Historic Achievements
Founded in 1930, the Division of the Arts & Humanities has remained the heart of UChicago’s tradition of innovation in higher education. From formalizing emerging twentieth-century fields and disciplines to pioneering interdisciplinary study, the Division has continually advanced humanistic knowledge while fostering a distinctive model of liberal education.
For nearly a century, the Division has reimagined undergraduate and graduate education. The Division has remained at the forefront by balancing a deep respect for intellectual tradition with a restless drive for discovery. Its faculty and students have consistently expanded the boundaries of the humanities and arts, finding new languages and forms of expression to connect scholarship and the public sphere.
Continually examining its delivery of education in the humanities and arts, the Division has quickly responded to changes in higher education and nation, all the while keeping faith with its humanistic approach. Through war, economic upheaval, and technological change, the Division has sustained the University’s enduring commitment to rigorous inquiry—connecting humans to humanism and examining what it means to be a subject and how our cultural forms, histories, and ideas shape the world we share.
Timeline
Key intellectual milestones and historical achievements of the Division
1890 — Incorporation of the University of Chicago
Founded by John D. Rockefeller and the American Baptist Education Society.
1892 — UChicago Opens
First classes held at the University. The humanities are taught within the Graduate School of Arts, Literature, and Science.
1909 — Department of English grants the first UChicago PhD
For a dissertation on a topic in American literature; previously, dissertations had been firmly rooted in the British tradition.
1921 — Georgiana R. Simpson (c. 1866–1944), AB 1911, AM '20, PhD '21
Simpson is awarded a doctorate in German literature for "Herder's Conception of 'Das Volk'"; Simpson becomes the first Black woman to receive a Ph.D. in the United States on June 14, 1921 (followed within weeks by two scholars at other universities who also received their degrees that month).
1930 — An interdisciplinary founding
The Division of the Humanities is established as one of UChicago’s four graduate divisions, joining the social, physical, and biological sciences. Under President Robert Maynard Hutchins, the divisions are tasked with collaborating across traditional boundaries and pioneering curricular innovation. The University’s celebrated tradition of interdisciplinarity is rooted in this founding vision.
1930s — The “Chicago School” in the Humanities
Emerging alongside the Chicago School of Sociology, the humanities at UChicago become known for grounding interpretation in empirical and historical evidence. Across fields from literary criticism to cinema and ancient history, faculty seek to refine aesthetic and political narratives through rigorous analysis—a spirit that later shaped the Department of Cinema and Media Studies’ pioneering work in film theory and historiography.
1931 — Faculty take to the airwaves
The University’s Radio Office launches the University of Chicago Round Table, a nationally broadcast program featuring professors discussing issues of the day. From 1933 to 1955 the program airs nationally on NBC and at its peak is broadcast on more than ninety NBC-affiliated stations. Moderated in its later years by English professor Edward “Ned” Rosenheim, the Round Table brought public engagement to the forefront of academic life.
1943 — UChicago language training in World War II
As part of the national wartime effort, UChicago hosts government-funded language programs catering to military and civilians through the Army Specialized Training School and Civil Affairs Training School. These initiatives expand the University’s foothold in international studies, and in turn the government and higher education spark new alliances. The humanities and social sciences further grow into each other through joint research on the non-Western world.
1947 — Chicago Review founded
UChicago students and faculty establish the Chicago Review, a literary journal that has since published generations of groundbreaking poets, novelists, and other writers. It remains a cornerstone of the University’s creative life.
1955 — Improv comedy is born
UChicago alumni Paul Sills, AB’51, partners with Mike Nichols, Elaine May, and others to form the Compass Players, adapting children’s games with Bertolt Brecht into a socially and politically charged cabaret. Four years later, Sills and fellow alumni Bernard Sahlins, AB’43 and Howard Alk, X’49, buy a small theater in Chicago’s North Side. They call it Second City—forever changing American comedy.
1962 — The Language Laboratory and Archives
Linguistic anthropology professors Norman A. McQuown and Eric P. Hamp establish the Language Laboratory and Archives, with Ford Foundation support. Providing state-of-the-art recording and research facilities, the lab laid the groundwork for computational linguistic modeling—a legacy furthered by today’s Center for the Study of Language and the Chicago Language Modeling Lab.
1979 — Humanities Day launches
Dean Karl J. Weintraub, AB’49, AM'52, PhD'57, and Annette Cronin, AM'88, inaugurate the first Humanities Open House (now Humanities Day), inviting the public to engage with faculty scholarship which found new life through collective debates on humanistic life. Decades later, this tradition has evolved through partnerships with the Chicago Humanities Festival (in 2025) and other civic institutions.
1982 — Faculty-student workshops inspire ideas and collaboration
Amid national declines in graduate enrollment, President Hanna H. Gray leads reforms that include cross-departmental workshops where students and faculty share works-in-progress. By 1988, more than six hundred students participate—revitalizing graduate study across all four graduate Divisions and building lasting intellectual communities.
1990 — Franke Institute for the Humanities established
Created as a home for cross-disciplinary dialogue and public engagement, the Franke Institute embodies the Division’s commitment to free-ranging argument and the evolving meaning of liberal education. Renamed in 1998 in honor of Barbara E. and Richard J. Franke’s $2.5 million endowment, it remains a locus of critical thinking on campus.
1996 — Faculty found the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality
Building on decades of work in feminist, gay, lesbian, and queer studies, faculty establish CSGS to conduct research in and on public arenas. Merging political, artistic, and intellectual concerns, CSGS draws faculty from departments as diverse yet interconnected as literature, history, sociology, anthropology, cinema and media studies, law, and medicine.
2002 — Neubauer Fellowships in the Humanities
Joseph Neubauer, MBA ’65, and Jeanette Lerman-Neubauer endow the Neubauer Presidential Fellowships in the Humanities with a $5 million gift—the largest to date supporting humanities graduate students. Neubauer has said: "Everything Jeanette and I have in life; we owe to our education...That is why so much of our philanthropy is about furthering it." Their generosity underscores the enduring value of education and intellectual exploration.
2025 — A new chapter
President Paul Alivisatos and Provost Katherine Baicker announce that the Division of the Humanities will be expanded and renamed to the Division of the Arts & Humanities, uniting its departments and a range of units associated with UChicago Arts. The new organization reaffirms the University’s unique combination of critical scholarship and creative intelligence, aligning arts units with academic departments to catalyze innovative explorations of history, theory, and practice within and across disciplines and forms.