In our last post you met the mentors, Matt and Lucy. Here are three more faces you will encounter in MAPH Central.
Sarah Smith, Program Coordinator
You can find Sarah at the front desk of the MAPH office, behind the daily puzzle calendar and next to the owl lamp. Come to her with any general questions or for administrative help. She’s a great source of information and in the unlikely scenario she cannot answer your questions, she can both physically and figuratively point you in the right direction.
Maren Robinson, Associate Director
Maren is
responsible for a lot of MAPH Programming and is known to untangle many an administrative problem. Maren is a resource for many parts of MAPH and for explaining/translating/navigating confusing university systems. Outside of MAPH, Maren teaches dramaturgy and script analysis to undergraduates and is also the person to talk to about “theater and performance in Chicago, nonprofits, mirror neurons, decoupage, dramaturgy, and where to find city green spaces, monk parakeets, and lighthouses in the Chicago vicinity.”
Hails from: Pocatello, ID. (Yes, there is a song in a musical which refers to being born in a trunk – extra points if you know which one- No, I was not born in a trunk.) I think of Yellowstone National Park as home.
Currently reading: I generally have a bunch of books going at once, but here are the three I have read most recently On Violence - Hannah Arendt, Our Man in Havana - Graham Greene, Vampires in the Lemon Grove - Karen Russell.
Favorite Coffee Shop: Julius Meinl, a great Austrian chain that has two locations on the north side of Chicago, it is worth a trip.
Outdoor and Indoor Fun: Last week I canoed on the Chicago river and I also have plans to see the Josef Koudelka exhibit at the Art Institute.
Kerri Hunt, Career and Alumni Outreach Coordinator
Kerri will act as a career advisor while continuing into her fifth year as a MAPH preceptor. She recently completed her PhD in English Literature, in which she studied the Victorian period and focused on material culture and the 19th-century novel, among other things. She is the point person within the MAPH office for helping you think about The Future and to connect you with MAPH alumni in your field(s) of interest. She’s also a great resource/sounding board for the ins and outs of UChicago and academia.
Hails from: N/A
Currently Reading: I recently finished a fun exercise in immersive cultural history: reading, in chronological order, every issue of Vogue from the 1950s. Now I’m revisiting some classic detective fiction. On the nonfiction front, recent picks include Uncommon Arrangements (about British Modernist writers and their strange marriages); The Perfect Medium (a history of spirit photography); books on Japanese art; and A War Imagined (WWI social and cultural history).
Favorite Past Time: Thrifting.
Favorite Youtube video: Many Too Many Small Boxes and Maru. I could watch this all day.
What are you doing this summer? Moving into a new apartment; working for the Mellon Mays Program (helping gifted undergraduate students of color learn about graduate-level research); gearing up for the academic job market in the fall; watching way too much anime; maybe getting a tattoo.