Events

The Chicago Center on Democracy and the Committee on Environment, Geography, and Urbanization (CEGU) present Brian Balogh (Professor of History, University of Virginia) in conversation with Sarah Fredericks (Associate Professor of Environmental Ethics; also in the College and Committee on Environment, Geography and Urbanization) on Balogh’s book Not In My Back Yard: How Citizen Activists Nationalized Local Politics in the Fight to Save Green Springs. 

Published in January 2024, Not In My Back Yard tells the story of “how a woman-led citizens’ group beat a Southern political machine by enlisting federal bureaucrats and judges to protect their neighborhood from unchecked economic development.” 

This narrative delves into the local political activism shaping Green Springs, Virginia, chronicling the enduring struggle spanning decades to safeguard the area. It sheds light on the intricate economic compromises linked to environmental preservation, the genesis of NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) sentiment, the evolving dynamics of local governance, and the unexpected influence of historical narratives on public policy advancement.

Speaker: Christina Arellano, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Topic: TBA

Soonwoo Kwon, Brown University Topic: TBA

Join Student Wellness PHAs at Regenstein Library to discuss intellectual wellbeing.

“The Cornucopian Stage: Performing Commerce in Early Modern China”

THIS IS AN IN-PERSON EVENT AND WILL NOT BE LIVE STREAMING.

Wednesday, May 15 · 5:00 pm

Seminary Co-op Bookstores, 5751 South Woodlawn Avenue Chicago, IL 60637

Part of the East Asia by the Book! CEAS Author Talks series, the University of Chicago’s Ariel Fox discusses her book that examines a body of influential yet understudied plays by a circle of Suzhou playwrights who enlisted the theatrical imaginary to very different ends. In plays about long-distance traders and small-time peddlers, impossible bargains and broken contracts, strings of cash and storehouses of silver, the Suzhou circle placed commercial forms not only at center stage but at the center of a new world coming into being. Here, Fox argues, the economic character of early modern selfhood is recast as fundamentally productive—as the basis for new subject positions, new kinds of communities, and new modes of art.

This event is presented in partnership with the Seminary Co-op Bookstores.

How much work does it take to make art seem effortless, the laboring body absent? Works By attempts to answer this question by bringing together four Chicago-based artists who share an interest in the many meanings of “labor.” The centerpiece of the exhibition is a floor drawing by Tony Lewis, performatively produced on site. A sculpture by Devin T. Mays features pallets collected during his wanderings around Chicago’s South Side. Erased: (Unrelated), a 2012 photograph by Bethany Collins, captures a cloud of chalk dust released into a black void—the remnants of the word “unrelated” repeatedly written on a blackboard and then erased. A large photo by Ellen Rothenberg depicts a work boot; another captures a giant lump of crumpled paper that was once a Barbara Kruger mural. The fruits of these artists’ labors will be on view from May 1 (International Workers’ Day) through July 14 (Bastille Day)—two dates that commemorate landmark events in the history of the working class.

Curated by Dieter Roelstraete.

Afro-Indigenous Intersections, Past and Present, will explore interconnections between African Americans and Native Americans across time and space in the land we now call the United States. The discussion will include shifts in relations on the ground as well as changes in scholarship and public representation.

Tiya Miles is the Michael Garvey Professor of History and Radcliffe Alumnae Professor at Harvard University. She is the author of seven books, including four prize- winning histories about race and slavery in the American past.

Following the American Civil War the states of the former Confederacy experienced what is usually termed a brief experiment in interracial democracy. “Redeemed” by white supremacists through violence and election fraud, these southern state governments represent the first truly interracial democratic political formations in the United States.

This lecture by Professor Jane Dailey (Professor of American History, the Law School, and the College at UChicago) focuses on the most successful of these coalitions, its downfall, and the successful efforts of its opponents to eradicate the memory of its existence from U.S. history. This history is directly relevant to the contemporary Republican campaign to warp the American past taught today.

This event is part of a quarterly lecture series associated with the Democracy Curriculum at the Chicago Center on Democracy.

How much work does it take to make art seem effortless, the laboring body absent? Works By attempts to answer this question by bringing together four Chicago-based artists who share an interest in the many meanings of “labor.” The centerpiece of the exhibition is a floor drawing by Tony Lewis, performatively produced on site. A sculpture by Devin T. Mays features pallets collected during his wanderings around Chicago’s South Side. Erased: (Unrelated), a 2012 photograph by Bethany Collins, captures a cloud of chalk dust released into a black void—the remnants of the word “unrelated” repeatedly written on a blackboard and then erased. A large photo by Ellen Rothenberg depicts a work boot; another captures a giant lump of crumpled paper that was once a Barbara Kruger mural. The fruits of these artists’ labors will be on view from May 1 (International Workers’ Day) through July 14 (Bastille Day)—two dates that commemorate landmark events in the history of the working class.

Curated by Dieter Roelstraete.