Whitewashing the Violence of the Local State
Steve Macek
In this entry in our Policing & the Media roundtable, Steve Macek reflects on the long history of police violence in Chicago and the media's complicity with that history.
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Recollections and Reflections on Chicago
Margaret Schwartz
Beginning with a series of personal recollections, the author reflects upon the politics of racial identity and the militarization of urban space.
As Chicago Goes, So Goes the Nation?
Brendan Kredell
Beginning the second round of our Policing and the Media roundtable, Brendan Kredell considers how the McDonald killing fits into a history of police violence in Chicago and across the nation.
The Past Remains Present
Joy Bivins
In this Policing and the Media entry, Joy Bivins explores the vulnerability of young black bodies and contrasts the legacies of Emmett Till and Laquan McDonald.
A Private Grief Made Public
Margaret Schwartz
In this post in our Policing and the Media roundtable, Margaret Schwartz considers how spectacular police violence imperils the right to grieve in private.
Framing a Shooting (and a Movement)
Steve Macek
In this entry in our Policing and the Media roundtable, Steve Macek explores the backstory of the Laquan McDonald shooting and the different ways that Chicago media outlets covered the story.
Policing and the Media: An Introduction
Brendan Kredell
Among the thirty seven people shot by police in 2014, it is Laquan McDonald’s death that has catalyzed public reaction; thanks to the existence of video documentation, we can see what happened with our own eyes. This seemingly simple observation belies a much more complex set of issues regarding the relationship between policing and media in the contemporary moment. With this roundtable, we seek to investigate those in some greater detail.
From the Editors’ Desk: On the Visible
The Editors
This issue addresses questions of visibility in terms of scholarly method, the structure of the academy, and its impact on public bodies and the body politic.
Spaces of Spectatorship: Architectures of the Projected Image
Swagato Chakravorty
Moving-image installations and media architecture have recently given renewed currency to established notions of dispositif, apparatus, and spectatorship. These concepts have allowed for new inquiries into the relationships among screens, viewers, and space in the urban context. In this Polished Panel, the participants use close analyses of peripheral practices of projection to illuminate the centrality of architecture to spectatorial experience.
Methodologies of Race and Space
Noelle Griffis
Mediated cityscapes often reinforce the stigma associated with devalued areas and the underprivileged, yet can also undermine dominant perceptions and counter misrepresentations of place. In this Polished Panel, the participants map that tension that emerges between real and represented places, using a spatial approach to race to trace formal and industrial practices that create meaningful linkages among spaces, places, and bodies.
Mapping Urban Horror
Zachary Price
Of all popular film genres, horror perhaps makes the most consistent and flexible use of space. This use maps out landscapes of power, repression, and displacement. In this Polished Panel, the participants propose to use horror as a map of gentrification and its spectre of racialized violence.
Syllabus: Cinema and the City
Nathan Holmes
What are the best practices for introducing students to the complex of film and urbanism? Does that change depending on who the students are, or what the instructor is working on? In this installment of On Teaching, Nathan Holmes presents two different "Cinema and the City" syllabi that he prepared five years apart for use in two distinct institutional contexts.