Recent decades have witnessed an unparalleled interest in the arts as a catalyst for urban regeneration. This script imagines the arts in service of property development and luring affluent consumption in select areas of cities. These efforts have drawn into sharp relief the social and economic polarization of cities, while illustrating, sometimes painfully, the ways in which artists’ images, sounds, and bodies cannot be extricated from antagonizing and neocolonial reformulations of urban space.

In this symposium, we will hear from two scholars, Ashon Crawley and Jillian Hernandez, who are investigating this problem and proposing visual, sonic, and embodied means for thinking and acting otherwise amidst this conventional creative city script. Following their presentations, invited scholars, including Ruth-Nicole Brown (Gender and Women's Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and Lisa Yun Lee (Director of the School of Art & Art History, University of Illinois at Chicago, and University of Illinois Presidential Fellow), will respond before opening the floor to conversation. Refreshments and light snacks will be provided.

Learn more about this event and the participants at http://illinois.edu/calendar/detail/4639?eventId=33254267.

This event is co-sponsored by IPRH, Visual Arts Research, School of Art and Design, and the Department of Gender and Women Studies.

Thanks to the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities for this information item.

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