Session 3

In person and live streamed: A growing body of scholarship has brought important attention to the co-opting of the Middle Ages by white supremacist myths of national origin. But in what ways has or can the medieval offer a resource for political projects of resistance and liberation? This session will explore how and why queer theorists, artists, and writers re-signified the medieval in the face of the AIDS pandemic in the 1980s and 1990s.

In person and live streamed: A growing body of scholarship has brought important attention to the co-opting of the Middle Ages by white supremacist myths of national origin. But in what ways has or can the medieval offer a resource for political projects of resistance and liberation? This session will explore how and why queer theorists, artists, and writers re-signified the medieval in the face of the AIDS pandemic in the 1980s and 1990s.

Virtual Only: Narratives about swamp people and swamp things punctuate the story of the New World, from the maroon communities constituted by Native peoples and formerly enslaved Africans beginning in the early 16th century to the first Asians (Filipinos) to arrive in the US, who settled in the swamps surrounding modern day New Orleans in 1763. As a place that is neither land nor water but both, the swamp functions as the grounds—as the “terra infirma”—for a series of considerations about difference, change, time, life, and death.

In 2019, the presenter had the great fortune to be part of an archaeological team that made a remarkable discovery: a hieroglyphic royal inscription authored by Hartapu, a mysterious king from the early first millennium BCE. Named one of the Top 10 Discoveries of the year by Archaeology Magazine, this inscription, which was deciphered by colleagues at the University of Chicago, established the nearby site as a hitherto completely unknown capital city.

The writers on this panel will talk about various approaches to writing about cities, with a particular emphasis on writing about Chicago. How do writers create inner and outer landscapes real enough to get lost in? How do writers look to (and sometimes become) architects, gardeners, mapmakers, and photographers to work toward new stories, essays, and poems?

**This presentation is sold out.**

In 1916, the Ebony Film Corporation was formed in Chicago with the goal of producing short comedies featuring all-African American casts. While white-capitalized, the company hired an African American producer, Luther J. Pollard, as its President and General Manager. The film’s comedies were aimed at general audiences and focused on the slapstick comedy popular in the mainstream industry. What were Pollard’s ambitions? How did he understand his work in relation to the constraints around Black representation in the broader American film industry?

In the final chapter of its “Babylon Project,” the New Budapest Orpheum Society explores the transformation of exile to return—the powerful chronicles that grow around dispossessed peoples. Throughout human history exile has taken many forms, resulting from the tragic loss of homeland, as well as the human suffering that accompanies a pandemic.