Emeritus Faculty

Gene Gragg began his tenure at the University of Chicago as a graduate student involved in both linguistics and languages of the Near East (1962–66), when he became interested in applying linguistic rigor to the study of Ancient Near Eastern languages. The result was a dissertation on the dimensional infixes of Sumerian, a short form of which was eventually published as The Dimensional Infixes of Sumerian (Neukirchen, 1973). Coming back to the University of Chicago in 1969, with a joint appointment in the Departments of Linguistics and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations (now Middle Eastern Studies), he divided his teaching time between the two departments, with time off for a year of field work in Ethiopia. He was chair of NELC (1979–85), director of the Oriental Institute (1997–2002), and retired in 2004.

Biographical note adapted from the University of Chicago Middle Eastern Studies department.