Our faculty engage the arts as scholars, painters, sculptors, photographers, composers, performers, teachers, critics, dramaturgs, poets, and more. They are drawn to the University’s culture of melding cross-disciplinary research and creative engagement, a love for working in and out of the classroom, studio, or laboratory. Here a conference on the praxis of theory combines performance with academic papers; a philosopher and a jazz musician co-teach a course on improvisation; practicing artists partner with scientists and economists to illuminate contemporary problems.

In 2011 UChicago Arts launched an experiment in further activating faculty involvement with the arts through the Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry, a unique program fostering collaborations between artists and scholars on campus and internationally. The University is a creative incubator where artists, performers, critics, curators, and scholars reimagine the role of the arts as a form of inquiry and knowledge production. Out of this will come innovative classes, new creative works, and groundbreaking scholarship that will impact the academy, the city, and the world.

Discover the scholarship and artistic production of a few of our faculty below. Explore departments and programs or sign up for our arts newsletter to learn more about the many other faculty at the University and the arts at the University of Chicago.

Select Faculty

Hillary Chute
Neubauer Family Assistant Professor, Department of English Language & Literature
Department of English

Heidi Coleman
Director, University Theatre; Director of Undergraduate Studies, Theater and Performance Studies; Senior Lecturer, Humanities Collegiate Division
Theater and Performance Studies

Darby English
Associate Professor, Department of Art History and the College
Department of Art History

Theaster Gates
Director, Arts and Public Life; Resident Artist and Lecturer, Department of Visual Arts
Arts and Public Life

Tom Gunning
Professor and Chair, Department of Art History, Department of Cinema & Media Studies, and the College
Cinema & Media Studies

Judy Hoffman
Senior Lecturer, Department of Cinema & Media Studies and Department of Visual Arts
Cinema & Media Studies

Wu Hung
Harrie A. Vanderstappen Distinguished Service Professor of Art History, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, and the College; Director, Center for the Art of East Asia; Consulting Curator, Smart Museum of Art
Department of Art History

David Levin
Director, Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry; Professor, Department of Germanic Studies, Cinema & Media Studies, Theater and Performance Studies, and the College
Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts & Inquiry
Cinema & Media Studies

John Muse
Assistant Professor, Department of English Language & Literature, Theater and Performance Studies, and the College
Department of English

William Pope.L
Associate Professor, Department of of Visual Arts
Department of Visual Arts

Shulamit Ran
Andrew MacLeish Dinstinguished Service Professor, Department of Music and the College; Artistic Director, Contempo
Department of Music

Srikanth (Chicu) Reddy
Assistant Professor, Department of English Language & Literature, Committee on Creative Writing, and the College; Poetry & Poetics
Department of English

Jessica Stockholder
Professor and Chair, Department of Visual Arts
Department of Visual Arts

Augusta Read Thomas
University Professor of Composition, Department of Music and the College
Department of Music

John Wilkinson
Professor Practice in the Arts, Department of English Language & Literature, Committee on Creative Writing
Department of English