Will Boast
Presentation:

Will Boast is the author of a story collection, Power Ballads (University of Iowa Press, 2011); a memoir, Epilogue (Liveright, 2014); and a novel, Daphne (Liveright, 2018). His short fiction, reporting, and essays have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, The Guardian, Glimmer Train, and the Virginia Quarterly Review, among other publications. He has held fellowships from Stanford University and the American Academy in Rome. Boast is Assistant Professor of Practice in the Arts in the Program of Creative Writing in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Chicago.

Christine Wilkie Bohlman

Christine Wilkie Bohlman is a Lecturer in Piano in the Humanities Collegiate Division. A former student of Menachem Pressler, she is a specialist in the performance of chamber music and repertories from the 18th and 20th centuries.

Philip V. Bohlman

Philip V. Bohlman recently published Wie sängen wir Seinen Gesang auf dem Boden der Fremde! (LIT Verlag, 2019) and the second, revised edition of World Music: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2020). He is the Ludwig Rosenberger Distinguished Service Professor in Jewish History in the Department of Music, as well as the Artistic Director of the Division of the Humanities' ensemble-in-residence, the New Budapest Orpheum Society.

Suzanne Buffam
Presentation:

Suzanne Buffam is the author of three collections of poetry, the most recent of which, A Pillow Book (Canarium Books, 2016), was named one of the 10 best books of poetry in 2016 by the New York Times. A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Jeannette Heian Ballard Foundation, she is Associate Professor of Practice in the Arts in the Program of Creative Writing in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Chicago.

Edgar Garcia

Edgar Garcia is a poet and scholar of the hemispheric cultures of the Americas, primarily during the 20th century. Winner of the 2018 Fence Modern Poets Series award, his collection of poems and anthropological essays on hemispheric migrations—Skins of Columbus: A Dream Ethnography (which also received an award from the Illinois Arts Council)—was published by Fence Books in 2019. His book of scholarship on the contemporary life of the seemingly antiquated sign-systems of the Americas—Signs of the Americas: A Poetics of Pictographs, Hieroglyphs, and Khipu—was published by the University of Chicago Press in November 2019 (a selection of this work received honors from the Modern Language Association in 2020). He also co-edited an anthology on the transnational contexts of American literature, American Literature in the World: An Anthology from Anne Bradstreet to Octavia Butler (Columbia University Press, 2016). Currently, he is working on two books: one is a rethinking of risk and migration in humanistic frameworks (as opposed to statistical ones); the other is a collection of essays on the K’iche Mayan story of creation the Popol Vuh. Garcia is the Neubauer Family Assistant Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Chicago.

Tom Ginsburg

Tom Ginsburg advises governments and international organizations on constitutions, legal reform, and democracy. His latest book is How to Save a Constitutional Democracy (2018, with co-author Aziz Huq). Ginsburg is the Leo Spitz Professor of International Law at the University of Chicago, where he also holds an appointment in the Political Science Department. He co-founded the Comparative Constitutions Project, which catalogues the world’s constitutions since 1789, and runs the award-winning Constitute website.

William Howell

William Howell has written widely on separation of powers issues, with a particular focus on the American Presidency. The author, most recently, of Presidents, Populism, and the Crisis of Democracy (University of Chicago Press, 2020), William is the Sydney Stein Professor of American Politics at the Harris School of Public Policy, the Chair of the Department of Political Science, the Director of the Center for Effective Government, and co-host of Not Another Politics Podcast.

Mitchell S. Jackson
Presentation:

Mitchell S. Jackson is the author of the novel The Residue Years (Bloomsbury USA, 2013) and the essay collection Survival Math: Notes on an All-American Family (Simon & Schuster, 2020). His second novel, John of Watts, will be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Among other honors, Jackson is the Winner of a Whiting Award. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harpers, The Paris Review, Time Magazine, The Guardian, the New York Times Book Review and elsewhere. He is Assistant Professor in the Program of Creative Writing in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Chicago.

Tracey Meares

Tracey L. Meares focuses her research on understanding how members of the public think about their relationships with legal authorities such as police, prosecutors, and judges. She has worked extensively with the federal government, including for the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs Science Advisory Board. Professor Meares is the Walton Hale Hamilton Professor and a Founding Director of the Justice Collaboratory at Yale University Law School.

Richard T. Neer has published widely on art and aesthetics in ancient Greece, early modern France, and world cinema. His next book, Painting as a Way of Life: Art Practice and Spiritual Exercise in the Age of Poussin, is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press. Neer is the Barbara E. and Richard J. Franke Distinguished Service Professor in Art History, Cinema & Media Studies and the College and Director of the Franke Institute for the Humanities at the University of Chicago.

Larry Norman

Larry F. Norman is a specialist in 17th– and 18th–century French literature, theater, and intellectual history. Specifically, his research focuses on how individual works play with social norms and literary expectations. Editor or co-editor of several volumes, Norman is the author of The Shock of the Ancient: Literature and History in Early Modern France (University of Chicago Press, 2011) and The Public Mirror: Moliere and the Social Commerce of Depiction (University of Chicago Press, 1999). Norman is the Frank L. Sulzberger Professor in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures and the Committee on Theater and Performance Studies.

Martha C. Nussbaum

Martha C. Nussbaum’s research explores the intersections of philosophy, law, classical studies, and political theory. She has written many books, including The Monarchy of Fear: A Philosopher Looks at Our Political Crisis (2018); edited 21 books; and published more than 450 articles. Among her multiple awards and honors, Nussbaum received the Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy in 2016, the Don M. Randel Prize for Achievement in the Humanities in 2018, and the Berggruen Prize for Philosophy and Culture in 2018. She is the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics, appointed in the Law School and the Philosophy Department.

David W. Oxtoby

David W. Oxtoby is President of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is President Emeritus of Pomona College, and he was a Visiting Scholar at the Harvard Graduate School of Education prior to becoming President of the American Academy. As the ninth president of Pomona College, Oxtoby has been recognized as a leader in American higher education. Previously he served as Dean of the Division of Physical Sciences and the William Rainey Harper Distinguished Service Professor of Chemistry at the University of Chicago.

Daniel Raeburn
Presentation:

Daniel Raeburn is the author of a book of art criticism, Chris Ware (Yale University Press, 2004), as well as Vessels: A Memoir of What Wasn’t (Little Brown Books Group, 2017). His essays have appeared in the New Yorker, The Baffler, Tin House, and in The Imp, his series of booklets about underground cartoonists. He is Assistant Professor of Practice in the Arts in Creative Writing in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Chicago.

Srikanth Reddy
Presentation:

Srikanth Reddy's latest book of poetry is Underworld Lit (Wave Books, 2020). His poetry and criticism have appeared in Harper's, The Guardian, the New York Times, Poetry, and numerous other venues. The recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Creative Capital Foundation, and the Guggenheim Foundation, Reddy is Professor in the Program of Creative Writing in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Chicago.

Eric Slauter

Eric Slauter has published The State as a Work of Art: The Cultural Origins of the Constitution (University of Chicago Press, 2009), examining the relation of culture to politics in revolutionary America. A historian of American thought and culture, his scholarship focuses chiefly on the period between the American Revolution and the Civil War. Currently, Slauter is working on a project about the material history book entitled “Walden’s Carbon Footprint: People, Plants, Animals, and Machines in the Making of an Environmental Classic.” He is Deputy Dean of the Division of the Humanities, Director of the Karla Scherer Center for the Study of American Culture, and Associate Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature.

Stephanie Soileau
Presentation:

Stephanie Soileau's debut collection of short stories Last One Out Shut Off the Lights (Little, Brown & Co., 2020) was recently published, and she is now at work on a novel about oil, land rights, and the disappearing Louisiana coast. Her work has also appeared in Glimmer Train, Oxford American, Ecotone, Tin House, and New Stories from the South, and other journals and anthologies, and has been supported by fellowships from the Wallace Stegner Fellowship Program at Stanford University, the Camargo Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Soileau is Assistant Professor of Practice in the Arts in the Program of Creative Writing in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Chicago.

Susan Stokes

Susan Stokes's research focuses on the emergence, quality, and erosion of democracy, especially in the developing world. Currently, she is writing a book about the referendum as mechanisms of direct democracy—its promises and its limitations. Stokes is the Blake Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Political Science and Faculty Director of the Chicago Center on Democracy at the University of Chicago.

Veronica Vegna

Veronica Vegna is the author of Donne, mafia e cinema: una prospettiva interdisciplinare (Longo Angelo, 2017), a critical study of gender roles and the representation of the mafia in contemporary Italian cinema. She is Senior Instructional Professor and the Director of the Italian Language Program at the University of Chicago.

Diane P. Wood

Diane P. Wood has served as a judge of the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit since 1995. Her research interests include antitrust—both international and general—federal civil procedure, and international trade and business. Additionally, Wood is Senior Lecturer in the Law School at the University of Chicago.