Michele Friedner
Comparative Human Development
Assistant Professor
Michele Friedner is a social and medical anthropologist whose work examines the categories and experience of “deafness” and “disability.” Her interests include understanding how political and economic changes in India have created new opportunities and constraints for deaf and disabled people in the arenas of employment, education, politics, religion, and everyday life. Her 2015 book, Valuing Deaf Worlds in Urban India (Rutgers), analyzes the social, moral, and economic practices of sign language-using young adults. Friedner comes to the University of Chicago from SUNY Stony Brook’s School of Health Technology and Management, where she was Assistant Professor of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences. She received her Ph.D. in Medical Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley and University of California, San Francisco in 2011.
Describe one object you have in your office that helps you in your work.
Like many anthropologists, I have objects from my fieldsites that make me happy. One such object is a wooden giraffe that I bought in Kenya with the help of deaf friends who were amazing hagglers / negotiators. I very much enjoyed observing them negotiate hard for me, using gestures, writing on palms with both an actual and imaginary pen, and walking away (the sellers had to really run after us to get us to come back). Another set of objects is “outsider art” created by disabled artists which I have hanging on my wall. This (wonderful) art reminds me of the boundaries between “insider” and “outsider” and pushes me to ask questions about how certain things become commodities and/or seen as worthy of value.
Alice Goff
Department of History
Assistant Professor
Alice Goff is a historian of modern German cultural and intellectual life. Her work focuses on the relationships between material objects and political thought in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Goff’s current research traces the history of artworks caught up in the looting, iconoclasm, and shifting boundaries of German states during the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars and the consequences of their displacement for German political, religious, and intellectual practice at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Goff joins the University of Chicago faculty following a post-doctoral fellowship with the Michigan Society of Fellows. She received her Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Berkeley in 2015.
Describe one object you have in your office that helps you in your work.
As a historian of material culture, I tend to surround myself with objects that help me think. Among my most treasured is my German media mail bag— a large bright green cloth sack with the words Deutsche Post AG emblazoned on the front. I acquired it from a post office in Berlin in 2006 to ship my books back to the US after two years of living abroad. It had evidently already made a few journeys before it made mine, and the holes on either side, hand sewn shut with matching green thread, made me wonder whether it would arrive empty and in tatters. But it held up amazingly well with all its contents in tact. Given the often solitary feeling of research and writing it reminds me of the extensive and often invisible infrastructures of people and things that support academic work.
Mikhail Golosov
Department of Economics
Homer J. Livingston Professor in Economics and the College
Mikhail Golosov is an economist specializing in macroeconomics, public finance and political economy. His research explores economic theories related to wars over resources, tax systems, and strategic communication. He is an associate editor of Econometrica and the Review of Economic Studies. He was awarded the Sloan Research Fellowship as well as the National Science Foundation CAREER Grant. Previous to the University of Chicago, Golosov was Professor of Economics at Princeton University, and has held positions at Yale University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Minnesota in 2004.
In which section of the library do you enjoy being in the most? Why? Name a few of the most interesting books you’ve found there.
I like to read social science books that are not directly related to economics - sociology, history, philosophy - so I often gravitate towards those sections of the library. Researchers in those disciplines study human society, just like economists do, but often have a very different perspective. I find that I can learn from that a fair bit. Steven Pinker's book "The Blank Slate" was a recent one of the most fascinating books I read recently.
Justin Grimmer
Department of Political Science
Associate Professor of Political Science and the College
Justin Grimmer’s research examines how representation occurs in American politics using new statistical methods. His 2013 book, Representational Style in Congress: What Legislators Say and Why It Matters (Cambridge), shows how senators define the type of representation they provide constituents and how this affects constituents' evaluations. His second book, The Impression of Influence: How Legislator Communication and Government Spending Cultivate a Personal Vote (Princeton, 2014), demonstrates how legislators ensure they receive credit for government actions. Grimmer comes to the University of Chicago from Stanford University, where he was Associate Professor of Political Science. He earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University’s Department of Government in 2010.
Describe one object you have in your office that helps you in your work.
The one object in my office that helps with my research are the two, large white board walls.
Peter Hull
Department of Economics
Assistant Professor
(deferred start - 7/1/2019)
Economist Peter Hull develops novel statistical techniques to answer policy questions in education and health care. Prior to earning his PhD in 2017 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received the Robert M. Solow Prize for Excellence in Research and Teaching, Hull worked in the Research Group of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Currently a Post-Doctoral Researcher at Microsoft Research, he will come to the University of Chicago campus as a Becker Friedman Institute Research Fellow in 2018, and will join the Department of Economics faculty in the summer of 2019.
DESCRIBE ONE OBJECT YOU HAVE IN YOUR OFFICE THAT HELPS YOU IN YOUR WORK.
I’m never as productive without my dozens of Spotify playlists and Pandora stations – and a pair of wireless headphones! Calm classical music (especially by Chopin, Mozart, and Brahms) helps keep me focused on writing or editing, and there’s nothing like a good Daft Punk or Chvrches beat to keep the Stata code flowing. Above all, I’ll never, ever apologize for the efficiency gains from certain trashy top 40 and country hits. Thank goodness for the headphones!
Joel Isaac
John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought
Associate Professor
Joel Isaac is a historian focused on social and political thought in the United States and how the Cold War shaped political ideologies. His current research examines the revival of eighteenth-century categories of political and moral thought in the twentieth century through more modern idioms: neoclassical economics, analytical philosophy, decision theory, and empirical political science. His first book, Working Knowledge: Making the Human Sciences from Parsons to Kuhn (Harvard, 2012), was awarded the Gladstone Prize by the Royal Historical Society in 2012. Isaac joins the John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought from the Cambridge University Faculty of History, where he was Senior Lecturer in the History of Modern Political Thought. He received his Ph.D. in history from Cambridge in 2006.
Describe one object you have in your office that helps you in your work.
My tried and trusted Compact Oxford English Dictionary. It is indispensable in and of itself, but I love the tactile experience of using it. The print is so small that one has to use a magnifying glass to read it!
In which section of the library do you enjoy being in the most? Why? Name a few of the most interesting books you’ve found there.
The Special Collections Research Center in the Regenstein Library. Before I came to Chicago, I made some pilgrimages across the Atlantic (from Cambridge, UK) to use the SCRC. Now its riches are on tap whenever I need them. I confess I get a special charge from reading the papers of former UChicago faculty who have deposited their papers in the archives of the SCRC. It’s a thrill to see the University through their eyes.
Destin Jenkins
Department of History
Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellow (2017-2018)
Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of History (7/1/2018-)
Destin Jenkins’s research as a historian centers on the linkages between the American state, capitalism, racial inequality, and the built environment in the twentieth century. His forthcoming book, tentatively titled Bonded Metropolis: Debt, Redevelopment, and Racial Inequality in Postwar San Francisco, argues that the practices of municipal debt finance redistributed wealth upwards, reinscribed racial inequality, and became a constraint on democratic state power. Jenkins was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University’s Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History in 2016–17. He received his Ph.D. in History from Stanford University in 2016.
What can students look forward to in their interactions with you?
It is no surprise that I owe my teaching philosophy to my incredible mentors. My undergraduate senior thesis advisor, Eric Foner, and graduate mentor Albert Camarillo, taught me that the point of advising is not to raise mini-me’s. Students can expect me to encourage them to think through their own interests and to brainstorm together how they might develop their own passions and research agendas. Richard White gave me an approach to leading discussion. I begin each class with three basic questions: what are the arguments of the week’s readings? What are the assumptions upon which those arguments rest? And if we accept these assumptions, what is at stake for our interpretation of a theme, debate, place, and moment in time? By insisting that lurking beneath every argument are a set of assumptions, I hope that students will develop a skill set that will not only be useful in comprehending historiographical debates but also help them undercut contemporary arguments about the alleged timelessness and universality of societal arrangements.
Ryan Jobson
Department of Anthropology
Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellow (2017-2019)
Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Anthropology (7/1/2019-)
Ryan Jobson is a social scientist and Caribbean cultural critic. His research and teaching engage issues of energy and extractive resource development, technology and infrastructure, states and sovereignty, and histories of racial capitalism in the colonial and postcolonial Americas. His first book manuscript, Deepwater Futures: Sovereignty at Risk in a Caribbean Petrostate, is an ethnographic study of fossil fuel industries and postcolonial state building in Trinidad and Tobago. A second research project will comprise a historical ethnography of oil and bauxite development in Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana. From 2017-2019, Jobson will serve as a Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Anthropology. He received his PhD in Anthropology and in African American Studies from Yale University in 2017.
In which section of the library do you enjoy being in the most? Why? Name a few of the most interesting books you’ve found there.
As a scholar of the Caribbean, I enjoy exploring texts and materials produced in and about the region. I am particularly fascinated by original documents from the eighteenth and nineteenth Century that I stumble upon in the stacks. On one of my first trips to the Reg, I was surprised to find a collection of late nineteenth century photographs of the Pitch Lake in Trinidad—the largest global reserve of natural bitumen asphalt. I later discovered that the photographs were donated to the university by the Barber Asphalt Co. on the occasion of the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. The gift coincided with efforts to structurally improve the roadways throughout the city, many of which were paved with Trinidad Lake Asphalt including Michigan Avenue and Jackson Boulevard. In my courses, I draw on anecdotes like this to demonstrate the enduring connections between places like Chicago and the Caribbean. Evidence of these connections often lurks in corners of the library or on the pavement beneath our feet.
Matthew Kruer
Department of History
Assistant Professor, Early North American History and the College
Matthew Kruer is a scholar of early modern North America exploring the relationship between Native American power and colonial violence. His forthcoming book project, The Time of Anarchy: Colonial Rebellions and the Wars of the Susquehannocks, 1675–1685, explores the forms of power exercised by seemingly weak and vulnerable indigenous migrants, who in their struggles for survival and resurgence drove political struggle and social change in early America. Kruer comes to the University of Chicago from the University of Oklahoma, where he was an Assistant Professor of History. He received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania Department of History in 2015. Kruer will spend the 2017-2018 academic year as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University's Mahindra Humanities Center.
If you could invite three specialists in your field (living or dead) to dinner, who would you choose, and what would you talk about?
What a delightful question! There are so many historians that I would love to meet. But I’m a sucker for the classics, and I often wonder what the giants of previous generations would think of the field these days. So, my first historian is George Bancroft, a gentleman historian of the nineteenth century whose multivolume History of the United States (1854-1878) gave the origins of the United States a mythic quality, anointing Americans with a special destiny because of what Bancroft saw as their unique virtues. For the second, I will invite Frederick Jackson Turner, famed—and often reviled—for his 1893 essay “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” which argued that the exceptionalism of American democracy was the natural result of the clash between white settler “civilization” and what he considered the “savagery” of a wilderness populated by American Indians. Rounding out the dinner party is one of the historians who has been most influential on my work, but who I never had the chance to meet: Edmund S. Morgan. His American Slavery, American Freedom (1975) told the searing story of racial injustice welded into the fabric of American history, focusing on the origins of African slavery in colonial Virginia.
Elliot Lipnowski
Department of Economics
Assistant Professor
Elliot Lipnowski is a microeconomist and game theorist with a focus on information economics and organizational economics. His work has evaluated the effect of ongoing delegated decision-making on the long-term efficiency and flexibility of organizations, investigated optimal information disclosure by well-intentioned experts (for instance between medical professionals and their patients), and explored how a worker's perceived job insecurity in an organization can create a self-fulfilling prophecy of declining productivity. Before joining the faculty, Lipnowski was a research fellow at the Becker-Friedman Institute during the 2016-2017 academic year. He received his PhD in economics from New York University's Stern School of Business in 2016.
What can students look forward to in their interactions with you?
Enthusiasm! Economic theory gives us a flexible, powerful framework for starting to understand strategic situations. We're going to roll up our sleeves, do some math, and hopefully gain some intuition that will serve us outside the classroom.
Describe one object you have in your office that helps you in your work.
One wall of my office here is covered in that whiteboard paint. It's amazing what a difference it makes. There's nothing quite like pacing around a room and scrawling math on the wall to help work through one's own confusion.
Alexander Torgovitsky
Department of Economics
Assistant Professor
Alexander Torgovitsky’s research is focused on developing new methods for causal inference and counterfactual analysis with economic data. His recent work has focused on developing tools for detecting and measuring state dependency (“stigma” effects) in unemployment dynamics. Other recent work has provided tools for extrapolating inferences from studies of small research populations to larger groups, with implications for understanding behavior and for policy making. Before joining the UChicago Department of Economics faculty, Torgovitsky was Assistant Professor in Economics at Northwestern University. He earned his Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University in 2012.
What can students look forward to in their interactions with you?
I put a lot of effort into connecting the theory that we teach to practical topics. The truth is --- and this is not often realized --- that many of the discussions taking place in the news media on hot-button issues, such as inequality and mobility, health care, tax reform, etc., are fueled by academic (or academic-style) empirical research. This research rests on sets of untestable assumptions about how the world works. These assumptions are often questionable and reasonable people can disagree, but this level of discourse usually does not make it to the NY Times article. I view one of my primary roles as an undergraduate instructor as alerting students to this situation and prepare them to be sophisticated participants in these types of arguments. My hope is that I am doing my (admittedly small) part to heighten the level of public discussion among our future leaders.
Robert Vargas
Department of Sociology Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Sociology
Robert Vargas’ research examines how laws, politics, and bureaucracies shape the conditions of cities, with a particular focus on violence and health care. His first book, Wounded City: Violent Turf Wars in a Chicago Barrio (Oxford, 2016), shows how ward redistricting shapes levels of violence in the Little Village neighborhood of Chicago. A forthcoming book presents an ethnography of uninsured Chicagoans' experiences with the Affordable Care Act. Vargas’ ongoing research explores the political economy of urban violence through a quantitative historical project on homicide in Chicago, New Orleans, and San Francisco from 1870 to the present. Before coming to the University of Chicago, Vargas was Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology from Northwestern University in 2012.
Describe one object you have in your office that helps you in your work.
An enormous dry erase board. I find it hard to think through ideas or problems on a 13-26 inch electronic screen. For me, it serves as a giant blank intellectual canvas.
If you could invite three specialists in your field (living or dead) to dinner, who would you choose, and what would you talk about?
Albert Einstein - I would love to see what he thinks about his concept of relativity being applied in social science. W.E.B. DuBois - It would be great to hear his thoughts on the current state of race relations in the U.S. Pierre Bourdieu - I'd love to hear his response to Einstein's thoughts on the use of relativity theory in social science.