Browsing by Subject "Chicago"

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1,000 miles : bridging the distance between Austin and Chicago
(2013-05) Hinderaker, Andrew Dean; Dietz, Steven; Lynn, Kirk; Zeder, Suzan
1,000 miles marks the culmination of my course of study at the University of Texas. As an MFA student in the playwriting program, I have juggled my responsibilities to the department with my role as a professional playwright, frequently splitting time between Austin and my hometown of Chicago, where I opened four world premieres from 2010-2012. In this thesis, I discuss the ways in which my work has been influenced by the aesthetics of both artistic communities. I focus on two of my plays in particular: Kingsville, which premiered in Chicago during my first semester at UT, and Colossal, which opened in Austin just weeks before graduation. Through the lens of these two plays, I outline my artistic evolution over the past three years, highlighting the ways in which my work has drawn from the very best of Chicago’s storefront theaters and Austin’s experimental scene.
And thus we shall survive : the perseverance of the South Side Community Art Center
(2015-05) Hardy, Debra Anne; Bolin, Paul Erik, 1954-; Adejumo, Christopher O
This study investigates The South Side Community Art Center in Chicago, Illinois, an art center founded at the end of the Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project. The Art Center was only one of a handful of African-American art centers in the nation, and was one of the only locations that black artists could showcase their work proudly on the South Side. An examination is made into the period of time after federal funds were pulled, focusing on 1942-1959, to examine how exactly the Art Center kept its doors open. An overview of the founding of the SSCAC is presented, alongside theoretical lenses used in the crafting of a specific theoretical framework to analyze the Art Center. This study uses historical interpretation of archive data from the SSCAC from 1942-1959. An investigation of archived information found a noticeable gap in data between 1950-1953, leading to the use of historic imagination surrounding the missing material. Using historical imagination, two hypotheses were put forth to explain the lack of information found in the archive. First, the historic significance of McCarthyism on black individuals is highlighted. Second, the elusive histories of black women which are often missing from traditional archives is brought forth as a possible explanation for why the data does not seem to exist. The research concludes with a reflection on the difficulty of studying small institutions and specifically the histories of oppressed groups.
Constance Shabazz Interview
(2018-10-11) Institute of Diversity and Civic Life
This interview is with Constance Shabazz, a social activist, feminist, and speaker from Chicago. After learning about the health care disparities and injustice faced by the African American community during her time working for the Sickle Cell Foundation in New York, Constance decided to become a physician and advocate for others. Constance talks about how reading the Autobiography of Malcolm X helped align her spiritual beliefs with Islam and informed her opinions on providing free health care for all. Constance moved to Texas in 2016 and continues to organize around community needs.
Density of abortion facilities in the four largest US cities
(2016-02-29) The University of Texas at Austin, Texas Policy Evaluation Project
Jezebel by another name : Black women, carceral geography, and the practice of urban marronage in Chicago
(2022-08-11) Machicote, Michaela; Smith, Christen A., 1977-; Ramey Berry, Daina; Irizarry, Yasmiyn; Jackson, Jenn M
“Jezebel By Another Name: Black Women, Carceral Geography, and the Practice of Urban Marronage in Chicago,” examines how Black women (including Black/Afro Latinas), femmes, and non-men in Chicago navigate the carceral, anti-black landscape created by neoliberal approaches to “law and order.” Recognizing that there are multiple sites where Black women are most vulnerable in the city, this project focuses specifically on sex work and community organizing. I argue that there is a dialectic between these two spaces, as spaces of violence and spaces of radical possibility. As such, this dissertation examines Black spatial practices of performance, art, politics, and community healing as contemporary forms of marronage in the afterlife of slavery, which I term urban marronage. Incorporating an interdisciplinary use of Black feminist geography and Black feminist ethnographic methodologies, this dissertation knits together the stories of Black women who have been violated by the state and Black women organizing against state violence on the West and South Sides of Chicago. I chronicle how these women are hyper-policed, criminalized, and territorially bound by racialized, gendered, and sexualized discourses of citizenship. This includes an analysis of anti-sex work ordinances and Black women’s precarity. City laws limit the possibilities of Black women’s citizenship by limiting their rights to the city (freedom of movement, access to public space), “criminalizing” all Black women as potential sex workers, and marking Black women as violable (not only by the police but also by society generally). To counter this criminalization, Black women create spaces to celebrate, support and empower Black communities as a form of urban marronage: a Black, queer, feminist, anti-violence organizing practice of creative imagining and refuge-building. Black women are criminalized and queered by the state regardless of their personal histories, class differences, and societal positions. Consequently, a Black queer feminist organizing praxis is necessary for diagnosing and addressing the landscape of gendered, antiblack violence.
Latinx political empowerment in Chicago during the Trump era : an analysis of interviews from Latinx elected officials
(2020-05-05) Cuevas, Ismael; Rodriguez, Néstor; Gutierrez, Laura G., 1968-
As the Latinx population grows and Latinxs are gaining political representation at every level of government in Chicago and throughout the state of Illinois there must be an analysis to assess if representation is translating into empowerment. The purpose of the study is to understand Latinx political empowerment during the President Trump era in urban neighborhoods from the perspective of Latinx elected officials from city, county, and state levels in the Chicago metropolitan region. This study focuses on the perspectives of ten elected officials — five women and five men — who belong to the Baby Boomer, Generation X, and Millennial generations and are of Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Guatemalan descent. Major themes include political representation, Census 2020, immigration rhetoric and policy, and accessibility to local government
Letter from William C. Brice to Emmett L. Bennett Jr., December 13, 1982
(1982-12-13) Brice, William C.
Letter to H.B. Stenzel from John Emery Adams on Undated
(0000-00-00) Adams, John Emery
Not your daddy’s theatre criticism : countering white supremacy culture with inclusive possibility models
(2021-07-24) Mikhaiel, Yasmin Zacaria; Bonin-Rodriguez, Paul
This thesis unveils Western theatre criticism’s alignment with white supremacy culture and offers possibility models to counter it on personal and institutional levels. I take an autoethnographic approach to my experiences working as an early-career critic to showcase steep barriers to entry, industry constraints, and present pathways forward. On an individual level, I advocate for critics to exercise cultural competency and develop a reflexive practice. I apply Donald Schön’s concepts of knowledge-in-action, reflection-in-action, and reflection-on-action to a critic’s process in order to demonstrate the harm that emerges in a critical practice that is not asset-based. I utilize close reading/listening and comparative analysis of written reviews, essays, podcasts, and web series to showcase how a diversity in critical form and thought productively serve artists, audiences, and archives. I offer four possibility models that aim to make the field more inclusive and sustainable: mentorship and expanding the form; cohort and contract model; culturally competent approach; and a reflexive practice. This thesis carries with it implications for the whole of journalism and its aspirations to due diligence and, impossibly, do no harm.
Placemaking in Boystown : a story of perspective and collaboration
(2019-05) Sessions, Aaron Merrill; Sletto, Bjørn; Muller, Elizabeth
Minorities must be intentional in seeking out and making spaces for their communities in the cities they live. Depending on the political and social cultures influencing their leaders and peers, they will find varying degrees of ease or difficulty in finding and creating spaces relevant to their minority community. I sought to find out which factors influence a minority community’s ability to successfully produce space in their city. More specifically, I wanted to see what influence cities have in that development process. I chose Chicago’s gay neighborhood as a case site after learning about former Mayor Richard M. Daley’s Neighborhoods Alive program at an American Planning Association National Conference. Under the Mayor’s initiative, several minority groups in Chicago received funding for planning and building streetscapes that reflected their communities. Chicago’s gay neighborhood, Boystown, was among the communities that received funding and I was intrigued by Chicago’s direct role in minority community placemaking. In addition to literature reviews on Boystown’s history and theories on space creation, I visited Chicago for a week in August 2018 and while there I interviewed 12 leaders and professionals connected to Boystown. I found that gay space creation in Chicago grew exponentially once the City ended discriminatory treatment of the community. Once those city inflicted burdens were removed, minimal direct action from the City was necessary for gay space creation to flourish. Before sodomy laws were removed in 1961, and even some time after, regular raids on businesses and arrests of patrons made space occupation difficult and contributed to the transient nature of gay spaces before the late 20th century. When discriminatory laws were removed and as harassment waned, gay spaces were able to develop in ways not previously possible. Ownership of buildings and homes and a growing openly gay community also changed the way gay spaces formed compared to Chicago’s past. Outside of the streetscape investments, Chicago has moved into a supportive role, allowing the community to determine its own future in part as a means to promote its business district as an amenity and tourist destination
Shared autonomous vehicle system designs for major metro areas : an examination of geofencing, ride-sharing, stop-location, and drivetrain decisions
(2020-12-04) Gurumurthy, Krishna Murthy; Kockelman, Kara; Boyles, Stephen D; Kumar, Krishna; Auld, Joshua A
With autonomous vehicles (AVs) in the testing phase, researchers and planners must resort to simulation techniques to explore possible futures regarding shared and automated mobility. An agent-based discrete-event transport simulator, POLARIS, is used throughout this dissertation to simulate passenger and freight travel in regions with a shared AV (SAV) mobility option. Using this framework, three broad areas of SAV design are explored – geographical restrictions via geofences, operational modifications via pickup-dropoff (PUDO) stops, and the use of all-electric drivetrains – using the case studies of Bloomington and Chicago in Illinois. Constraining SAVs within pre-defined geofences indicate that empty vehicle-miles-traveled (eVMT) can be curtailed when service areas in Chicago have a balanced mix of trip generators and attractors. Geofences also help lower spatial response times, system-wide VMT across all modes, and ensure uniform access to SAVs. Dynamic ride-sharing (DRS) is useful in lowering VMT and percent eVMT that arises from sprawling when demand is low, whereas savings from DRS is highest when all demand within smaller regions are served by SAVs. Various PUDO spacings and trip-demand densities with fixed mode shares in Bloomington reveal that greater PUDO spacing or distances between stops and higher levels of SAV use or trip demand increases AVO by up to 11% per 4-seater SAV, on average. Aggregation also decreases SAV VMT (by up to 20%) compared to door-to-door SAV fleet operations without DRS or PUDOs. Higher SAV mode shares in a forecasted scenario for Chicago outline total VMT savings of about 2 to 3%, even though SAV VMT increases from serving more trips. A quarter-mile PUDO spacing is recommended in downtown regions to keep walking trips short, but further analysis on congestion spillback is warranted. A variety of electric SAV (SAEV) fleet designs and charging strategies show that a mixed fleet of short (100-mi) and long (250-mi) range SAEVs performs better than a homogenous short-range fleet, with lower empty vehicle miles traveled (eVMT) and lower idling time. Charging and service priority policies are both required, but at different times of the day to accommodate slow Level 2 chargers, but is not as important for DCFC charging stations. SAEVs can stay in place longer (1 hr versus 15 min) to keep eVMT low, but only if long-range SAEVs are in the fleet and the region is small. SAEVs in large regions like Chicago are exposed to location-specific trip requests when idling in place, and need to have high average state of charge (SoC) across the fleet to serve all incoming requests. Smart siting of EVCS and availability of fast chargers remain key to minimizing fleet size and keeping response times low.
Sharjeel Syed Interview
(2020-11-01) Institute of Diversity and Civic Life
This interview is with Sharjeel Syed, a first-generation undocumented Pakistani Muslim-American, who is currently in his first year of residency in Chicago, Illinois. Sharjeel’s experience of growing up in San Antonio, going to the local mosque, and feeling a close kinship with Islam, has shaped who he is today. He speaks to wanting to impart systemic changes in the healthcare system in America while also being involved in advocacy or social justice work.
Telling a different geographic story : garreting, license, and the making of Chicago's Ida B. Wells Homes
(2010-05) Quesal, Susan; Thompson, Shirley Elizabeth; Hoelscher, Steven
The Ida B. Wells Homes, the first black-occupied housing project built in Chicago, were completed in 1941. Throughout their construction and inhabitation, the black community in Chicago worked to create a self-contained space which would control the visibility/invisibility of its black inhabitants and, symbolically, the black community as a whole. Taking as theoretical grounding Katherine McKittrick’s work on garreting and Susan Lepselter’s work on license, this essay argues that the Ida B. Wells Homes were a South Side garret for the black community, a space in which freedom became defined by its own boundaries and wherein this freedom could work in tandem with dominant geographies of oppression to construct a “different” geographic story. This “different” geography intended to alter perceptions of black life by working against dominant geographic narratives that were prevalent at the time, such as those put forth by the Chicago School of Sociology.
Transit proximity and trip-making characteristics : a study of 2007 Chicago metropolitan region travel tracking survey
(2008-08) Hong, Sujin, active 2008; Zhang, Ming, 1963 April 22-; Butler, Kent S.
Influence of built environment on travel behavior has been recognized by several studies in last decade (Cervero 2003, 2004, Ewing at al 2003 and etc.). Easy access to the transit station and mixed land use has been largely emphasized by New Urbanist because of its influence on transit ridership and reduction of vehicle mile travel. However, empirical evidence that proximity of residential location to the transit station or mixed land use reduces auto dependency and encourages transit ridership has been lack for Chicago metropolitan region in spite of its long history of transit development. This study uses 2007 Chicago metropolitan region travel tracking study data and travel characteristics of residents living within walkable distance from the CAT or METRA rail station in Chicago Metropolitan region was analyzed in comparison with those of residents living beyond walkable distance from the rail station in order to find any difference in socio-demographic characteristics and travel characteristics. In general, households located within walkable distance (a quarter mile for this study) from the rail station are more likely to be low income households, to reside in a multifamily rental housing. Residents living within walkable distance show higher portion of African American or Asian proportion, of smaller-sized households (a single member household or childless household). They are likely to own fewer cars than residents living far from the rail station. With this observation of some difference in sociodemographic and travel characteristics between two groups, probability of transit use and rail use in a relationship with home location and job location were tested using binary logistic model. The result indicates that the number of household vehicles per person in the household influences negatively on residential location. The more available household cars per person, the less likely it is that a household is located within walkable distance from the rail station. Work location was also an important factor for transit or rail use. This provides evidence that providing mixed land use where jobs and housing are all provided within walkable distance from the transit station can increase transit use and reduces auto-dependency that current American society is facing severely.
“Woven alike with meaning” : sovereignty and form in Native North American poetry, 1800-1910
(2017-07-20) Grewe, Lauren Marie; Cohen, Matt, 1970-; Cox, James H. (James Howard), 1968-; Winship, Michael; Bennett, Chad; Fitzgerald, Stephanie
The story of American poetry has developed alongside the idea of America itself, becoming almost synonymous with national sovereignty projects in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. During this time the figure of the Indian was, in poetry, customarily depicted as melancholy and moribund, a noble savage making way for a supposedly superior civilization and race. Yet indigenous North American poets also composed and published poetry and participated in reading communities during this time. Examining this poetry reveals how indigenous writers manipulated poetic genres to contest U.S. hegemony and assert sovereignties from the sexual to the tribal to the national. Indeed, understanding early indigenous poets’ formal choices and poetic communities challenges critical narratives of American poetry’s history as having been linear and progressive, demanding a new way of organizing the study of American poetry. In this dissertation, I argue that early Native North American poets chose to write in specific poetic genres in response to local, national, and international publishing worlds. Each chapter examines how indigenous poets comment on the practice and form of poetry, thus speaking to a diverse community of poets and readers through a variety of verse traditions. Jane Johnston Schoolcraft draws from multiple cultural traditions as she manipulates time and genre through her mourning poems, ballads, and lyrics in the Anishinaabe world of the Great Lakes. In the Chicago area, Simon Pokagon uses insurgent practices of appropriation to criticize and revise colonialist American poetry through cross-racial citations and borrowings in his birchbark pamphlets and novel. As public literary tastes shift from poems to legends at the turn of the twentieth century, E. Pauline Johnson helps invent a different kind of modernist poetry that challenges representations of indigenous peoples as pre-modern. Alex Posey composes skeptical elegies, dialect poems, and political newspaper verse from western and Creek literary forms in Indian Territory to heal a divided Creek Nation, practicing poetic appropriations that offered ways of relating to genre that remain powerful for Native American poets today.