For more information on any faculty members whose teaching and research interests intersect with the study of American culture, please visit their departmental home pages linked below.
Anthropology
Shannon Lee Dawdy
Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology and Social Sciences
Southeast U.S. and Caribbean, particularly Louisiana and Cuba; Colonialism; Modernity; Informal economies
sdawdy@uchicago.edu
Mark Lycett
Director of the Environmental Studies Program in the College; Senior Lecturer in Anthropology and in the Social Sciences
Method and theory; Analytical methods; Ethnohistory; Colonialism; Demography; Landscape studies
mlycett@uchicago.edu
Joseph Masco
Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology and the College
Science and technology; U.S. national security culture; Political ecology; Mass media; Critical theory
jmasco@uchicago.edu
Stephan Palmié
Professor of Anthropology and of Social Sciences in the College
Afro-Caribbean cultures; Practices of historical representation and knowledge production; Systems of slavery and unfree labor; Constructions of race and ethnicity; Embodiment and moral personhood; Medical anthropology; Anthropology of food and cuisine
palmie@uchicago.edu
Art History
Darby English
Associate Professor, Department of Art History; Affiliate Faculty, Department of Visual Arts
Histories of modernism; Contemporary art; Cultural studies
denglish@uchicago.edu
Joel Snyder
Professor and Chair, Department of Art History
History of photography; Theory of photography and film; History and theory of perspective; Medieval and Renaissance theory of vision; Critical theory, aesthetics and the theory of representation
jsnyder@uchicago.edu
Katherine Taylor
Associate Professor, Department of Art History
19th and 20th century architecture and urbanism, with an emphasis on the reception and social use of buildings’ Representations of power in post-revolutionary architecture
k-taylor@uchicago.edu
Cinema and Media Studies
Tom Gunning
Edwin A. and Betty L. Bergman Distinguished Service Professor, Department of Art History and the College; Chair, Department of Cinema and Media Studies
International early and silent cinema; American avant-garde cinema; Film and narrative theory; Classical film theory; Early cinema and the experience of modernity; Film historiography; Film exhibition and spectatorship; Modernist cinema of the twenties (Soviet, French, and German)
tgunning@uchicago.edu
Judy Hoffman
Lecturer, Departments of Cinema & Media Studies and Visual Arts
Documentary cinema and video; Video and film production; Ethnographic film and issues of representation and cultural ownership; Cinema verite and the participant camera; The Guerilla Television Movement; Political film and video; Chicago Film History
judyh@uchicago.edu
Rebecca West
William R. Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Service Professor, Department of Romance Languages & Literatures, Department of Cinema & Media Studies, and the College; Department of Cinema & Media Studies
Film adaptations of the American writer Patricia Highsmith; American cinema; Italian-American cinema; Feminist and queer studies approaches
r-west@uchicago.edu
Comparative Human Development
Richard Shweder
William Claude Reavis Distinguished Service Professor of Human Development in the Department of Comparative Human Development
Pluralism and the multicultural challenge in Western liberal democracies
rshd@uchicago.edu
Divinity
Catherine A. Brekus
Associate Professor of the History of Christianity in the Divinity School; Associate Faculty in the Department of History
History of Christian practice in America; Perspectives on children in Christian thought; Religion, feminism, and the family
cbrekus@uchicago.edu
Curtis Evans
Assistant Professor of the History of Christianity in the Divinity School
Modern American religion; Race and religion in US history; Slavery and Christianity
cjevans@uchicago.edu
W. Clark Gilpin
Margaret E. Burton Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Christianity and Theology in the Divinity School and the College
Cultural history of theology in England and America since the 17th-century
wgilpin@uchicago.edu
Richard Rosengarten
Associate Professor of Religion and Literature in the Divinity School
Genres of narrative (especially the novel); Hermeneutics, literary theory, and aesthetics; religious thought through the “long” 18th-century
raroseng@uchicago.edu
English
James Chandler
Barbara E. & Richard J. Franke Distinguished Service Professor, Department of English, Committee on the History of Culture, Committee on Cinema & Media Studies; Director, Franke Institute for the Humanities
The Romantic movement; Lyric poetry; History of the novel; Relations between politics and literature; the Scottish Enlightenment; Modern Irish literature and culture; Sentimentality; Cinema studies
docj@uchicago.edu
James Lastra
Associate Professor, Department of English
Surrealism both in Europe and in the United States; Silent film comedy; American experimental film; Luis Buñuel
jflastra@uchicago.edu
W.J.T. Mitchell
Gaylord Donnelley Distinguished Service Professor, Departments of English, Art History, and Visual Arts
Visual Culture and Iconography; Critical Race Studies; History of Ideas; Marxism; 18th- and 20th-Century British Literature
wjtm@uchicago.edu
Lawrence Rothfield
Associate Professor, Department of English, Department of Comparative Literature; Research Affiliate, Cultural Policy Center
Literature and epistemic and political struggles; Cultural policy studies; Politics of taste; 19th-century European fiction
lary@uchicago.edu
Eric Slauter
Associate Professor, Department of English; Director, Scherer Center
Early American cultural, intellectual, and literary history; Legal history; History of political thought; Book history; Visual and material culture studies; Quantitative analysis; History of slavery, abolition, and emancipation; Atlantic history
eslauter@uchicago.edu
Harris School
Christopher Berry
Assistant Professor, Harris School of Public Policy
Political economy of American local government and the politics of federal spending
crberry@uchicago.edu
William Howell
Sydney Stein Professor in American Politics; Co-Director, Program on Political Institutions; Professor, Department of Political Science and the College
Separation-of-powers issues and American political institutions
whowell@uchicago.edu
History
Leora Auslander
Professor of European Social History; Founding Director of the Center for Gender Studies; Professor, Committee on Jewish Studies
19th- and 20th-century European Social and Cultural History; Material Culture and the Built Environment; Culture and Politics; Jewish History; Gender History and Theory; Colonial and Post-colonial Europe
lausland@uchicago.edu
Mark Bradley
Professor, Department of History
Twentieth-Century U.S. International History; Global History of Human Rights Politics; Postcolonial Southeast Asia
mbradley@uchicago.edu
Paul Cheney
Assistant Professor, Department of History
The Atlantic World; History of Political Thought; and Early Modern Capitalism; French History; The Enlightenment; French Revolution
cheney@uchicago.edu
Kathleen Conzen
Interim Department Chair (2010-2011); Thomas E. Donnelley Professor, Department of History and the College
American Urban History; Immigration and Ethnicity; Rural History; Western Settlement; Nineteenth-Century Social History
k-conzen@uchicago.edu
Jane Dailey
Associate Professor, Department of History
Modern United States social and political history; African American history; the American South; Legal history
dailey@uchicago.edu
Ramon A. Gutierrez
Preston and Sterling Morton Distinguished Service Professor in United States History, Department of History
Chicano History; Race and Ethnicity in American Life; Chicano/Latino Studies; Indian-White Relations in the Americas; Social and Economic History of the Southwest; Colonial Latin America; Mexican Immigration
rgutierrez@uchicago.edu
Emilio Kouri
Professor, Department of History
Modern Mexico; Social and economic history of Latin America; Agrarian studies; History of ideas; Cuba and the Spanish Caribbean; US Latino history
kouri@uchicago.edu
Julie Saville
Associate Professor, Department of History
United States History; African-American and Caribbean History; Comparative Slavery and Emancipations
jsaville@uchicago.edu
James T. Sparrow
Assistant Professor, Department of History
Modern United States political and social history; War and society; Social science and the state; Technology; History and new media
jts@uchicago.edu
Christine Stansell
Stein-Freiler Distinguished Service Professor in United States History, Department of History
Women’s and gender history; Antebellum U.S. social and political history; American cultural history; History of human rights and post-catastrophic societies
stansell@uchicago.edu
Law
Emily Buss
Mark and Barbara Field Professor of Law, The Law School
Children’s and parents’ rights and the legal system’s allocation of authority and responsibility for children’s development among parent, child, and state
ebussdos@uchicago.edu
Richard Helmholz
Ruth Wyatt Rosenson Distinguished Service Professor of Law, The Law School
Law of property; Natural resources law; Legal history; Roman and canon laws to the development of the common law
dick_helmholz@law.uchicago.edu
Dennis J. Hutchinson
William Rainey Harper Professor in the College, Master of the New Collegiate Division, and Assoc. Dean of the College
Contracts; Constitutional law; Elements; Legal history
dennis_hutchinson@uclaw.uchicago.edu
Alison LaCroix
Assistant Professor of Law, The Law School
Legal history; Federalism; Constitutional law; Federal jurisdiction; Law and literature
lacroix@uchicago.edu
Eric Posner
Kirkland and Ellis Professor of Law, The Law School
International law; Immigration law; Foreign relations law
eric_posner@law.uchicago.edu
Geoffrey Stone
Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor, The Law School
Constitutional law
g-stone@uchicago.edu
David Strauss
Gerald Ratner Distinguished Service Professor of Law, The Law School
Constitutional law
d-strauss@uchicago.edu
Linguistics
John Goldsmith
Edward Carson Waller Distinguished Service Professor, Department of Linguistics
Technology; Artificial Intelligence; Linguistics; Humanities
goldsmith@uchicago.edu
Salikoko Mufwene
Frank J. McLoraine Distinguished Service Professor, Department of Linguistics and the College; The Committee on Evolutionary Biology; The Committee on the Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science
Morphosyntactic and semantic characteristics of Gullah, African-American Vernacular English, Jamaican Creole, and English
s-mufwene@uchicago.edu
Alan C.L. Yu
Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics and the College
Language documentation and revitalization in North America; Native American linguistics; Phonological theory; Speech perception and production; Historical linguistics
aclyu@uchicago.edu
Music
Phillip Bohlman
Mary Werkman Distinguished Service Professor of Music and the Humanities in the College
Performance and research; Jewish music and modernity
boh6@uchicago.edu
Berthold Hoeckner
Associate Professor, Department of Music and the Humanities
19th- and 20th-Century music; Aesthetics; Adorno; Music and literature; Film music and visual culture; Psychology and neuroscience of music
bhoeckne@uchicago.edu
Travis Jackson
Associate Professor, Department of Music and the Humanities
Ethnomusicology; Jazz
travieso@uchicago.edu
Shulamit Ran
Andrew MacLeish Distinguished Service Professor, Department of Music
Composition
sran@uchicago.edu
Philosophy
Dan Brudney
Professor in the Department of Philosophy and the College; Associate Faculty in the Divinity School; Associate Faculty, MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics
Political philosophy; Philosophy and literature; Bioethics and philosophy of religion
dbrudney@uchicago.edu
James Conant
Chester D. Tripp Professor of Humanities and the College; Professor and Chair, Department of Philosophy
Philosophy of Language; Philosophy of Mind; Aesthetics; German Idealism; and History of Analytic Philosophy
jconant@uchicago.edu
Political Science
John Brehm
Professor, Department of Political Science
Compliance; Political Psychology; Public Opinion
jjbrehm@uchicago.edu
Michael Dawson
John D. MacArthur Professor of Political Science and the College
African American political behavior, identity, and public opinion; Political effects of urban poverty; African American political ideology
mc-dawson@uchicago.edu
Robert Gooding-Williams
Ralph and Mary Otis Isham Professor of Political Science and the College; Faculty Associate, the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory; affiliate, the Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture
Nietzsche; Du Bois; Critical Race Theory; African-American Political Thought; 19th-Century Continental Philosophy; Existentialism; Aesthetics
bgoodingwilliams@uchicago.edu
Mark Hansen
Charles L. Hutchinson Distinguished Service Professor, Department of Political Science and the College
Legislative Politics; Interest Group Politics; Rational Choice Models
jhansen@midway.uchicago.edu
Patchen Markell
Associate Professor, Department of Political Science
Modern European and American political thought and philosophy; Democratic theory; Critiques of capitalism; Classical political thought and its modern receptions
pmarkell@uchicago.edu
Eric Oliver
Professor, Department of Political Science
Contemporary American politics; Suburban and racial politics; Political psychology; Politics of science
eoliver@uchicago.edu
John Padgett
Professor, Department of Political Science
American Politics; Organizational Theory; Mathematical Models; Co-Evolution of States and Markets
jpadgett@midway.uchicago.edu
Gerald Rosenberg
Associate Professor, Department of Political Science; Lecturer, The Law School
American Politics; Public Law; Civil Rights and Civil Liberties
g-rosenberg@uchicago.edu
Nathan Tarcov
Professor, Department of Political Science
History of political theory; Education and family in political theory; Principles of U.S. foreign policy
n-tarcov@uchicago.edu
Social Service Administration
Harold Pollack
Helen Ross Professor at the School of Social Service Administration; Faculty Chair, the Center for Health Administration Studies; Co-Director, University of Chicago Crime Lab
Poverty policy and public health
haroldp@uchicago.edu
Social Thought
Ralph Lerner
Benjamin Franklin Professor Emeritus in the College and of Social Thought
American Political Thought; Tocqueville; 17th- and 18th-Century British Political Thought; Maimonides and Medieval Muslim Political Philosophy
rlerner@uchicago.edu
Mark Payne
Associate Professor, the Committee on Social Thought, Department of Classics, and the College
The culture of North American plains Indians; Pastoral poetry; Ancient and modern lyric poetry; Poetry of ancient Greece and modern Europe
mpayne@uchicago.edu
Robert Pippin
Evelyn Stefansson Nef Distinguished Service Professor of Social Thought, Philosophy, and in the College
Political philosophy; Theories of self-consciousness; Nature of conceptual change; the problem of freedom
rbp1@uchicago.edu
Sociology
Andrew Abbot
Gustavus F. and Ann M. Swift Distinguished Service Professor, Department of Sociology and the College
Sociology of occupations, professions, and work; Sociology of culture and knowledge; Social theory
a-abbott@uchicago.edu
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