Gordon Parks and the Postwar City Conference
April 2 - 4, 2025
5:00 PM - 3:00 PM America/Chicago
Location
UIC Great Cities Institute, Room 418 and UIC Daley Library, Room 1-470
Calendar
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Join us for a three-day conference to examine Gordon Parks's expansive body of work and his enduring legacy for Black Studies, American culture and the world. This conference brings together students, scholars, filmmakers and activists. Free and open to the public.
You can view the detailed conference program below.
Date posted
Mar 13, 2025
Date updated
Mar 20, 2025
About the Conference
Gordon Parks was among the most prolific black photographers of the twentieth century. His work addressed the radical transformations of American life taking place after World War II. In his photographic essays and films, Parks examined policing and crime on the streets of American cities, ghettoization and poverty, the civil rights struggle, the rise of Black Power militancy and the various political aspirations animating black life and American society more generally. It would be difficult to find a figure who so single-handedly documented and presented black life to a mass audience at the time, and in a way that both cracked the glass ceiling for black artists and challenged prevailing racist caricatures of black life.
Chicago has a special place in Parks’s story. Born in Kansas in 1912, he spent his teen and early adult years in St. Paul, Minnesota, before moving to Chicago in 1940. Parks’s life would take a fortunate turn as he established his first portrait studio at the Southside Community Art Center and was recruited to the Farm Security Administration, where he developed his “camera as a weapon” approach to attacking social injustice.
View the program and conference schedule below:
Wednesday, April 2
| TIME | SESSION | LOCATION | SPEAKERS |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5:00pm - 7:00pm | Film Screening & Discussion: The World of Piri Thomas | UIC Great Cities Institute, Room 418 | Panelists: Teresa Córdova, UIC Great Cities Institute Tamara Cedré, Pitzer College Donn Worgs, Towson University Juan González, UIC Great Cities Institute |
Thursday, April 3
| TIME | SESSION | LOCATION | SPEAKERS |
|---|---|---|---|
| 8:00am - 9:45am | Session 1: Opening Plenary | Richard J. Daley Library, Room 1-470 | Cedric Johnson, UIC Roberto Aspholm, University of St. Thomas Michal Raz-Russo, The Gordon Parks Foundation |
| 10:00am - 11:45am | Session 2: Black Life South & North | Richard J. Daley Library, Room 1-470 | "Gordon Parks: The Black Artist and Objectivity" - David Canton, University of Florida "Black and White in Color: Skins, Fabrics, and the Color Photography of Gordon Parks" - Jesus Costantino, University of New Mexico Discussants: Cynthia Blair, UIC Ainsworth Clarke, UIC |
| 1:00pm - 2:45pm | Session 3: Black Power | Richard J. Daley Library, Room 1-470 | "Malcolm X through the Parks Lens" - Stephen Ward, University of Michigan "Here / There: Gordon Parks, Stokely Carmichael, and the Vietnam War" - Lisa Volpe, Museum of Contemporary Arts Houston Discussants: Jane Rhodes, UIC Johari Jabir, UIC |
Friday, April 4
| TIME | SESSION | LOCATION | SPEAKERS |
|---|---|---|---|
| 8:00am - 9:45am | Session 4: Working Life at the Margins | UIC Great Cities Institute, Room 418 | "In Twilight and Shadow: Seeing Mid-Twentieth Century Working Lives with Gordon Parks" - Cedric Johnson, UIC "Crime in Gordon Parks's Postwar City" - Roberto Aspholm, University of St. Thomas Discussants: Julian Thompson, UIC Lilia Fernandez, UIC |
| 10:00am - 11:45am | Session 5: Blaxploitation Cinema | UIC Great Cities Institute, Room 418 | "You're Damned if You Do and Damned if You Don't: Afropessimism and Respectability Politics in Gordon Parks' The Learning Tree" - Roxana Walker-Canton, University of Maryland-Eastern Shore "Shaft: A Black Power Double Feature... Ya Dig!" - Daven Baptiste, University of Memphis Discussants: David Stovall, UIC Faheem Majeed, UIC |
| 1:00pm - 2:45pm | Session 6: A Choice of Weapons | UIC Great Cities Institute, Room 418 | Panelists: Tonika Johnson, Folded Map Project Kenn Cook, Jr., Legler Regional Library Michal Raz-Russo, The Gordon Parks Foundation Jimel Primm, Primm's Positive Space |
Conference Locations
Great Cities Institute, Room 413
The UIC Great Cities Institute (GCI) is located at 412 South Peoria Street, Suite 400, Chicago, IL 60607.
- GCI is near the Blue Line, Harrison (#7) bus, Halsted (#8) bus, Blue Island/26th (#60) bus, and Jackson (#126) bus. There is a drop-off area on Peoria Street. The closest parking structure is the Harrison Street Parking Structure (1100 W Harrison St) and near the intersection of Harrison & Racine.
- All-gender restrooms are in nearby UIC Art and Exhibition Hall (400 S. Peoria Street) on the 1st floor, rooms 1226 and 1228.
Daley Library, Room 1-470
The UIC Daley Library is located at 801 South Morgan Street, Chicago, IL 60607. Library Room 1-470 is located on the northwest side of the Library on the 1st floor. You can view a map of the UIC Daley Library here: https://library.uic.edu/libraries/daley/#daley-library-map.
- Daley Library is near the Blue Line, Roosevelt (#12) bus, Harrison (#7) bus, Halsted (#8) bus, and Taylor (#157) bus. There is a drop-off area on Morgan Street. The closest parking structure is the Harrison Street Parking Structure (1100 W Harrison St) and near the intersection of Harrison & Racine.
- Daley Library has an all-gender restroom on the 2nd floor, room 2343, near the south end of the building. Accessible restrooms are available on all floors of Daley Library.