Features

Camp And Circumstance
The only currently active beauty contest at the University of Chicago has been going strong for ten years, fills every seat of Mandel Hall, and crowns a male winner.
Carrie Golus, AB’91, AM’93
First Among Equals
Twenty-nine years before Vanessa Williams was named Miss America, Janice Porter, AB’56, became Miss University of Chicago.
Carrie Golus, AB’91, AM’93
Cairo, Interrupted
Launched on the eve of a revolution, a new Civilizations program in Egypt took its lessons—and its students—to Paris.
Elizabeth Station
Cloth Bound
How the Great Books seminar turned a radical poet into a philosopher and priest.
Benjamin Recchie, AB’03

Departments

Seen & Heard

Doubles team Kendra Higgins, ’12, and Chrissy Hu, AB’11, hit the ball back.

RSO Spotlight: WHPK

At UChicago’s radio station, the golden age of vinyl is today.

Loose Canon

Two comic strips by Maggie Fritz-Morkin, AM’04.

Feature Extra
- Beauty, Briefly
  A history of beauty queens at the University of Chicago.
In Every Issue
- Editor’s Note: The Secret History of
  Betty Co-Ed
  Marion Simon, AB’39, two-time winner of campus beauty contests.
- Letters
  Tales of the chalkboard tiger.
- Go Ask Alumni: Ex Libris
  In honor of Mansueto Library, alumni recall library memories.
- Loose Canon
  Two comic strips by Maggie Fritz-Morkin, AM’04.
Marginalia
- Seen & Heard
  Doubles team Kendra Higgins, ’12, and Chrissy Hu, AB’11, hit the ball back.
- UnCommon, Indeed
  Intramural Quidditch and other UnCommon Fund projects.
- Top Ten: Scav on Campus
  Ten Scav Hunt items that made the campus a stranger place.
- Nut Profit
  The winners of our squirrel caption competition.
Eye on the Quads
- RSO Spotlight: WHPK
  At UChicago’s radio station, the golden age of vinyl is today.
- Patience, Grasshopper
  A student team wins $10k for a long-term project: to make us eat bugs.
- Office Hours
  Former dean Lorna Straus reveals the family origins of Scav Hunt.
Beyond the Quads
- The Loneliest Planet
  Could life thrive on a planet without a sun?
- Out Loud and Outbound
  A capella group Voices in Your Head rakes in awards.
- Unclean Break
  Alumna Swati Avasthi’s work at a domestic violence clinic inspired her hard-hitting young adult novel.

The University of Chicago Magazine has been published continuously since 1907; here’s the latest bimonthly issue:

Illustrated ideology
The art of Soviet-era children's literature shifted from experimental and avant-garde to a realistic, government-mandated style under Stalin.

Course of treatment
Monica Vela, MD'93, who has faced health-care disparities as both physician and patient, teaches students about the issues that afflict underserved communities, inspiring many to reach out.

57th variety
With Caffe Florian closed, the Magazine provides a guide to current dining on 57th Street.

Glimpses: Esther Conwell, PhD’48
At a time when science was a man’s field, physicist and chemist Conwell conducted research that won her a 2010 National Medal of Science.

Hard hitting
Meet the UChicago doubles team who won back-to-back NCAA titles.