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Katherine Sturgill MA'16

How Divinity School training in ethics shapes Katherine Sturgill, MA’16’s approach to pleasure, labor, and care in Chicago’s restaurant world.

For Katherine Sturgill, MA’16, considering pleasure a moral category is part of her day-to-day calling. As the general manager of il Carciofo, the third restaurant from Top Chef winner Joe Flamm in Chicago’s Fulton Market, Sturgill is, quite literally, responsible for creating a vibe that promotes joy for everyone in the space, from the guests to her staff.

“Hospitality is something we don’t just extend to our guests, but to ourselves and each other,” Sturgill said. “Creating environments where people feel safe and respected is important to me.”

Sturgill found her way to the dining and hospitality industry after completing her master’s degree at the University of Chicago Divinity School, where classes in ethics inspired thoughtful engagement with labor and humanism. Now, as a Court of Master certified sommelier and restaurant manager, she links her study of religion and ethics to agriculture, immigration, and labor.

Criteria spoke with Sturgill to learn more about her path from the Divinity School to the competitive Chicago food scene.

This Q&A has been edited for readability.     

How did your Divinity School education shape the way you learned to pay attention, and how does that formation guide your leadership and decision-making in restaurant spaces today?

In thinking about wine, and now just about restaurants in general, and all of the people who work in them. Courses at the Divinity School, especially those that focused on ethics, helped me ask important questions about the labor systems that impact my industry. Questions like: who is actually part of the systems we talk about? Who is shaping those systems and creating categories that allow a person or group of people to work within them or outside of them? And who is missing from the discussion altogether?

One of the lessons from the Divinity School that has stuck with me came from a class with Professor Sarah Fredericks, in which we discussed collective ethics: what we are responsible for in the groups or societies we belong to, versus what we can accomplish as individuals.

Did your time at the Divinity School give you language or permission to take pleasure seriously as a moral category, especially now that you work in an industry built around taste, enjoyment, and hospitality?

One thing I remember Professor William Schweiker saying is that pleasure and joy should be accessible human goods. To me, it’s a huge privilege to work in an industry where every single day I get to care for people and make space for them to experience moments of joy.

All the small details—lighting, ambiance—create opportunities for connection with friends, family, or co-workers. If you think about where you were for your partner’s birthday or your best friend’s engagement celebration, those moments stick with you. Setting the stage for those experiences is important and brings comfort and joy to people’s lives.

One of the challenging things for me about working in restaurants is that while I do think dining experiences offer a lot of pleasure, and that people have a right to access that joy, I’m mindful that not everyone does because of systemic and financial barriers. That tension is sticky to think about.

In your work as a sommelier and now as a general manager, hospitality seems less about transaction and more about relationship and trust. Do you think of hospitality as a moral practice?

Professor Schweiker’s course on humanism really stuck with me. There were lessons and questions from that class that I still reflect on and that remain relevant to how I think about my work now.

We read Emmanuel Levinas's Humanism of the Other, and his thesis is that everyone has a whole world and horizon in front of them. That you need to look at other people not just as dots on your own horizon, but as their own world, with its own horizon.

I often apply this philosophy in hospitality and remind my staff to do the same. You just don’t know what people are going through or where they’re coming from.

The number of times I’ve received feedback about an experience when someone was grieving and needed a place to spend a couple of hours taking their mind off the pain, or when someone was about to start chemotherapy and wanted a last meal before treatment affected their taste buds, underscores that providing care is a big responsibility, and a real privilege, too. A restaurant can be a powerful space to enact hospitality as a moral practice.