CHF Chicago Humanities Festival

Guest Bloggers

  • E-Mail
    (e.g. amandasmith@gmail.com)

    (Please separate multiple email addresses with commas.)

    (You may use or edit the message above.)

  • PRINT

  • Share

  • TEXT SIZE
Marina Abramovic: The Space Between
Working in the region of the Former Yugoslavia for the past 15 years, I had heard of Marina Abramović, but never had the opportunity to see her work. But little could prepare me for the extent of both my pleasure and disappointment when I finally went to see the exhibition mounted by MoMA in spring of 2010. For many of us doing research in the region, in the wake of the violence and devastation of the 1990s, Abramović represented a different version of Yugoslavia:... Continue Reading >>
Posted Tuesday, February 21 by Jessica Greenberg
Reading Etgar Keret in Chicago
For an Israeli reader, an encounter with Etgar Keret in English – or, for that matter, in any language other than Hebrew – is a rather strange experience. In fact, for an Israeli reader, writing about Etgar Keret in any language other than Hebrew is a strange experience. Yet, information keeps coming: Etgar (us Israelis tend to skip last names, we do not believe in formalities) is the most popular writer in Poland, in Australia, in Japan; a story of his is published in the New Yorker.... Continue Reading >>
Posted Monday, February 13 by Tamar Merin
Saying Big Things: The Art of Etgar Keret
Etgar Keret says very big things about very small worlds. There is an irony in this, because to say big things, big and true things, one must be a genius of some sort. Especially, if these big and true things are at once both strangely original and artfully rendered, Keret says things in this way. The irony, such as it is, stems from his decision, or tendency, to couch the big within the small, to assign his particular genius or vision to the startling illumination of compact worlds. There's... Continue Reading >>
Posted Monday, February 13 by Todd Hasak-Lowy
The Extra-Dimensional Being: Marina Abramovic
Introducing Marina Abramovic    Marina Abramovic In the Central Australian desert, Marina sat for very long periods of time in extreme heat, doing nothing  Marina … Lived in a car for five years Designed menus for a French restaurant Painted walls at technical fairs Wore wooden shoes Knitted all her pullovers herself Milked goats in the mountains in exchange for food Once a year, for five years, she let 5... Continue Reading >>
Posted Friday, January 13 by Marko Zivkovic
Happy Birthday to Marina Abramović and Ulay
Thirty-two years ago today, the performance artists Marina Abramović and Ulay celebrated their shared birthday by creating a beautiful and little-known performance work, Communist Body / Fascist Body. This work is one of the centerpieces of Feast, so today is the perfect moment to introduce it to you.(It's also a great moment to mention that we're partnering with the Chicago Humanities Festival to bring Marina in to give a lecture on February 16, 2012. She's one of the most brilliant -- and... Continue Reading >>
Posted Monday, December 19 by Stephanie Smith
First Week in November Wrap-Up
As I was sitting in the Chicago History Museum's on Saturday, waiting for Michael Taussig's talk, Beauty and the Beast: The Monstrous Side of Plastic Surgery to begin, I realized that one small thing I'm really loving about the festival is the opportunity to see all the different theater spaces I never knew about.  From University of Chicago's Victorian Mandel Hall to the Francis W. Parker school's ultramodern auditorium, each space has a character of its own. I've been reminded over and over of... Continue Reading >>
Posted Monday, November 07 by Kate Harding
The Long Tale of Israel's Wars
Rachel S. Harris is assistant professor of comparative literature and Jewish studies at the University of Illinois. She will interview  David Grossman on Sunday, Nov. 13 at 10 am at Thorne Auditorium. David Grossman A message arrives only when someone receives it. Ora, terrified of the message that might come, flees her home setting out on a long hike across Israel. This is the premise behind David Grossman’s new novel To the End of the Land. The... Continue Reading >>
Posted Tuesday, November 01 by Rachel S. Harris
Deliciousness Abounds: A Brief Guide to Festival Dining near the UIC Forum
Kelsey You probably know by now that the Chicago Humanities Festival is pretty darn great at delivering engaging, thought-provoking programs. But you might not know that we’re also extremely talented in another area – I’m talking about eating. Yes, we tend to demolish in short order any delicious food that makes its way into our office. Leftovers from a lunch meeting at La Madia won’t last more than a minute, and there are at least three people on staff whose baked goods rival any... Continue Reading >>
Posted Friday, October 28 by Kelsey Rotwein
Kate Harding's Hyde Park Adventure
The fourth annual Hyde Park day was an abject failure in terms of my overachiever's schedule (act surprised), but nevertheless one of the best days I've had in a long time. Since my husband had to take the puppy to obedience class in the car, I made my way to the University of Chicago via public transportation, which took about 90 minutes from my home in Rogers Park. Unfortunately, I had only budgeted slightly more than an hour for the trip, so I missed the presentation on... Continue Reading >>
Posted Tuesday, October 25 by Kate Harding
What Have We Achieved?
Rania Al Malky is the Chief Editor of Daily News Egypt. She publishes a weekly column tackling local political and social issues.This column first appeared in the online edition of Daily News Egypt on September 23, 2011 and appears here courtesy of Rania Al Malky. It’s been nine months to the day since a group of virtual activists made the final tweaks to a planned January 25 protest, a date that will be forever be etched in the memory of this nation. We all know what... Continue Reading >>
Posted Friday, October 21 by Rania Al Malky
Rap is an Art and I’m like Picasso
Dana Horst works for nonprofits, writes things, and turns the bass up. “Even if it’s not laid out in perfect sentences – is any rap? – you’d have to be an idiot to not at least grasp a few things from these songs, or have had no interest in pulling anything from them in the first place.” -Aesop Rock Common “One Day It’ll All Make Sense”, Common says, in his new autobiography,  and between that, the forthcoming album The Dreamer, The Believer, his afterword on The Anthology of Rap (edited, in... Continue Reading >>
Posted Thursday, October 20 by Dana Horst
Puppies, Lies, and Digital Footprints: Day One
Two weeks ago, my husband, Al, and I brought home a puppy. Important background information: three weeks ago, Al and I did not want anything to do with a puppy. After putting our sweet, old, one-eyed pug/corgi cross, Solomon, to sleep, we planned to adopt another adult mutt. But someone didn't filter his Petfinder.com search to exclude younger dogs, so we soon learned that there were 11-week-old pug/corgi puppies available at a suburban shelter—including one who looked like, as Al put it when he... Continue Reading >>
Posted Monday, October 17 by Kate Harding
Digital Certainties
Taylor Hokanson is an Assistant Professor of Art at Columbia College Chicago. Computers are dumb.  Though they have the ability to store, process and export massive amounts of data, they are fundamentally incapable of distilling meaning from this material.  A computer can pretend to offer insight, but one must never forget that this synthesis is illusory, an echo of the human who taught the device how to operate. Here’s the secret to understanding computing: ... Continue Reading >>
Posted Tuesday, October 11 by Taylor Hokanson
Understanding Origins
Based at the University of Michigan, Gordon Kane is a professor of physics and in the School of Art & Design and is Director of the Michigan Center for Theoretical Physics. He collaborated with Liz Lerman on "The Matter of Origins."  In addition to our co-presentation of "The Matter of Origins" with the MCA, CHF presents Kane and Lerman in conversation discussing the intersection of art and science. In recent decades age-old questions such as the origin of our universe, and of... Continue Reading >>
Posted Tuesday, October 11 by Gordon Kane
Kate Harding's Fall Festival Preview
"I like your ambition, Kate!" That was a Chicago Humanities Festival employee's response after seeing a homemade calendar of events I plan to attend: 29 of them, in all, bookended (ha!) by William Gibson in Evanston on October 16 and Umberto Eco downtown on November 13. The fantastic perk of being a guest blogger is an all-access pass to the festival, and I intend to make the most of it—even if I did clearly hear a quiet "Good luck with that, sport" underlying the comment... Continue Reading >>
Posted Tuesday, October 04 by Kate Harding
David Carr and the Future of Journalism
Clara Jeffery is the coeditor of Mother Jones magazine. Flashback, mid ’90s, perhaps a week after I first met David Carr. The occasion was David giving reporters and editors at Washington City Paper, the alt weekly where I worked and where he’d just become the boss, a little speech. My memory of it is vague: part introduction, part pep talk, part acknowledgement that he had a steep learning curve to grok a city where most of us had grown up and all of us had put in some serious time... Continue Reading >>
Posted Friday, September 30 by Clara Jeffrey
On the Poetics of Claudia Rankine
A note from Corrina Lesser, CHF Senior Program Manager:Naturally, I’m biased when it comes to believing how important and influential CHF’s presenters are in the worlds – be it academic or artistic – that they inhabit. I’ll say that very few things bring me such professional satisfaction, in this particular case, as being able to present a writer who truly inspires awe and reverence in the creative lives of the greater artistic community. Time and again when I’ve mentioned that poet and essayist... Continue Reading >>
Posted Tuesday, September 27 by Elizabeth Metzger Sampson
River of Research
Elation, followed by panic: that about sums up my reaction when I was asked to interview Amitav Ghosh about his latest novel, River of Smoke. Unfortunately I’m easily intimidated by nearly every author I encounter, but Ghosh? He’s brilliant, complex, prolific, a veritable trifecta of admirable literary qualities, and so transcends being merely a smarty-pants author. His best-selling 2008 Sea of Poppies was so multifaceted and imaginative it was shortlisted for the Man Booker... Continue Reading >>
Posted Tuesday, September 27 by Victoria Lautman
Jason Graae on Jerry Herman
From Jason Graae's liner notes for his just-released CD, Perfect Hermany. Jerry Herman is the reason I got into this Business. I don’t know whether to hug him or to hit him. I will NEVER forget the first time I heard “Some Enchanted Evening” and my life was changed. Oh wait – that was Rodgers and Hammerstein! I knew that. I have always loved Jerry’s scores, and come on – WHO DOESN’T? I started piano lessons when I was 9 – my piano bench was filled with Grieg,... Continue Reading >>
Posted Friday, September 23 by Jason Graae
Adam Bradley: My Unlikely Career as a Hip Hop Academic
Adam Bradley is an associate professor of English at the University of Colorado, Boulder and the author or several books, including Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop, The Anthology of Rap (co-edited with Andrew DuBois), and One Day It’ll All Make Sense (with Common). Ten years ago when I was in the midst of my graduate studies in English at Harvard, reading four-inch-thick Victorian novels and taking my oral exams with professors whose names appear on the spine of the... Continue Reading >>
Posted Friday, September 09 by Adam Bradley
Support CHF - Donate Now

Festival Sponsors

© Copyright 2011 Chicago Humanities Festival