Two Perspectives on Video Games
Visual Arts Scholar Theaster Gates's Art Basel Exhibition Draws Celebrities
Well-regarded sculptor and scholar of urban planning, Theaster Gates, professor in Visual Arts at UChicago, excels at discovering art in ordinary objects. His enthusiasm and skill at creating unusual exhibitions drew high-visibility celebrities such as Kanye West, Emma Roberts, and Venus Williams to his Art Basel exhibition “The Black Image Corporation” a Prada-sponsored art installation in Miami this month. Gates is “that rare artist who seems to fill the space between art and ordinary life,” said Miuccia Prada, a fashion icon.
NELC and Oriental Institute Excavation Team Discovers Ancient Urban Villa with Shrine for Ancestor Worship in Egypt
A Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and Oriental Institute team unearthed a large urban villa at the site of Tell Edfu in southern Egypt dating back to the New Kingdom, about 1500–1450 B.C.E. The excavation includes a large hall containing a rare, well-preserved domestic shrine dedicated to family ancestors. “It has been more than 80 years since such a shrine for the ancestors was discovered in Egypt, and the ones we did have were rarely within an undisturbed context,” said Nadine Moeller, associate professor of Egyptian archaeology in NELC, who leads the Tell Edfu Project excavation with Oriental Institute research associate Gregory Marouard.
Humanities Graduate Student Earns Kudos as a Poet
Emily Jungmin Yoon has more on her mind than earning her PhD in East Asian Languages and Civilizations. The fourth year UChicago graduate student is an accomplished poet who writes about gender, race, and violence against women, primarily through intertwining the histories of her native Korea and the United States. Her first poetry collection, A Cruelty Special to Our Species (Harper Collins, 2018), is earning rave reviews.
Scholarly Associations for Middle East Studies Laud NELC Researchers for Illuminating Recent and Ancient History
Scholars in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations have discovered and excavated new archaeological sites and uncovered new perspectives about history in the Middle East that brought new understanding about the civilizations, daily life, and religious and scientific practices of the region. In recognition of their significant contributions to the field, the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) and Middle East Medievalists (MEM) recently honored NELC faculty members Donald Whitcomb and Orit Bashkin, as well as NELC alumnus Ahmet Tunç Şen, MA’10, PhD’16. Whitcomb received the MEM Lifetime Achievement Award for his pivotal fieldwork in historic Islamic archaeology. As the co-winner of MESA’s 2018 Nikki Keddie Book Award for her book Impossible Exodus: Iraqi Jews in Israel (Stanford University Press, 2017), Bashkin explores the difficult transition for Iraqi Jews who migrated to Israel in the 1950s, especially of the women and children. For his 2016 dissertation on “Astrology in the Service of the Empire: Knowledge, Prognostication, and Politics at the Ottoman Court, 1450s–1550s,” Şen received MEM’s Inaugural Dissertation Award.
