UChicagoReads features books written by UChicago staff, faculty, students, and alumni or those written about University topics. Do you know of a book we should feature? Do you have a book of your own? Email us at uchicagointranet@uchicago.edu.

Originally founded in 1890 as one of the three main divisions of the University of Chicago, The University of Chicago Press publishes books and journals with a mission “to disseminate scholarship of the highest standard and to publish serious works that foster public understanding, provide an authoritative foundation for informed dialogue, and enrich the diversity of cultural life.” Twice a year, The Press releases seasonal catalogs announcing new titles.

In this edition of UChicagoReads, we’re featuring three titles by UChicago faculty that appear in the Fall 2024 catalog. For more new releases from The Press, you can peruse the complete Fall 2024 catalog at your leisure.

The Chicago Canon on Free Inquiry and Expression

Edited by Tony Banout and Tom Ginsburg
© 2024 | 240 pages

Synopsis

The Chicago Canon on Free Inquiry and Expression is a collection of texts that provide the foundation for the University of Chicago’s longstanding tradition of free expression, principles that are at the center of current debates within higher education and society more broadly.

Throughout waves of historical and societal challenges and changes, this first principle of free expression has required rearticulation and new interpretations. The documents gathered here include, among others, William Rainey Harper’s “Freedom of Speech” (1900), the Kalven Committee’s report on the University’s role in political and social action (1967), and Geoffrey R. Stone’s “Free Speech on A Challenge of Our Times” (2016). Together, the writings of the canon reveal how the Chicago tradition is neither static nor stagnant, but a vibrant experiment; a lively struggle to understand, practice, and advance free inquiry and expression.

About the authors

Tony Banout, the inaugural executive director of the University of Chicago’s Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression, earned his PhD from the University’s Divinity School, where he was a Martin Marty Center Junior Fellow and Provost Dissertation Fellow. His career has spanned leadership in social sector organizations including healthcare and community organizing, as well as academia. For over a decade, he served as the senior vice president for Interfaith America, guiding a national civic organization in the development of strategies and programs devoted to democratic discourse and civil conversation across deep difference. He has spoken and published widely on free expression, constructive engagement of difference, and the civic relevance of religious diversity. A lifelong advocate for ideological diversity and inclusion in academia, Banout serves as a board member of the Heterodox Academy.

Prof. Tom Ginsburg, the inaugural faculty director of the Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression, attained his BA, JD, and PhD degrees from the University of California at Berkeley. Prior to joining the University’s faculty in 2008, he held myriad roles consulting and providing legal advice to numerous international organizations, development agencies, and governments, including the Iran–United States Claims Tribunal. In addition to his work at the University, he acts as co-director of the Comparative Constitutions Project and is a research professor at the American Bar Foundation. His publications have been broadly recognized with awards from the American Society for International Law, the International Society of Constitutional Law, and the American Political Science Association. Ginsburg is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

The University of Chicago: A History, Enlarged Edition

John W. Boyer
© 2024 | 784 pages

Synopsis

With The University of Chicago: A History, John W. Boyer, former Dean of the College, presents a deeply researched and comprehensive history of the University. Boyer has mined the archives, exploring the school’s complex and sometimes controversial past to set myth and hearsay apart from fact. The result is a fascinating narrative of a legendary academic community, one that brings to light the nature of its academic culture and curricula, the experience of its students, its engagement with Chicago’s civic community, and the conditions that have enabled the University to survive and sustain itself through decades of change. Boyer’s extensive research shows that the University of Chicago’s identity is profoundly interwoven with its history and that history is unique in the annals of American higher education.

Newly updated, this edition extends through the presidency of Robert Zimmer, whose long tenure was marked by significant developments and controversies over subjects as varied as free speech, medical inequity, and community relations.

About the author

John W. Boyer (AM’69, PhD’75), the College’s longest-serving dean and now senior advisor to UChicago President Paul Alivisatos, provided remarkable leadership at the College for an unprecedented 31 years. Learn more about Boyer’s role in transforming the College in this story from UChicago News. Boyer’s research and teaching focus on the history of modern Europe, especially on the states, the peoples, and the societies of Central Europe since 1700. In recent years, he delved deeply into the history of the University and the history of the Habsburg Empire and Republican Austria. He recently completed the Austria, 1867-1955 volume for the Oxford History of Modern Europe series, published by Oxford University Press in late 2022.

Articulating Difference: Sex and Language in the German Nineteenth Century

Sophie Salvo
© 2024 | 272 pages

Synopsis

Drawing on a wide range of texts, Sophie Salvo uncovers the prehistory of the inextricability of gender and language. Taking German discourses on language as her focus, she argues that we are not the inventors but, rather, the inheritors and adapters of the notion that gender and language are interrelated. Particularly during the long nineteenth century, ideas about sexual differences shaped how language was understood, classified, and analyzed. As Salvo explains, philosophers asserted the patriarchal origins of language, linguists investigated “women’s languages” and grammatical gender, and literary Modernists imagined “feminine” sign systems, and in doing so they not only deemed sex-based divisions to be necessary categories of language but also produced a plethora of gendered tropes and fictions, which they used both to support their claims and delimit their disciplines.

Articulating Difference charts new territory, revealing how gendered conceptions of language make possible the misogynistic logic of exclusion that underlies arguments claiming, for example, that women cannot be great orators or writers. While Salvo focuses on how male scholars aligned language study with masculinity, she also uncovers how women responded, highlighting the contributions of understudied nineteenth-century works on language that women wrote even as they were excluded from academic opportunities.

About the author

Sophie Salvo is an assistant professor in the Department of Germanic Studies at the University of Chicago, affiliated with the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality. Her research focuses on the history of concepts of sex and gender, particularly how they were used to think about language in disciplines like language science and philosophy. New projects include an edited volume on the “Reinvention of Patriarchy” around 1800 and a book on contemporary political literature. Focusing on texts written by authors on both the left and the right, this project investigates the fate of the political novel in the twenty-first century.