CROSSROADS WITH BILL SAVAGE
Thursday, October 4, 2018
6:00 – 8:00 PM
National Hellenic Museum
Non-Members: $15, NHM Members: $10, Students: $5
Chicago is a city of immigrants, a crossroads where people from around the world meet and mingle, acting in cooperation, competition, and conflict. But what exactly is a crossroads, literally and metaphorically? How do different individuals and groups in Chicago represent their historical encounter with this unprecedented city, and the other people in it? What makes different groups distinct, and what do they have in common? This lecture will explore literary and historical representations of immigrant experiences in Chicago from the 1890s to the 21st Century, to get at the meaning of “crossroads.”
ABOUT BILL SAVAGE:
Bill Savage teaches Chicago literature, culture, and history in the English Department at Northwestern University and the Newberry Library of Chicago. His scholarly work focuses on the creation of American identity in the dynamic relationship between people (as individuals and members of groups) in the city’s urban spaces and places. He has published essays and book reviews in the Chicago Tribune, the Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Reader, Crain’s Chicago Business, New City, and many other publications. His most recent book project was ‘The Old-Time Saloon: Not Wet, Not Dry, Just History’, an annotated edition of George Ade’s 1931 pro-Repeal polemic. He has also co-edited two critical editions of works by Nelson Algren, and he works as an editor for the University of Chicago Press’s Chicago Visions and Revisions Series. He is currently writing a book entitled ‘The City Logical’, about the evolution of Chicago’s street-naming and numbering system, and how its quirks tell the history of the city.
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