PhiloDave
cnepstad
mathissexy
itejeda
writingisthinking
Kamran Swanson
Realist
Matt U.
domenicorocco
speechfromtheblock
casthwcFor anyone interested, I wanted to let you know about future opportunities to attend a variety of Chicago tours, arranged through the American Historical Association. If interested, please use the contact information named for each tour.
Tours for 2012 AHA Chicago: Schedule and Description
Updated 7/14/2011
| Date | Time | Tour |
| Wednesday, January 4 | 1:00pm – 4:30pm | Tour 1: Public Housing in Chicago |
| Wednesday, January 4 | 2:30pm – 5:00pm | Tour 2: Chicago History Museum: Facing Freedom |
| Thursday, January 5 | 2:00pm – 5:00pm | Tour 3: Polish and Ukrainian Museums |
| Thursday, January 5 | 2:30pm – 5:00pm | Tour 4: “Out in Chicago” |
| Thursday, January 5 | Noon – 6:00pm | On Site Workshop: ThatCamp: New Media |
| Friday, January 6 | 9:30am – Noon | Tour 5: Hull-House |
| Friday, January 6 | 9:30am – Noon | Tour 6: Newberry: Medieval Collections |
| Friday, January 6 | 2:30pm – 5:00pm | Tour 7: Newberry: Indigenous and Native peoples |
| Friday, January 6 | 2:00pm – 5:00pm | Tour 8: Black Metropolis |
| Friday, January 6 | 2:00pm – 5:00pm | Tour 9: National Museum of Mexican Art and Pilsen |
| Saturday, January 7 | 9:00am – Noon | Tour 10: Plan of Chicago |
| Saturday, January 7 | 10:00am – 1:00pm | Tour 11: Cambodian Museum and Killing Fields Memorial |
| Saturday, January 7 | 2:00pm – 5:30pm | Tour 12: World War II: The Lithuanian Experience |
| Saturday, January 7 | 2:00pm – 5:30pm | Tour 13: Evanston: Emma Willard House |
Tour 1: Public Housing in Chicago: Past and Present
Time: Wednesday, January 4, 1-4:30 pm.
Location: Various public housing sites in Chicago, both historical and present, including the future site of the National Public Housing Museum
Starting Location: Sheraton
Tour Leader: D. Bradford Hunt (Roosevelt University). Hunt is the author of Blueprint for Disaster: The Unraveling of Chicago Public Housing (University of Chicago Press, 2009).
Description: Chicago’s public housing has long been synonymous with urban segregation and problematic public policy. Today, most (but not all) of Chicago’s high-rise public housing has been torn down, replaced with low-rise “mixed-income” communities. We will tour several old and new projects as well as the site of the future National Public Housing Museum in the last of the Jane Addams Homes. Our tour will cover public housing in Chicago with all its hopes and struggles, its community and controversy.
Limit: Up to 35 people (how many can fit on the bus?). Much of the tour will be driving; depending on the weather, we may walk one or two sites.
Costs: Just for the bus.
Tour 2: The Chicago History Museum: Facing Freedom
Location: Chicago History Museum
Date, time: Wednesday, Jan. 4: 2:30-5:00 (3:00pm – 4:30pm at the Museum)
Starting location:
Bus from Sheraton to Chicago History Museum, 1601 N. Clark Street
Tour leader: Peter T. Alter, Chicago History Museum, alter@chicagohistory.org,
312-799-2054
Description: “Facing Freedom” is the Chicago History Museum’s newest permanent exhibit. Based on the central idea that the United States has been shaped by conflicts over freedom, this installation uses images, artifacts, and interactivity to explore eight stories about what it means to be free. Facing Freedom’s target audience is middle and high school students visiting the Museum on school group tours. An exhibit curator will provide participants with a tour of Facing Freedom and discuss the project team’s approaches to the target audience.
Limit: 15
Costs: No cost at Chicago History Museum; charge to cover the bus.
Tour 3: World War II and Its Aftermath: The Polish and Ukrainian Experiences
Time: Thursday, January 5, 2:00pm – 5:00pm
Thursday, January 5, 2012
2:00-5:00 (at UNM about 2:30-3:15 and at PMA about 3:35-4:30, including refreshments)
Ukrainian National Museum: Jerry Hankewych, Hankewych@msn.com, (312) 421-8020
Polish Museum of America: Jan Lorys, Jan-Lorys@polishmuseumofamerica.org, (773) 384-3352
The tour will visit the Ukrainian National Museum (UNM) and the Polish Museum of America (PMA), founded in 1937. The UNM’s current exhibition is “DP to DC, A Migration of Ukrainian People from Ukraine through Displaced Persons Camps (DP).” Visitors to the PMA will see the newly refurbished Paderewski Room, featuring memorabilia of Ignacy Jan Paderewski, pianist, composer, and head of the Polish government in exile. This tour is the only opportunity for AHA members to visit the UNM, which will be closed for Ukrainian Orthodox Christmas during the AHA conference.
Cost before bus fare: $16 per person: Ukrainian National Museum: $5 admission; Polish Museum of America: $7 admission + $4 refreshments/person
Tour 4: Chicago History Museum: Out in Chicago
Location: Chicago History Museum
Time: Thursday, January 5, 2:30 – 5:00pm
Starting Location: Sheraton
Tour Leader: Jennie Brier
Join curators Jennifer Brier (History at UIC) and Jill Austin (Chicago History Museum) for a behind the scenes tour of Out in Chicago, the Chicago History Museum’s 4,000 square foot exhibition detailing Chicago’s century and half long lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender history. Designed specifically for historians and scholars attending the Chicago conference, this curator-led tour will focus on how we transformed decades of historical scholarship on same-sex desire and gender non-conformity into a complex and emotionally charged public history display that appeals to a wide range of visitors.
Costs: Just for the bus.
Tour 5: Hull House Museum: Jane Addams and Chicago’s Near West Side
Location: Hull House Museum and driving tour of Near West Side
Time: Friday, January 6, 2012, 9:30 – Noon.
Starting Location: Sheraton
Tour Leader: Jeff Nichols (charingcross@gmail.com), Ph.D. Candidate, University of Illinois Chicago, will lead the group from the Sheraton and also do a bus tour before/after Hull House. At the museum, Lisa Yun Lee, Director of the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, and a member of the Art History, and Gender and Women’s Studies faculty at the University of Illinois at Chicago, will give tour.
Need Description
Costs: Donation of $5 per head is suggested. Just for the bus.
Tour 6: The Newberry Library: Medieval, Renaissance, and Early Modern Collections
Location: Newberry Library
Time (first choice): Friday, January 6, 9:30 – Noon (10:00 – 11:30 a.m. at location)
Starting location:
Bus from Sheraton to Newberry, 60 West Walton Street, between Clark and Dearborn.
Tour leaders:
Karen Christianson, Acting Director, The Newberry Center for Renaissance Studies
Paul F. Gehl, Custodian, John M. Wing Foundation on the History of Printing, The Newberry Library
Description: A tour behind the scenes and into the closed stacks of the renowned independent research library, including a hands-on rare books “show-and-tell” session focusing on medieval, Renaissance, and early modern manuscripts and other materials. The Newberry’s collections in this area are especially strong in book arts and printing; religion; maps, travel, and exploration; European colonialism; humanism, education, and rhetoric; and music and dance.
Limit: 30
Costs: No cost at Newberry; charge to cover cost of bus.
Tour 7: The Newberry Library: Indigenous and Settler Worlds in the Americas
Location: Newberry Library
Time, Friday, January 6, 2:30 – 5:00pm (3:00 – 4:30 p.m. actual time at location)
Starting location:
Bus from Sheraton to Newberry, 60 West Walton Street, between Clark and Dearborn.
Tour leaders:
James Akerman, Director, Hermon Dunlap Smith Center for the History of Cartography, The Newberry Library
Scott Stevens, Director, D’Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies, The Newberry Library
Description: An introduction to the renowned collections of the Newberry Library pertaining to a wide variety of fields within the history of the Americas. The tour will include a trip into the closed stacks and a hands-on display of rare books and other materials. Collection strengths include early encounters, conquests, exploration and mapping, missionary efforts, settlement, and indigenous resistance throughout North and South America. The materials in the collection range from books and manuscripts, maps and codices, to photographs and rare tribal newspapers. Visitors will learn about these holdings and the Newberry’s research and academic centers, and also take a look at a special spotlight exhibition commemorating the War of 1812.
Limit: 30
Costs: No cost at Newberry; charge to cover the bus
Tour 8: Black Metropolis: A tour of African American History on Chicago’s South Side
Location: Tour of Chicago’s South Side
Time: Friday, January 6, 2-5pm
Starting Location: Sheraton
Tour Leader: Christopher Reed, creed@roosevelt.edu
Chicago’s historic black neighborhood dubbed “Bronzeville” easily rivaled New York City’s Harlem as both an entertainment mecca and business center during the 1920s. The intersection of 35th and State Streets served as epicenter for a variety of activities and attracted thousands daily as well as nightly who “strolled” the broad walkway and either danced the night away or sat spellbound as Louie Armstrong blew notes so penetrating that a second Chicago Fire appeared imminent. Pugilist Jack Johnson’s Cafe du Champion beckoned also as did other interracial dens of pleasure and dreams. Several architectural remnants of those days past still beckon alluringly to the historically-minded visitor.
Costs: Just for the bus
Tour 9: The National Museum of Mexican Art: Mexican Culture and Chicago’s Pilsen Community
Location: National Museum of Mexican Art, 1852 W. 19th Street, Chicago, IL
Starting Location: Sheraton
Friday, 2-5:00pm
Leaders: Valeria Jiménez, Northwestern University, plus on-site guide Monsy Hernández, 312-738-1503, extension 3950. Her e-mail address is monsy@nationalmuseumofmexicanart.org.
Need description
Costs: $60 total for group tour, payable to the Museum. Plus bus.
Tour 10: Chicago Explored: Legacy of Daniel Burnham and Edward Bennett’s 1909 Plan of Chicago
Time: Saturday, January 7, 2012, from 9:00am – Noon.
Tour leader: Dennis McClendon (dennis@chicagocarto.com)
Location: Various places in Central City by bus
Starting Location: Sheraton
Description: Daniel Burnham and Edward Bennett’s 1909 vision for the city is still revered a century later. But the plan’s actual results are often misunderstood or forgotten. This bus tour of the central city will look at the Plan’s physical legacies: Navy Pier, North Michigan Avenue, Northerly Island, a straightened river, Ogden Avenue, Congress Parkway, Union Station, Wacker Drive. We will look at projects that greatly benefited the city, at proposals that later generations reconsidered, and at heroic accomplishments that in the end meant little. All participants will receive the booklet “The Plan of Chicago: A Regional Legacy.”
Tour 11: Cambodian American Heritage Museum: the Killing Fields Memorial
Saturday, January 7, 2012, 10:00-1:00 (at the museum from about 10:30-12:15)
Need Tour Leader, Description
Cost before bus fare $5 per person admission
Tour 12: World War II and Its Aftermath: The Lithuanian Experience
Time: Friday, January 6, 2012, 2:00-5:30 pm (arrive at museum 2:45, leave at least by 4:45)
Travel by bus to Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture
6500 S. Pulaski Rd.
Chicago, IL 60629
Tour leaders:
Someone from the AHA Local Arrangements Committee will accompany the bus.
Dr. Audrius Plioplys, initiator and chair of the exhibition and program series Hope and Spirit, will lead the tour.
Description:
For the 70th anniversary of the start of mass deportations From Lithuania to the Soviet Gulag (1941-53), the Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture has collaborated with The Museum of Genocide Victims in Vilnius, Lithuania, and Lithuanian Research and Studies Center in Chicago for an Exhibition and series of programs entitled “Hope and Spirit.” Dr. Audrius Plioplys will lead a special tour of the exhibition. The permanent exhibition War After War: Armed Anti-Soviet Resistance in Lithuania in 1944-1953 covers the crimes of the Soviet occupation and the fate of Lithuanian freedom fighters and victims of Soviet genocide. If there is time, the tour will include the 30-minute documentary film Ice in June (2001, English subtitles), which recounts the physical and spiritual destruction of the Lithuanian nation during the first Soviet occupation and the June 1941 deportations. Survivors—Irena Valaitytė-Špakauskienė, Ričardas Vaičekauskas, Rytė Merkytė and others—reminisce about their exile near the Laptev Sea. The drawings of Gintautas Martinaitis accompany their stories.
Tour limit: 30 people
Fee: $5 for admission
Pass Through: If there are any costs that will be passed through from the AHA to the tour site, such as an admission fee, please note the exact amount per person and the name and address where the funds should be sent following the annual meeting. I will coordinate payments. (I have found that this works much better than trying to collect admission fees from tour participants on site.)
$5 per person.
Send check, following the tour, to:
Rita Janz
Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture
6500 S. Pulaski Rd.
Chicago, IL 60629
Logistics: Name, e-mail address, and phone number of the person at the site who can answer questions about the tour, plus the name of the member of the LAC who is organizing the tour.
Rita Janz, Balzekas@sbcglobal.net, (773) 582-6500
Tour organizer from AHA LAC: Peg Strobel, peg.strobel@sbcglobal.net, 708-829-3912 cell
Tour 13: Frances Willard House Museum and Archives: Behind and Beyond the Scenes of the Temperance Movement
Location: Frances Willard House Museum, 1730 Chicago Avenue, Evanston, IL
Time: First choice: Saturday, January 7—2:00 – 5:30 p.m.
Starting location: Bus from Sheraton to Evanston (a 45-minute drive each way).
Tour leaders: Amy Tyson (DePaul University) will coordinate leading the group from the hotel to the site. Carolyn DeSwarte Gifford (Northwestern University), author of Writing Out My Heart: Selections from the Journal of Frances E. Willard (1855-96) will narrate the bus tour to Evanston; Mary McWilliams (WCTU Site Manager) will lead tours of the historic house; Erin Hughes (Evanston History Center) will provide an overview of the collections; Janet Olson (Northwestern University) will open the Willard Archives and discuss its holdings.
Description: Historians are increasingly interested in the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) as a force in women’s history beyond the temperance movement. The Frances Willard House—a museum since 1900, and a National Historic Landmark since 1965—with its original furnishings (including Willard’s working library), offers general visitors a unique sensory experience of history. For the AHA, this special tour will highlight how docents interpret a site with multiple periods of significance and multiple themes: Willard’s life, her leadership of the largest women’s organization of its time, and the national and international reach of the WCTU. The tour of the Willard Archives, a “hidden collection” open only by appointment, will survey its rich but virtually untapped resources relating to the organization and its constituents.
Limit: Up to 40 people can be accommodated at the site. Please note, however, that the House and Archives are not handicapped accessible. Guests will need to navigate stairs and be able to stand for approximately 1 hour.
Costs: $5/person for groups of more than 8 persons. $10/person for groups smaller than 8 persons. Please remit admissions fees to Frances Willard Historical Association, attn. Glen Madeja 1730 Chicago Avenue, Evanston IL 60201.
On-Site Workshop: New Media Workshop: “ThatCamp”
Date: Thursday, January 5, 1-6pm
Location: Sheraton or Sheraton
Dan Cohen, George Mason University and Director, Center for History and New Media
THATCamp (The Humanities and Technology Camp) is a free, open “unconference” where attendees create sessions, ideas, and collaborations on the spot. There are no podiums or PowerPoint slides; instead, campers learn directly from one another. THATCamp is a productive and fun event for scholars and technologists, digital humanities practitioners and those who don’t know much about digital humanities but wish to learn.
