The Up the Street Series is a student-organized series that invites a political theorist from the surrounding Chicago area to present their current work. We may also occasionally host hybrid events with speakers from outside Chicago. The Up the Street series is run by workshop co-chairs Charlotte Mencke and Jinxue Chen.
2023–24
- November 10:
Ella Myers (Political Science and Gender Studies, University of Utah)
“The Jane Collective and the Material Politics of Direct Adress”
Discussed by Amanda Fu
- May 10:
Lawrence Svabek (Political Science and Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity, University of Chicago)
“Beyond the State: W.E.B. DuBois and the African American Cooperative Movement”
Past Up the Street Speakers
2022–23
- February 10:
Valentina Moro (Philosophy, University of Verona/DePaul University)
“Staging Tragic Agonism: Language, Aesthetics, and the Bodies in Sophocles’ Theatre”
Discussed by Sam McChesney - April 14:
Joanildo Burity (Sociology and Political Science, Federal University of Pernambuco, Joaquim Nabuco Foundation)
“Evangelical-Capitalist Resonance Machine or Right-Wing Populism: Religious Politics in Brazil”
Discussed by Lauren Baker
2021–22
- November 19:
Yuna Blajer de la Garza (Political Science, Loyola University Chicago)
“Conceptualizing Belonging for Democratic Theory”
Discussed by Nathalia Justo - February 18:
Andrés Fabián Henao Castro (Political Science, University of Massachusetts Boston)
“Decolonial Ruminations on a Classic: Medea, Seth, and la Llorona”
Discussed by Charlotte Mencke - May 6:
Fanny Söderbäck (Philosophy, DePaul University)
“Sexual Violence as Ontological Violence: Narration, Selfhood, and the Destruction of Singularity”
Discussed by Tim Charlebois - May 20:
Elisabeth Anker (American Studies, George Washington University)
“White and Deadly: Sugar and the Sweet Taste of Freedom”
Published in 2022 in Ugly Freedoms (Duke University Press)
Discussed by Shah Zeb Chaudhary
2020–21
- Ainsley LeSure (Africana Studies, Brown University)
“Another World is Possible: Reading Black Skin, White Masks Phenomenologically”
Discussed by Lucien Ferguson - Kevin Duong (Politics, University of Virginia)
“Freud in the Tropics”
Published in 2021 as “Freud sous les tropiques” in Les cahiers philosophiques de Strasbourg 50, 13–52.
Discussed by Tim Charlebois - Rafael Vizcaíno (Philosophy, DePaul University)
“Latin American Thought and the Dialectics of Secularization”
Discussed by Usdin Martínez - Daniela Cammack (Political Science, University of California, Berkeley)
“Representation in Ancient Greek Democracy”
Published in 2021 in History of Political Thought 42 (4): 567–601.
Discussed by Sam McChesney
2019–20
- Jennifer Forestal (Political Science, Loyola University Chicago)
“r/democracy: Flexible Spaces, Experimental Habits, and the Problem of Self-Segregation”
Published in 2021 in Designing for Democracy: How to Build Community in Digital Environments (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Discussed by Kyle Jones
2018–19
- Ross Carroll (Politics, University of Exeter)
“A Refusal to Argue: Ridicule in Scottish Enlightenment Polemics Against Slavery
Published in 2021 in Uncivil Mirth: Ridicule in Enlightenment Britain (Princeton: Princeton University Press).
Discussed by Emre Gercek - Adom Getachew (Political Science, University of Chicago)
“Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination”
Published in 2019 in Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination (Princeton: Princeton University Press)
Discussed by Owen Brown
2017–18
- Shmulik Nili (Political Science, Northwestern University)
“Too Big to Fail and Too Big to Jail? A Strategic Response to Corporate Crime” - Amanda Gouws (Political Science, Stellenbosch University)
“Young Radical, African, Intersectional Feminists in the #EndRapeCulture Campaign in South Africa: Thinking about Intersectionality and the Matrix of Domination”
Published in 2017 in Agenda 31 (1).
Discussed by Rhiannon Auriemma - José Medina (Philosophy, Northwestern University)
“No Justice, No Peace: Protest and the Politics of Confrontation”
Published 2020 in Protest and Dissent: NOMOS LXII, edited by Melissa Schwartzberg.
Discussed by Malia Bowers - Jeff Rice (Political Science, Northwestern University)
“Radical Actions at NU: From the 1968 Bursars Office Takeover to the Student Strike in 1970″
Discussed by James Farr
2016–17
- Loubna El Amine (Political Science, Northwestern University)
“Beyond East and West: A Reorientation of Political Theory Through the Prism of Modernity”
Published in 2016 in Perspectives on Politics 14 (1): 102–120.
Discussed by Rhiannon Auriemma - Jennifer C. Nash (African American Studies and Gender & Sexuality Studies, Northwestern University)
“Feeling Black Feminism”
Published in 2019 in Black Feminism Reimagined: After Intersectionality (Durham, NC: Duke University Press).
Discussed by Malia Bowers - Dana Naomy Mills (Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities, Bard College)
“Dance and Politics: Moving Beyond Boundaries”
Published in 2016 in Dance and Politics: Moving Beyond Boundaries (Manchester: Manchester University Press). - Demetra Kasimis (Political Science, University of Chicago)
“The Metic In and Out of Theory”
Published in 2018 in The Perpetual Immigrant and the Limits of Athenian Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Discussed by Boris Litvin
2015–16
- David Lay Williams (Political Science, DePaul University)
“Forestalling ‘the ever-widening inequality of fortunes’: Jean-Jacques Rousseau on Economic Inequality and the General Will.”
Discussed by Emre Gercek - Charles Mills (Philosophy, Northwestern University)
“Racial Equality”
Published in 2015 in The Equal Society: Essays on Equality in Theory and Practice, edited by George Hull (Lanham, MA: Lexington Books).
Discussed by Chris Sardo - John P. McCormick (Political Science, University of Chicago)
“Faulty Foundings and Failed Reformers in Machiavelli’s Florentine Histories”
Published in 2017 in American Political Science Review 111 (1).
Discussed by Boris Litvin
2014–15
- Laura Ephraim (Political Science, Williams College)
“Get Real: Towards an Agonistic Scientific Populism”
Discussed by Javier Burdman - Thomas Meredith (Political Science, University of Toronto)
“An Unlikely Moderate: Self-Reflection and Self-Restraint in Nietzsche’s Thought”