This year’s CASE conference will explore the complex role of the city in American culture, with a special emphasis on the history, literature and arts from and about Chicago. We will provide each other with practical ways of integrating the city – both its representations and reality – into the American Studies classroom. We will also discover creative ways to bring the classroom into the city.
The keynote speaker, Carl Smith (Ph.D. American Studies, Yale University), teaches American literature and cultural history at Northwestern University. He is the author of Chicago and the American Literary Imagination, 1880-1920 (1984) and of Urban Disorder and the Shape of Belief: The Great Chicago Fire, the Haymarket Bomb, and the Model Town of Pullman (1994), which won the Urban History Association's prize for Best Book in North American Urban History and the Society of Midland Authors' first prize for non-fiction. He is also the curator of the online Chicago History Museum exhibitions, The Great Chicago Fire and the Web of Memory (1995) and The Dramas of Haymarket (2000), which have received several awards. A recipient of a WCAS Outstanding Teaching Award, Smith was named Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence in 1994.
Three sets of breakout sessions will follow, organized around ways to bring history, literature and arts from and about Chicago into our classrooms. We will also examine urban issues, including architecture, neighborhoods, and race. Please see a preliminary program.
If you haven’t registered for the conference, please do so soon. The conference cost is $75 and the fee includes keynote speaker/program, breakout sessions, curriculum exchange, continental breakfast and luncheon catered by Wolfgang Puck Catering, and time to meet with fellow American Studies teachers.
