UIS professor to study “Art & Public Culture in Chicago” during National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Seminar

UIS Associate Professor Hinda Seif with students presenting at the Student Technology, Arts & Research Symposium on April 5, 2018.

Hinda Seif, University of Illinois Springfield associate professor and chair of the Department of Women and Gender Studies, was recently selected for a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Seminar on “Art & Public Culture in Chicago”.

The session will be held June 11-29, 2018, at the Newberry Library in Chicago. Seif was selected from more than 100 applicants and will spend three weeks learning about the arts, their reception, and their civic importance in Chicago from the 1893 World’s Fair through the present moment.

"This institute is related to my current research on women artists, spaces and self-expression in Mexican Chicago,” said Seif. “Given that we have many students at UIS who are from or are interested in Chicago, I plan to bring what I learn back to UIS and central Illinois to enhance my teaching and research."

According to the seminar description, the course will be particularly focused on artistic communities, small-scale venues, and vernacular expressions that developed against or alongside Chicago’s mainstream cultural institutions—especially those that took shape in the city’s African American neighborhoods.

The summer seminar will be led by Liesl Olson, director of Chicago Studies at the Newberry Library; Rebecca Zorach, professor of art history at Northwestern University; and Chad Heap, associate professor of American studies at George Washington University.

Last summer, Seif was selected to participate in an NEH Summer Seminar exploring 20th century U.S. history through the lens of the National Women’s Conference, which was held in Houston in 1977.

Seif holds a master’s degree in women’s studies from the University of Arizona and a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from the University of California, Davis.