Graduate Student Workshops in the Humanities and Social Sciences

Explores Africa’s dynamic relationship to the wider world, and charts the effects of these processes in various spheres of African life.

Hosts presentations by graduate students and faculty of work on ancient philosophical texts, as well as a year-long reading group.

Investigates the theme “Texts and Archaeology,” to explore the relationship between texts and archaeological excavation as sources of evidence.

Focuses on topics in economics, political science, sociology, anthropology, history, international studies, and various other areas.

Explores the social organization of urban environments, focusing on new understandings of the social structures and processes within a city.

Explores fundamental topics in cognitive psychology and their potential to enhance human performance.

Examines how biological and social environments influence social behavior and how behaviors and the environment in turn influence genetic change.

Includes topics on violence, states, political parties, ethnicity, nationalism, economic development, democracy, and ideology.

Explores the unprecedented possibilities for social inquiry enabled by the volume of data and new methods currently available.

Engages history as a crucial lens for analyzing the production and narration of recent art through sustained dialogue and debate.

Examines work on primary texts and other evidence for the early Christian movement and the world in which it grew.

Encompasses the entirety of the Mediterranean and European worlds as well as their rivals and colonial possessions (circa 1350-1800).

Explores prominent figures, approaches and developments in Philosophy from the 16th through the 18th centuries.

Focuses on topics in economics, political science, sociology, anthropology, history, international studies, and various other areas.

Explores themes of a transnational and regional/global nature that have been obscured by the national paradigm.

Supports the advancement of education-related research and theory by exploring methodology and new findings.

Discusses the tensions between diverse cultural production from 1660-1900 and the unifying narrative of modernity often imposed on these centuries.

Explores the discourse on music and its cultural context, establishing an interchange among disciplines in the humanities and social sciences.

Aims to understand how gender and sexuality shape human experiences and are embedded in other social practices.

Examines German Idealism and its precursors, Nineteenth-century Germany philosophy, Twentieth century (especially the phenomenological and hermeneutic traditions), the elucidation and development within the Anglophone tradition of central concepts, methods, and concerns from the German tradition, and more.

Engages questions in and around the Hebrew Bible, its historical and cultural context, and its ongoing interpretation.

Investigates and encounters the latest work in science studies.

Explores the strange divergence between political theory and political realities in the actual history of performed “rights” and “duties”.

Explores France from the mid-seventeenth century to the present within the humanities and social sciences.

Forges a concerted dialogue on the relationship between theoretical and methodological approaches centered on considerations of “Vision”.

This workshop provides a forum for Chicago faculty and students conducting research in Paris to share and discuss their work with their colleagues.

Considers the interaction of historical forces across national boundaries and regions of the world.

Addresses a broad range of theoretical and empirical issues and reflects widely varying methodological approaches and normative commitments.

Topics include all aspects of the causes of war and peace, American national security policy, and international security affairs.

This workshop looks to engage students and faculty interested in Jewish studies while stretching them to think beyond the strictures that currently typify their sub-disciplines.

Explores discourse of crisis and promise; relationships between institutions, markets, and states; property and privatization; and political identity.

Analyzes how gesture and signed languages enhance our understanding of language through several perspectives.

Focuses on “Under-represented languages,” exploring minority language varieties in the United States, as well as globally under-studied languages.

Explores peoples, cultures, histories, and religions of the late Antique and Byzantine world, including the near Eastern and Slavic regions.

Facilitates an interdisciplinary conversation around questions of common interest to those whose work focuses on Latin America and the Caribbean.

Aims to develop wide comparative historical perspectives and to examine methods and techniques from a variety of disciplines.

Explores the philosophy of literature and vice-versa, intellectual exchange between philosophers and literary figures, and hybrid forms of cultural production.

Focuses on broad questions regarding the key role mass culture plays in the formation of contemporary public spheres.

Focuses on the literature, history, and culture of the European Middle Ages, c. 500-1500, through a wide variety of disciplines.

Explores topics such as ornament, figure, metonymy, allegory, translation, analogy, cognition, and epistemology.

Examines a wide array of academic questions related to the history, culture, societies, and politics of the Middle East.

Emphasizes interdisciplinary projects that challenge well-documented economic assumptions, or examine the logics and infrastructures presumed necessary for markets and currencies to function.

This workshop provides a forum for graduate students, faculty, and other scholars to explore contemporary approaches to music history, music theory, and the ways in which these two disciplines intersect. Allowing for a variety of disciplinary perspectives and multiple modes of presentation, the workshop aims to foster scholarly dialogues on involving music history and theory across a broad community of scholars.

Explores the historical and discursive intersections of technology, culture, politics, and aesthetics.

Fosters a historical and formal engagement with poetry in all languages and across all periods.

Strengthens theoretical and empirical work in political science by incorporating knowledge from psychology.

Promotes critical discussion of political theory, political philosophy, and moral, social, and legal theory and philosophy, historical and contemporary.

This workshop is a forum for those interested in ethics, conceived broadly to include normative moral philosophy, meta-ethics, action theory, moral psychology, political philosophy, and the theory of practical reason.

Addresses the ideas, meanings, and practices of the sacred within racially marginalized communities.

Explores the intersections of religion with the modern day ethical domains, and historically engages with influential thinkers.

Explores the role of religion in American culture from the colonial period to the present day.

Emphasizes cross-disciplinary study of English and European literature, art, politics, theology, natural science and much more during the Renaissance.

Addresses the different processes of racialization experienced within groups, as well as across groups, in all continents.

Examines the literature of classical Greece and Rome, on its own terms or in relation to the literature and poetry of other cultures.

Explores the parallels, tensions, and places for dialog between research traditions and a recent body of work as approaches to human interiority.

Investigates the subject of meaning in natural language from philosophical and linguistic perspectives, focusing on the theme, “Alternatives.”

This workshop seeks to advance research based on a semiotic framework. Presentations will come from a variety of fields including, but not limited to linguistics, psychology, sociology, political science, literary theory, history, and anthropology.

Provides an academic forum for the discussion and development of work that takes seriously the history of everyday life.

This workshop explores in a sustained fashion the social theoretical implications of participants’ work in the social sciences and humanities.

Focuses on the clarity and cogency of social theories, and the logic and effectiveness of evidence in social research.

Systematically reflects on the longstanding divide between theories and praxes of performance.

Aims to maintain a thematically and disciplinarily diverse conversation about religious discourse, practice and meaning.

Promotes intellectual inquiry in South Asian Studies.

Explores the history, culture, and societies of Modern Europe, Russia/the Soviet Union, East Central Europe, Germany, and France.

Explores ethnographic research in Canada and the United States from social scientific fields engaging cross-disciplinary anthropological problems.

Examines the possible uses of recent theories of art, history, and material and visual culture in the study of East Asia.

Explores linguistic, textual, and visual traditions, emphasizing the movement and exchange of peoples, ideas, motifs, and objects.

Fosters a variety of forms of interdisciplinary research that take their point of departure from shared interest in Wittgenstein’s intellectual achievement.