especially regarding free speech and university values. We worked on our study within the framework of researching the ecosystems of discourse surrounding the protests. We aimed to map competing discourses with the purpose of informing more constructive dialogue on the matter. Our study examines three universities: the University of Chicago, Northwestern university, and Emory university. My research focused on Northwestern University following the methodology applied to all three: qualitative analysis through NVIVO of news at the level of university newspaper, to state and local newspapers, to national news media. Analysis of these texts for specific rhetorical features such as key actors, ideological cues, problem statements (among others delineated in the study) yields for categories: highly conservative, moderately conservative, liberal-democratic, and extreme-left. These categories were drawn from the specific rhetorical features and the patterns of their frequency as associated with rhetorical intent. At Northwestern University, positions were centered around reaction to the negotiations Northwestern University President Michael Schill entered with students at the encampment and his subsequent presence in a congressional hearing on antisemitism on campus. Conservative rhetors saw Schill as capitulating to the demands of an illegal encampment with antisemitic intent, both jeopardizing students’ safety and validating a dangerous paradigm of protest; left-leaning rhetors saw Schill’s resolution as an effective way to appease student protestor while avoiding the intense violence seen at other campuses, like Emory; more extreme-left rhetors critiqued the organizer of the encampment for agreeing to work with university administration instead of holding onto their demands without compromise. Schill’s performance in the congressional hearing was critiqued from all sides for varied reasons, but there was an overall trend of Schill failing his duty—either to defend Northwestern students, or to properly condemn them. This research serves as the foundation for a larger project that would pull on more data similarly analyzed alongside interview data with key figures. Through this, we will better understand the dynamics of rhetoric as it relates to specific event from the varied angles of involved individuals.

Research Mentor: Ekaterina Lukianova, Senior Instructional Professor and Associate Director, Parrhesia Program for Public Discourse

Josh Kindler, "Rhetoric of Campus Free Speech: 2024 Encampment Protests"

This spring, college students nationwide launched encampment protests surrounding the war in Gaza. Protests topped national news and ignited intense debate from all political lanes, especially regarding free speech and university values. Our study researched the ecosystems of discourse surrounding these protests. We aimed to analyze rhetoric from varying parties and positions with the purpose of informing more constructive dialogue about the encampments. We used a case study approach to examine public discourse about encampments at three different universities: University of Chicago, Northwestern University, and Emory University. We began by examining traditional news coverage, social media discourse on X, and interviews with university community members. Our research this summer then focused on comparative analysis of news media coverage in school and national news media. We used qualitative analysis software NVIVO to analyze the texts for their specific rhetorical features, including key words and phrases, narratives, and compositional structure. We identified four main perspectives on the issue of encampments—highly conservative, moderately conservative, liberal-democratic, and extreme-left; these distinctions were warranted by specific language patterns involved, rather than by a pre-existing set of ideological categories. My work this summer focused specifically on the ecosystem of discourse at the University of Chicago, where positions were etched out in particular according to viewpoints on the Chicago Principles and institutional neutrality. Conservative rhetors tended to allege the encampment violated both the Principles and University policy; more left-leaning rhetors both alleged that the University itself violated the Principles and also paid less mind to campus doctrines and procedures altogether. Overall, a moderately conservative, meritocratic position idealizing a competitive marketplace of ideas was preeminent in discourse at UChicago, both in student and national news media.

Research Mentor: Ekaterina Lukianova, Senior Instructional Professor and Associate Director, Parrhesia Program for Public Discourse

Cleo Delogu, "Making History (and Money) in Chicago’s Oak Woods Cemetery"

Chicago’s Oak Woods Cemetery, originally chartered in 1853, provides a final resting place to a who’s-who of major Chicago historical figures as well as a much needed urban green space to the Greater Grand Crossing neighborhood. The cemetery is also a profit making endeavor of Service Corporation International, one of the country's largest funereal conglomerates. In order to better understand the ways in which Oak Woods Cemetery’s business interests produced the historical site we see today, I undertook a broad survey of legal documents, advertisements, and trade publications associated with the cemetery throughout the 20th century. Through an analysis of these documents, I argue that a combination of favorable land rights granted to the cemetery in the 1853 charter, a rapidly modernizing funeral industry, and a business-savvy cemetery administration transformed Oak Woods Cemetery from a local burial ground into the streamlined, diversified, and financialized funeral service provider that it remains to this day. This funeral service provider model has, I argue, incorporated historicity as one selling point alongside Oak Woods Cemetery’s location, amenities, aesthetic qualities, and so forth, demonstrating how the “historical” cemetery is actively produced rather than a place in which history passively accrues. As the Oak Woods Cemetery historical project is still in its relatively early stages, I hope that the documents I have accumulated will be able to provide useful financial contextualization to any inquiries conducted into the cemetery by my colleagues or by future researchers. My work also suggests several possibilities for further inquiry. Future investigations could take on the cemetery’s history of segregation and the archival gaps that that segregation produced or tackle the cemetery’s transformation from a standalone operation into a conglomeratized outpost of Service Corporation International around the turn of the 21st century.

Research Mentor: Na'ama Rokem, Associate Professor of Modern Hebrew Literature and Comparative Literature, Center for Jewish Studies, NELC, and Comparative Literature

Andy Cheng, "Life after Death: Oak Woods Cemetery as a Bridge between the Living and the Dead"

Oak Woods cemetery is the final resting place for countless souls, be it famous figures, fallen soldiers, or the average person. Each buried soul at Oak Woods is memorialized by their friends and families in starkly different ways. By exploring the cemetery’s role as a site of remembrance, I aim to uncover the lasting impact of Hyde Park and Chicago on people, and how these influences manifest in people’s respective lives after death. To accomplish this, I examined existing literature on the philosophical and sociological aspects of burial methods and remembrance, took photos of and transcribed inscriptions on the headstones, visited material collections from museums, and studied archival information kept by government agencies. Apart from the research project, I have also recently begun contributing grave information to Billion Graves, a web depository of headstone information. I endeavor to document all the famous graves at Oak Woods outlined by the Hyde Park Historical Society and finish cataloging the headstones around the Tomb of Enrico Fermi, a renowned UChicago nuclear physicist. I will also attempt to finish a photo essay musing on the philosophical and sociological meaning of death in Western society based on information I have gathered on Oak Woods. Throughout the research progress, I have come to realize the lack of photographic evidence on Oak Woods, or most cemeteries, in the public domain, and therefore I believe that, through my cataloging and transcription efforts, in particular those of the perishable offerings to the dead, I can help build a foundation on which future researchers can benefit from.

Research Mentor: Na'ama Rokem, Associate Professor of Modern Hebrew Literature and Comparative Literature, Center for Jewish Studies, NELC, and Comparative Literature

Anthony Procaccio, "To Die a Chicagoan: Tracing the Influences of Cemetery Development in Chicagoland"

Chicago and its surrounding metropolitan area have over seventy cemeteries serving many ethnic and religious communities. Beginning in the mid-to-late nineteenth century, a demand for rural cemeteries, situated a significant distance from city centers, surfaced and cemetery entrepreneurs saw this as an opportunity to develop beautified lawns and parks as sacred venues for death. This phenomenon, referred to as the park-lawn movement, reached Chicago, resulting in the establishment of Graceland, Rosehill, and Oak Woods cemeteries. A desire for alluring cemeteries, however, was not the only factor that spurred cemetery development in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. European immigrant arrivals brought with them a need for Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish cemeteries. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago now runs more than forty-five cemeteries, most founded out of a need for immigrant expression. The Archdiocese remains a driving force for setting cemetery management precedents and serving a community of hundreds of thousands of Catholics. It has become the largest single operator of cemeteries in Chicago. As I encountered these trends in literature about Chicago cemeteries, I began to think of what forces were at play in their development. I have examined the charters of the major park-lawn cemeteries in the United States, accessed via Interlibrary Loan, and have consulted secondary literature on Chicago cemeteries and green spaces. I have also read an institutional history of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago. I posit that the park-lawn movement cemeteries, largely established by businessmen and politicians for socioeconomic gain, and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago were the two major guiding powers in cemetery development in Chicago. European Protestant immigrant communities instituted themselves as a minor force. Scholarship and literature on African-American and Jewish cemeteries and burial practices remains lacking.

Research Mentor: Na'ama Rokem, Associate Professor of Modern Hebrew Literature and Comparative Literature, Center for Jewish Studies, NELC, and Comparative Literature

Isaiah Terry, "Speaker For the Dead: The Importance of Graveyards as a Site of Ritual Abjection"

In the very back of the Historic Oak Woods Cemetery, there is a small gated plot of land which contains graves far more densely packed than the surrounding graveyard. It is the unnamed Orthodox Jewish Cemeteries of Oakwoods, whose congregations have long since left Hyde Park. Around the world there are numerous such cemeteries, sites of the dead which occupy an odd space in the communities they are surrounded by. For each one it serves to ask, what place do they have if any? In order to address this large question, two things are required: the first is an understanding of the context with which the Cemetery was created and maintained, the second is a philosophical framework with which to understand its value. To that end, I am using Julia Kristeva’s theory of Abjection, which examines the relationship that exists between human identity and the things we try to discard. Cemeteries as places where the dead are given up  are innate places of this abjection, but cemeteries which have been left are doubly so. By confronting and exploring the history and people of Oakwood’s Orthodox Jewish  cemeteries, I hope to unveil not simply the past but a way to continue exploring the relationship we have with the cemeteries as we move into the future. To that end in conjunction with historical readings and archival research, I have created an archive which seeks to catalog and make accessible the text of these cemeteries, their people, their physicality, and their context. While far from a holistic solution, my goal is to preserve that which has been abjected,  so that these cemeteries do not find themselves indecipherable but that they might be open to confront future researchers and be re-incorporated into the identity of Hyde Park. 

Research Mentor: Na'ama Rokem, Associate Professor of Modern Hebrew Literature and Comparative Literature, Center for Jewish Studies, NELC, and Comparative Literature

Elias Widawsky, "Reviving a Cemetery: Re-imagining the Oak Woods Cemetery as a Recreational Green Space"

Chicago is well known for its innovative use of green space, from its sprawling lakefront trail to Millenium Park. At first glance, the southside neighborhood of Greater Grand Crossing boasts an impressive 323 square feet of green space per inhabitant – an urban green space (UGS) rate equivalent to that of Lincoln Park. Of the 216.52 acres of park land in the neighborhood, 183 of them belong to the Oak Woods Cemetery, which was built in the 19th century in accordance with the principles of the Park Lawn Movement. The cemetery was originally designed as a recreational garden rather than simply a graveyard, wherein citizens could picnic, go boating etc. Today, the cemetery is hardly frequented by anyone other than park workers, funeral convoys and the occasional mourner. Further, much of the cemetery remains vacant, and is not one of Chicago’s most under-utilized green spaces. The aim of my investigation draws upon the philosophy behind the Park Lawn Movement and reimagines the Oak Woods cemetery as a recreational green space. I propose improvements for the site as well as a complete redesign of the cemetery, in order to inspire inhabitants to make use of and enhance the space. The aim of my project is not to enact a dramatic transformation of the site, but rather to motivate people to think about green spaces more creatively, reduce stigma around cemeteries and death and foster a stronger sense of community in Greater Grand Crossing.

Research Mentor: Na'ama Rokem, Associate Professor of Modern Hebrew Literature and Comparative Literature, Center for Jewish Studies, NELC, and Comparative Literature