About CAS
Workshop Structure and Activities
2023-2024 CAS Workshops
About CAS
- 20th and 21st Century
- Affect and the Emotions
- American History & Cultures
- American Politics
- Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy
- Ancient Societies
- Art and Politics of East Asia
- Chat About
- Cognition 
- Comparative Politics
- Current Ethnography and Social Theory Study Group
- Digital Media
- Early Christian Studies
- Early Modern and Mediterranean Worlds
- East Asia: Trans-Regional Histories
- Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Atlantic Cultures
- EthNoise! The Music, Language, and Culture Workshop
- Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy
- Gender and Sexuality Studies
- German Philosophy
- Hebrew Bible and Early Jewish Reception
- History and Theory of Capitalism
- Immigration Workshop
- Interdisciplinary Archaeology
- Interdisciplinary Approaches to France and the Francophone World
- International Politics
- Jewish Studies
- Language Evolution, Acquisition, & Processing
- Language Variation and Change
- Latin American and the Caribbean
- Latin American History
- Learning & Memory Based at UChicago
- Literature and Philosophy
- Mass Culture
- Medicine and Its Objects
- Medieval Studies
- Middle East History and Theory
- Morphology and Syntax 
- Movement Theory Study Group
- Music and Sound (previously Sound and Society)
- Philosophy of Religions
- Political Theory
- Politics, History, and Society 
- Practical Philosophy
- Religions in America
- Renaissance
- Research in Art and Visual Evidence
- Rhetoric and Poetics
- Semiotics: Culture in Context
- Theater and Performance Studies 
- Theoretical Philosophy
- Transnational Approaches to Modern Europe
- Visual and Material Perspectives on East AsiaÂ
In 1982, the University of Chicago pioneered a new dimension in graduate education—interdisciplinary workshops that bring together students and faculty in the Divinity School, Humanities Division, and the Social Sciences Division for ongoing and collaborative exchange of ideas around particular areas of interest. By providing graduate students with a forum for presenting their research and writing, the workshops, which have been widely replicated at other universities, have become an important part of the UChicago graduate education experience. Workshops facilitate the dissertation-writing process and create opportunities for professionalization as they encourage students to engage rigorously with their own and their fellow students’ work through discussion, debate, evaluation, and critical feedback.
In addition to the academic importance of workshops, participation in a workshop series, which can include scheduled meetings as well as dinners and other social gatherings, serves well to combat intellectual isolation. The workshop setting provides an informal forum for students to develop close and supportive ties with their fellow students as well as faculty mentors and even guest faculty. More advanced graduate students often become mentors and role models to other students as they experience together the different stages of their transition from consumers to creators of knowledge. The workshops represent dozens of vibrant micro-communities of scholars where the participants engage in lively conversation and receive valuable insight and encouragement.
Workshop Structure and Activities
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The basic workshop structure can be defined by regularly scheduled seminar-style meetings where a student, faculty, or guest speaker presents his or her work-in-progress. Workshop groups can also facilitate activities such as exhibition visits, concert or film screenings, and hands-on learning of field-work techniques. They can also work collaboratively on relevant events and conferences with UChicago centers and institutes as well as colleagues at other universities. While their structure and emphasis may vary, successful workshop programs always allow graduate students to engage with faculty and fellow students in discussion of their evolving research interests. Not all workshops are interdisciplinary in their organization, but since the founding of the Workshop Program, interdisciplinarity has been a key feature of UChicago workshops.