The Making of Americans, Paris 1925

Join the Scherer Center for a conference that asks how Americans were made, unmade, and remade by a city whose cultural magnetism famously drew artists, musicians, dancers, and writers across the Atlantic, often for years.

Click Here

Cross-listed Courses

Explore a current list of cross-listed courses in American Culture

Click Here

The New Directions in American History workshop.

NDAH focuses on themes and topics in North American history, serving as the primary home for the University of Chicago’s Americanists. We also welcome participation from outside students and faculty and are inclusive of projects that bring interdisciplinary methods and theoretical frameworks to bear on diverse historical questions and problems while remaining mindful of their legal and sociocultural resonances in the present day.

Click Here

Events

A list of events related to American Culture from around UChicago

Events

The Religions in America workshop.

The Religions in America Workshop explores the role of religion in American culture from the colonial period to the present. Our goal is to better understand the complex ways in which religious traditions, practices, and concerns shape and respond to the American experience. To that end, this interdisciplinary workshop will consider American religion’s relevance and relation to other categories such as race, gender, economics, politics, and literature. We will consider work from a variety of methodological and theoretical perspectives, in keeping with the most current trends in the study of religion in America.

Click Here

Partners

Explore various centers, institutions, and organizations that we have partnered with to create and support the study of American Culture.

Explore

Faculty Affiliates

Learn more about the faculty members affiliated with the Scherer Center.

Learn more

The Rising Generation

Gradual Abolition, Black Legal Culture, and the Making of National Freedom

Check out the latest alumni publication from Sarah L.H. Gronningsater

Click Here

Faculty Board

Learn more about the members of the Scherer Center’s faculty board

Learn more

The Scherer Center helps coordinate the University’s rich and diverse scholarly interest in the study of American culture by sponsoring courses, seminars, and lunch-time discussions of new work; by bringing distinguished visitors to campus for lectures, symposia, and conferences; and by developing forums for meaningful interactions among scholars of different disciplines and the public.

Join our mailing list

If you are interested in American Culture, whether based at the University of Chicago or elsewhere, join our mailing list. It is the best way to stay connected with us as the center evolves. We will treat your inbox with respect.

Associated events

Browse our incomplete list of events hosted by our partners across the university that we think you may be interested in.

TALK Democratic Exhaustion with Dirk Jörke (Darmstadt University)

For several years now, people have been talking about a crisis of democracy. Articles and books on the subject often end with proposals for revitalizing democracy, whether through institutional reform or by calling on citizens to defend democracy. However, the possibility that this is not a temporary crisis but a transition to a new regime is ignored.

Click Here

A Pressing Call: 500 Years of Women Printing

A Pressing Call: Five Centuries of Women Printing features the stories of women who have worked in the print trade in a variety of roles including as publishers, print shop proprietors, typesetters and compositors, and booksellers. The history of women’s contributions to book production has been obscured by the societal constraints placed on women’s labor, and they were often hidden behind the names of men or corporate bodies. If one knows how and where to look, however, it becomes clear that thousands of books were printed by women.

Click Here

South Side Impresarios: A Lecture and Recital —With Samantha Ege

Join musicologist and international concert pianist Samantha Ege on April 10 from 6:00 pm -7:00 pm either in person at Ruggles Hall or via Zoom for a musical performance and discussion of her new book about the women who put Chicago’s Black classical music on a cultural map of their own making. A book signing will follow from 7:00 pm to 7:30 pm.

Click Here