Notions 2023 by UChiCollegium

Notions 2023

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Director’s Note

I am proud to introduce Notions, the Neubauer Collegium’s new public-facing report. This report is more than a source of information about what’s been happening at the corner of Woodlawn Avenue and 57th Street. At a time when everyone is talking about crisis in the humanities (and in universities more broadly), it offers a source of inspiration and hope for the future of qualitative humanistic research. Such hope is much needed. Lately, humanists are understandably demoralized. Private and public funding and attention are increasingly turning to STEM fields. Qualitative researchers have been pressured to justify their existence and defend their value. At the same time, universities have been subjected to increasing political heat, pressured to defend or change their leadership and their curriculums; challenged in their ability to represent a diverse society; divided internally by debates over the meaning of free expression. We at the Neubauer Collegium don’t claim to have the solution to any of those problems, and this report is not a manifesto. But we do offer something else: evidence of the value of qualitative research in the form of our research projects, gallery exhibitions, and public programming. In all three domains, our mission is to bring together scholars, artists, and practitioners across disciplinary and administrative boundaries who are posing new questions about human societies and culture. Notions highlights a few of the themes that have emerged organically in our programming this year, including climate change; the role

of the performing arts as repositories of history and embodied knowledge; and the cultural and economic afterlives of empire. All ideas begin as notions. Some remain fleeting thoughts, but others grow into questions that drive research and change. But notions do not become big ideas without support, space, and community—some of which is highly visible, and some largely unseen by the public. This report provides a behind-the-scenes perspective on ideas in the making—and of the ways in which unfettered qualitative research is essential to understanding cultures and societies in transformation. Tara Zahra Roman Family Director Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society

Everybody Talks About the Weather p. 19

Book Burial p. 20

Yuval Sharon p. 24

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Kyle Abraham p. 24

Rick Lowe p. 28

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Gelitin p. 27

These projects draw on a range of disciplinary approaches to explore the ways that national and cultural identities are shaped and catalyzed at moments of political transition. The Quest for Modern Language Between the Mediterranean and Black Sea, 1820–1948 Orit Bashkin Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations

Costumes and Collapse

Economic Planning and Democratic Politics

Hoda El Shakry Comparative Literature

Aaron Benanav Syracuse University

Leah Feldman Comparative Literature

Gary Herrigel Political Science Joel Isaac Committee on Social Thought

Itamar Francez Linguistics Na’ama Rokem Comparative Literature

Matthew Landauer Political Science

Holly Shissler Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations

Expressions After Empire The Quest for Modern Language Between the Mediterranean and Black Sea, 1820–1948 The roots of many contemporary conflicts in the Middle East can be traced back to the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and scholarly efforts to understand the rise of nationalism in the region often intersect with the study of language reform. The nation-states that emerged after World War I recognized important connections between language modernization and the formation of national identity—and pursued both in tandem. The Quest for Modern Language Between the Mediterranean and Black Sea project (2021– 2024) is bringing together an international group of historians, literary scholars, linguists, anthropologists, and sociologists to study the role of “language ideologies” in the Middle East from 1820 to 1948. Academic interest in this area is notably strong. When the research team put out a call for papers about language reform in the context of emerging Middle East nationalisms, the high number and quality of the proposals prompted the team to split its proposed conference into two. The first took place in April 2023, with a series of talks on language and cultural transformation, language purification, and related themes. A second conference in late November examined the ways that multilingual practices challenged state policies in the post-Ottoman Middle East. Speakers explored how people cultivated multiple and intimate relations to different languages, the nostalgia they expressed and fostered for multilingual

Turkish President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk introducing the new Turkish alphabet, September 20, 1928. Agefotostock/Alamy.

imperial pasts, and the civil rights battles for language justice they conducted, especially in ethno-nationalist and colonized states. The project is fostering an international network of scholars interested in synthesizing insights from their respective areas of study. These include Visiting Fellows Esra Almas (Bilkent University), Marilyn Booth (Oxford University), and Annie Greene (University of Utah). Almas, who was in residence during the Fall Quarter, presented a talk about the celebrated linguist Leo Spitzer, who learned Turkish while studying Romance languages in Istanbul in 1934. LEARN MORE

Expressions After Empire

Costumes and Collapse

Economic Planning and Democratic Politics

In times of crisis, fashion and fabrics help people forge new ways of being. How do clothes, textiles, and craftwork operate as modes of group formation and political resistance at such moments? The Costumes and Collapse project (2023–2026) is exploring this provocative question by focusing on two diverse post-imperial spaces: the Soviet Union and the Middle East. On Oct. 26 the research team launched a series of artist talks about the politics of couture and crafts with a presentation by Rufina Bazlova, who challenges Belarusian authoritarianism through traditional embroidery. The event was co-sponsored by the Department of Comparative Literature, the Pozen Center for Human Rights, the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, and the Center for Gender and Sexuality at the University of Chicago, and presented with the Hyde Park Art Center, where Bazlova was an artist in residence this fall. The research team also launched a reading group for an international group of scholars and artists who are studying the histories and theories of wearable art, textiles, and costuming. In the coming months the project will host talks with three more artists, including celebrated Chicago-based sculptor Nick Cave.

Public trust in political and economic institutions has plummeted since the 2008 financial crash. The collapse of the “neoliberal consensus” has, in turn, created new possibilities for citizens, who are reshaping the dynamics that determine state approaches to social, economic, and environmental policy. The Economic Planning and Democratic Politics project is exploring the contours of this new (and notably under-studied) landscape with a series of high-level discussions. There is no shortage of ideas from citizens and state officials about the best way to manage the economy, but which ideas are most closely aligned with the public interest? The project kicked off with a workshop on Dec. 1 led by Geoff Hodgson, a specialist in institutional economics and the author of more than twenty books on economics and political thought. Speakers at upcoming events in the series will represent a range of current perspectives on post-Keynesian economic theory, the Austrian school of economics, sustainable development, and heterodox approaches to political economy.

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JOIN THE READING GROUP

Belarusian artist Rufina Bazlova holding her 2021 work Svetlana Is My Prezident. Photo by Daria Rudko, courtesy of the artist.

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These investigations—of historical documents, ancient texts, and archaeological sites—are applying new research tools to reexamine what we know about the distant and not-so-distant past. Capturing the Stars: Women’s Networks and the Advancement of Science at Yerkes Observatory, 1895–1940 Richard G. Kron Astronomy and Astrophysics

Ancient Greek Philosophy of Race and Ethnicity

Genomes, Migrations, and Culture in the Early Civilizations of the Middle East

Patricia Marechal University of California, San Diego

John Novembre Human Genetics

John Proios Philosophy

James Osborne Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures

Kristine Palmieri Institute on the Formation of Knowledge Andrea Twiss-Brooks University of Chicago Library

Maanasa Raghavan Human Genetics David Schloen Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures 14

Excavations Capturing the Stars On May 6, 1921, Albert Einstein visited Yerkes Observatory, a site in southern Wisconsin run by the University of Chicago, as part of his first trip to the United States. A century later, researchers at the University were astonished to discover a photo that included a group of women standing next to Einstein the day of his visit. The investigation that followed revealed a cadre of “hidden figures” who performed crucial astronomical research at Yerkes at a time when the field was formally closed to women. In September the University of Chicago Library and the Neubauer Collegium’s Capturing the Stars project jointly organized a three-day symposium on “Invisible Labor in Astronomy and Astrophysics” to share findings inspired by this archival work. Coinciding with the installation of the library’s new exhibition Capturing the Stars: The Untold History of Women at Yerkes Observatory, 19001930, the event brought together experts from diverse fields in the humanities and the sciences to consider questions of labor, credit, and expertise in the production of astronomical research. The project is integrating digital humanities methods for network mapping and data analysis, with the goal of deepening public knowledge about the women who helped advance twentiethcentury discoveries about the universe.

Mary Ross Calvert, computer of Yerkes Observatory, operating the Kenwood 12-inch refractor telescope, 1926. Photo by George C. Blakslee. The Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, The University of Chicago Library.

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Excavations

Ancient Greek Philosophy of Race and Ethnicity

Genomes, Migrations, and Culture in the Early Civilizations of the Middle East

Does racist ideology stretch back to antiquity, or did the social prejudices of the ancient Greeks and Romans find their justification in other systems of thought? Plato and Aristotle lived in societies that associated people’s language, culture, and skin color with cognitive, emotional, and moral dispositions. Yet scholars have devoted little attention to the influence of Greco-Roman ideas about race and ethnicity on classical philosophy. The Ancient Greek Philosophy of Race and Ethnicity project is helping to plug this gap. On Dec. 1 the research team welcomed Cinzia Arruzza (Associate Professor of Philosophy, New School for Social Research) for a riveting talk about Plato’s defense of ethnic cohesion in the ideal city of Magnesia. Her close reading was a model of humanistic scholarship, revealing not only that contemporary critical frameworks can inspire fresh insights about ancient texts but also that ancient texts can inform our most urgent social and political debates. A volume of essays edited by the research team is forthcoming.

Many projects at the Neubauer Collegium are expressly designed to push inquiry in new directions. By supporting research at the incubation stage, these projects help define and shape new fields of research. Genomes, Migrations, and Culture in the Early Civilizations of the Middle East is one such effort. A pioneering collaboration between archaeologists and geneticists, the project is bringing the disciplines together to advance the emerging field of archaeogenetics. The research team is analyzing DNA from ancient human remains excavated in the Middle East in order to reconstruct population movements and assess the prevailing explanations for cultural change in the Bronze Age civilizations of this region. A capstone event Nov. 13–14 brought the group together to share findings and discuss promising methods of analysis. The team is developing a curriculum and fostering a network of collaborators to support scholarship in this burgeoning area. LEARN MORE

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Athenian red-figured plate painted by Epiktetos, circa 520 BC. The figure is most likely intended to depict an Amazon archer. © The Trustees of the British Museum.

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Artists and scholars are coming together to develop creative responses to the global climate crisis—and to gain a deeper understanding of our links to the natural world. Untidy Objects Sara Black School of the Art Institute of Chicago Marc Downie Cinema and Media Studies Samantha Frost University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Amber Ginsburg Visual Arts

Everybody Talks About the Weather Fondazione Prada Venice, Italy May 20–Nov. 26, 2023 Chicago Cli-Fi Library Book Burial Neubauer Collegium Sept. 7, 2023 Awi’nakola Neubauer Collegium May 17, 2023

Art from the Anthropocene Untidy Objects

Everybody Talks About the Weather

Can a “living sculpture” prompt new ways to address the challenge of environmental sustainability? That question animates Untidy Objects, a research project studying an installation at the University of Chicago’s Logan Center for the Arts that includes components of a thriving ecosystem. DoVA lecturer Amber Ginsburg created the sculpture in 2021 with her colleagues Sara Black (School of the Art Institute of Chicago) and Samantha Frost (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), with support from the Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry and the Logan Center. As it has grown, the piece has become a site for rich encounters between humans and the natural environment. In the project’s current phase, supported by the Neubauer Collegium, the team is hosting a series of on-site discussions prompted by interactions with the sculpture. Participants at the first convening (Oct. 14–15) investigated the challenge of “attunement” as they shifted their sensory perception to foreground objects in the environment that are typically overlooked. The team is planning more convenings and developing software to study visitors’ responses to an “augmented reality” component designed by Cinema and Media Studies scholar Marc Downie.

Everybody Talks About the Weather, a research-informed exhibition at the Fondazione Prada in Venice (May 20–Nov. 26), was conceived by Neubauer Collegium Curator Dieter Roelstraete as a large-scale, international complement to The Chicago Cli-Fi Library (on view in our gallery Feb. 22–June 10). The Venice show, which coincided with the Venice Architecture Biennale, included more than 50 works by contemporary artists and a selection of historical artworks tracing the various ways that humanity has responded to meteorological events. The show also included “research stations,” with scientific presentations developed in collaboration with the New Institute Centre for Environmental Humanities (NICHE) at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice. At a two-day conference in Venice Oct. 5–6, an interdisciplinary group of experts discussed climate change as a challenge confronting scientists and humanistic scholars as well as artists and other creative professionals. The event concluded with a performative reading of How Does the World End (for Others)?—a piece by the artists Geissler & Sann featuring fragments from classic climate dystopias that was created for The Chicago Cli-Fi Library.

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Art from the Anthropocene

Chicago Cli-Fi Library Book Burial

Awi’nakola

Jenny Kendler’s Underground Library (2023) features a shelf of books about climate change that have been burned to a crisp. Kendler “biocharred” the books through a process that transformed them into a solid form of carbon, which could be sequestered in the earth to enrich the soil rather than released into the atmosphere as harmful emissions. The work was included as part of The Chicago Cli-Fi Library, a recent exhibition in our gallery that showcased four local artists’ responses to the climate crisis. Kendler returned to the Neubauer Collegium on Sept. 7 to bury the books at a private evening ceremony that was equal parts funereal and utopian. An elegy for unheeded warnings doubled as a symbolic gesture pointing toward a more sustainable future. “The practice of burying the books is an act of mourning and regret,” Kendler said. But it is also an act of creation, “planting the garden of the worlds to come.”

On May 17 the Neubauer Collegium welcomed leaders from Awi’nakola, a Canada-based organization that brings together Indigenous knowledge keepers, scientists, and artists to find effective responses to the climate crisis. The event included remarks by Awi’nakola founder Rande Cook, artist and hereditary chief of the Ma’amtagila First Nation; small-group discussions about strategies for stewarding land and culture; and a “social dance” at which participants explored new ways to connect with one another and the natural world. The program was part of a weeklong series organized by Chicago-based curator Stephanie Smith that included many partners at the University of Chicago, including the Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry; the Office of the Provost; and the Department of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity. Other partners included the Center for Native Futures, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Watershed: Art + Ecology.

VIEW PHOTOS

Jenny Kendler, Underground Library, 2023. Photo by the artist.

Installation view, Everybody Talks about the Weather, Fondazione Prada (Venice, Italy), May 20–Nov. 26, 2023. Photo by Marco Cappelletti, courtesy Fondazione Prada.

A conceptual illustration of Untidy Objects by the research team.

Participants at a “social dance” led by Awi’nakola, Neubauer Collegium, May 17, 2023. Photo by Abel Arciniega.

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If we want to learn more about how people perceive, understand, and interact with the world, we should study the way our bodies shape and reflect meaning. Stacy Hardy Visiting Fellow 2023–2024 Kyle Abraham Director’s Lecture Oct. 10, 2023 Yuval Sharon Global Solutions Visiting Fellow 2023–2025

Embodied Knowledge Stacy Hardy What is a breathing machine? South African writer, researcher, and editor Stacy Hardy explored this question through a range of activities during her Fall Quarter residence as a Neubauer Collegium Visiting Fellow. Hardy previously collaborated as a member of the research team on the Pulmonographies project (2020-2023), which focused on the “biographies and geographies of breath” in relation to tuberculosis in South Africa. The team’s current project, Transperformations (2023-2024), expands on that work by investigating the potential of “collective breathing” as a liberatory practice opposed to the imperialist suppression of breath.

Hardy also collaborated with Chicago-based poet and translator Daniel Borzutzky on a poetry manuscript (publication forthcoming) and on a film; organized performances and jazz improvisations with South African composer Neo Muyanga; and pursued ethnographic research on Viennese health care with Sunder Rajan. On Oct. 21, as part of the University’s annual Humanities Day, she gave a performance lecture about breathing machines that incorporated poetry, video, music, critical theory, and history. Then, on Nov. 3, she hosted the “Festival of Holes” at the Neubauer Collegium, which included dance and musical performances along with a reading to celebrate the launch of her new book, An Archaeology of Holes (Bridge Books). Ongoing work on the Transperformations project includes a series of writing workshops with participants from South Africa and Colombia, societies with a common history of colonization and oppressed breathing. The project is helping to forge partnerships between the countries’ truth and reconciliation committees, and the work has spurred the development of resources for lawyers and truth commissioners.

Hardy co-taught a graduate course this fall with anthropologist Kaushik Sunder Rajan, in which they defined breathing machines as “forms and forums for the building and expression of collectivity” and encouraged students to build them around shared sets of research questions and various approaches to creative expression. The course featured contributions from several guest lecturers and artists, who built breathing machines in conjunction with the students. Final projects ranged widely in form and content, from the production of a radio show to a draft of a novel to direct social action.

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Embodied Knowledge

Kyle Abraham

Yuval Sharon

Kyle Abraham, one of the most celebrated and sought-after choreographers in the United States, shared his passion for dance during a two-day visit to campus in October. A diverse set of programs showcased Abraham’s distinct approach to movement as a form of personal and collective expression—and provided an opportunity to explore dance performance as an experimental form of research about “embodied meaning.” An afternoon workshop on Oct. 10, held at the Logan Center for the Arts and sponsored by the Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry, introduced a group of Theater and Performance Studies students to Abraham’s improvisatory method. That evening Abraham gave a Director’s Lecture during which he discussed his evolution as a dancer and explored ideas about Black dance vernacular as a form of embodied African American history. The next morning he joined leaders from some of the city’s most prominent Black dance companies for an intimate breakfast discussion at the Neubauer Collegium co-hosted by the Chicago Black Dance Legacy Project. “Not only did the breakfast provide an opportunity to introduce the iconic dance artists of Chicago to a national voice in choreography, it also allowed them to share stories, experiences, and be in conversation about the Black tradition in American dance,” said CBDLP director Princess Mhoon. “The fellowship fostered a sense of community that would be nearly impossible in another setting.”

Yuval Sharon is a trailblazing force in the world of contemporary opera. Currently serving as the Gary L. Wasserman Artistic Director at the Detroit Opera and the inaugural Global Solutions Visiting Fellow at the Neubauer Collegium, Sharon is helping to reshape the genre with a body of work that integrates technology, immersive experience, and innovative approaches to narrative and stage design. “My fellowship with the Neubauer Collegium is focused on developing the conceptual underpinnings of the projects I am working on,” he explained. “The research opportunities in the academic space allow me to explore ideas and think about alternatives in a way that makes the ideation process richer, deeper, and more thoughtful than it would be if we were just racing to a design deadline.” At a workshop last March, faculty shared feedback on the dress rehearsal of Proximity, which was incorporated into the world premiere. Featuring a trio of new works masterfully interwoven by Sharon, Proximity was hailed by critics as a highlight of the season—and a radical departure from tradition. On May 1, Sharon workshopped a draft of his forthcoming book, A New Philosophy of Opera (Liveright, 2024). The series will continue in February, when an interdisciplinary group of faculty will meet the design team working with Sharon on a new production of Mozart’s Così fan tutte. Over two days of intensive discussions, the group will explore ways to reimagine the opera through the lens of AI.

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Photo of Kyle Abraham by Tatiana Wills, courtesy A.I.M. by Kyle Abraham.

Zoie Reams in Proximity. Photo by Todd Rosenberg, courtesy Lyric Opera of Chicago.

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Two recent projects fuse art and social context to ask important questions about the role of the creative process in shaping democratic society. Gelitin: Democratic Sculpture 7 Neubauer Collegium Sept. 23, 2023–Jan. 12, 2024 Rick Lowe Visiting Fellow 2023–2024

Social Sculptures Gelitin: Democratic Sculpture 7 In their transition from enfants terribles of the contemporary art world to eminent punk pranksters, the Viennese art collective Gelitin have maintained a subversive sense of humor—and a surprisingly serious approach to play. Democratic Sculpture 7 is a case in point. On view in the Neubauer Collegium gallery Sept. 23–Jan. 12, the installation also made a brief appearance at the Chicago Cultural Center as part of the opening of the 2023 Chicago Architecture Biennial. A monumental pizza made of discarded clothing with holes through which guests can poke their heads, the piece elicited both critical conversation and giddy laughter.

Gelitin (seated, from front to back: Tobias Urban, Florian Reither, Ali Janka, and Wolfgang Gantner) with Neubauer Collegium Curator Dieter Roelstraete. Photo by Robert Heishman.

In a video produced for the show, the artists shared their thoughts on how a work that may seem like pure whimsy was actually designed with a serious purpose: to encourage civic participation. “I think with this pizza you can create a square where people come together and interact,” Wolfgang Gantner noted. “And they have a costume on, so they are more likely to speak to each other.” But why did the artists go with a pizza, as opposed to some other universally recognized object? “Making a plate of spaghetti was a bit too complicated,” Tobias Urban quipped.

and the fact that viewing art can itself be a political activity. Through the fluid interchange between audience and performer, Gelitin suggest a truly democratic form of art-making: open and accessible to all. This sense of freedom caught some off guard at first, but those willing to join in the high-minded buffoonery found themselves empowered. WATCH THE VIDEO

Throughout the run of the show, a steady stream of visitors fashioned themselves into toppings. The installation prompted a wide range of reflections about food politics, creative interventions in the public sphere,

Social Sculptures

Rick Lowe “Art’s power to illuminate, interrogate, and propose new ideas should matter to universities and institutions of higher learning, as we increasingly recognize the importance of extending beyond the standard parameters of scholarly research and expertise to meet today’s most pressing needs,” Neubauer Collegium Faculty Director Tara Zahra writes in the foreword to a new monograph on the artist Rick Lowe. “Lowe’s investments in deep and sustained collaboration, relationships fostered over decades, undergird his pioneering work in social sculpture. It is a value that animates our work at the Collegium, and it is fundamental to the success of any critically important domain of inquiry.”

with paintings and documentation of projects from the past three decades, charting a trajectory that includes early-career political interventions, pioneering works of communitybased “social sculpture,” and recent experiments with abstraction. It also includes several essays, including one by Neubauer Collegium Visiting Fellow Abigail Winograd about her collaboration with Lowe on the Black Wall Street Journey project. That project, in turn, informed Notes on the Great Migration, which is featured prominently in these pages.

The book, jointly published by the Neubauer Collegium and Gagosian, presents the first comprehensive account of the Houstonbased artist’s career. Its release marks a milestone in the Collegium’s longstanding partnership with Lowe, a Visiting Fellow who collaborated on the Black Wall Street Journey research project (2020–2021) and mounted an exhibition of recent works in the gallery (Notes on the Great Migration, Oct. 25, 2022–Feb. 10, 2023). Edited by Neubauer Collegium Curator Dieter Roelstraete and Gagosian Director Antwaun Sargent, the book is lushly illustrated

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Why Interdisciplinary Collaboration?

We are in a moment when most information we receive is “customized” and “tailored” in some way. Our unique identities and tastes are celebrated. This is how we get better music matches, better health care, better educational outcomes.

have a group show about climate change, or paintings evoking the Great Migration, or a sculpture that looks like a benign pizza but in fact disrupts social hierarchy. The engine driving the Collegium is its ever-changing stream of collaborative research; the gallery serves as an interlocutor, introducing new thinking about But what does this compartmentalization mean themes shared by the research projects and for our sense of belonging to larger communities? providing a point of entry for conversation. In this And what does it mean for the production untailored environment, an opera director can of knowledge, which has only recently shifted bump into a data scientist and come up with away from the Romantic ideal of the heroic a new idea for an opera production; a sociologist genius working in isolation? How does it serve and a painter can reimagine data collection our growing appreciation for the importance driven by community building; a climate scientist of context, community, and collaboration and a composer can take up the challenge in developing breakthrough ideas? It seems a of representing environmental catastrophe. step backwards. The Collegium is open to all ideas from all The tailoring of information to suit our immediate quarters. And bringing together people whose and predictable interests seems particularly information-streaming habits would otherwise at odds with interdisciplinarity, a core value at isolate and separate to work together on a the University of Chicago. The Neubauer shared question is what universities are uniquely Collegium was created precisely to spark positioned to do. The solution to the world’s collaborative research on ideas that can’t be problems isn’t going to happen in an information fully understood, let alone advanced, without bubble. bringing together “unlikely partners” (people who would not run into each other, let alone Elspeth Carruthers work together, in the normal flow of things). Executive Director Projects are led by teams that incorporate the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society diverse perspectives needed to solve complex problems. Context matters for this way of working. The Collegium environment—space, people, and mindset—sits outside the normal disciplinary parameters of the University. It is designed to pop tailored bubbles of information, and to welcome new communities into research collaboration. The “untailored” experience of the Collegium begins when you enter the building and are drawn into the exhibitions gallery, which may 30

× × pp. 2 and 31: Participants at recent Neubauer Collegium events, including: Workshop with Yuval Sharon, May 1, 2023; Awi’nakola discussion and social dance, May 17, 2023; “Invisible Labor in Astronomy and Astrophysics” conference, Sept. 14–16, 2023; opening reception for Gelitin: Democratic Sculpture 7, Sept. 23, 2023; “An Embodied Conversation,” Director’s Lecture with Kyle Abraham, Oct. 10, 2023; breakfast discussion with Kyle Abraham, Oct. 11, 2023;

“Breathing Machines Across Worlds,” Humanities Day performance lecture by Stacy Hardy, Oct. 21, 2023; artist talk with Rufina Bazlova, Oct. 26, 2023; “A Festival of Holes” performance and reading, Nov. 3, 2023; “Languages between State and Empire” conference, Nov. 28–29, 2023; “Looking at the Black Sea: Genê and Civic Theôria in Plato’s Laws,” lecture by Cinzia Arruzza, Dec. 1, 2023. Photos by Max Herman, Abel Arciniega, and Erielle Bakkum.

pp. 3 and 30: Photos by Erielle Bakkum.

p. 4: Installation view, Everybody Talks about the Weather, Fondazione Prada (Venice, Italy), May 20–Nov. 26, 2023. Photo by Marco Cappelletti, courtesy Fondazione Prada.

p. 5: Jenny Kendler, Underground Library, 2023. Photo by the artist.

p. 6: Lucia Lucas in Proximity. Photo by Todd Rosenberg, courtesy Lyric Opera of Chicago.

p. 9: Gelitin, Democratic Sculpture 7 (detail), 2023. Photo by Robert Heishman.

p. 7: Photo of Kyle Abraham by Tatiana Wills, courtesy A.I.M. by Kyle Abraham.

p. 10: Dollar illustration via Wikimedia Commons.

p. 14: Archaeological plan for the burial site of Alişar Höyük, Turkey, courtesy the Genomes, Migrations, and Culture in the Early Civilizations of the Middle East project.

p. 18: Conceptual illustration of Untidy Objects by the research team.

p. 22: Detail of the album cover of Dialectic Soul by Asher Gamedze, 2020, courtesy the artist. p. 26: Sketch of Democratic Sculpture 7, courtesy Gelitin.

Design: Raventype