Presenter: 

Disrupting geographical and literary boundaries, this session reintroduces work by Chicago writers not in the context of a “Second City” in a generic Midwest, but as one center of Great Lakes/Rust Belt cultures. How do factors likes deindustrialization, economic migration, and globalization redefine writers like Saul Bellow, Jeffery Renard Allen, and Daniela Olszewska? Where does one locate Chicago on the compass: north, west, or even south?