ChicagoHamburg30

In this first of three episodes about Chicago avant-garde music, Dr. Douglas Cowie and DJ Kara "Slim" Rusch introduce you to the two key organizations that shaped the scene: the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) and the Art Ensemble of Chicago (AEC).

They discuss the history of jazz in Chicago as well as the problem of using the word "jazz" to categorize this unique musical form. They also analyze the 9 purposes of the AACM and highlight the preferred term that the musicians themselves used to describe their music: Great Black Music.

Check out the two albums discussed in this episode on YouTube here:

Bap-Tizum (live at the Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival, 1972)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CasRSGYX3ds&list=PLyHn3f7-9IUL3EXNjKRrnHsd_JXwnDxRD

Fanfare for the Warriors (studio album, 1973) at

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaVAsP0DCzs

The definitive book about the AACM and the AEC is by George E. Lewis, A Power Stronger than Itself (U. of Chicago Press, 2007).

Thank you to CIMP for giving us permission to share Anthony Braxton's first track from 8 Compositions (2001).

Chicago is always associated with the Mafia boss Al Capone. But what is the real history of organized crime in the city? When did it begin? What social and economic forces helped it grow? And how did machine politicians, in alliance with gangsters like Al Capone, shape the city?

In this episode, we dissect the connections between vice and politics in the city from its origins to the present with two expert guests: retired Chicago Police Officer and Professor of Criminology Robert Lombardo (Loyola University) and author and expert on Jewish gangs in Chicago Professor Joe Kraus (University of Scranton).

Topics include the origins of vice in the Levy District, the early connections between politicians and criminal activity, the Black Hand, Jewish gangs, Prohibition, and the evolution of the Italian Mafia from its early days as the Capone Syndicate through the emergence of the Outfit.

No industry shaped Chicago more decisively than the meatpacking industry, and no book exposed the rapacious, exploitative and vicious character of the meatpacking industry more than Upton Sinclair's The Jungle (1906).

In this episode, we explore the origins and explosive growth of the meatpacking industry, the brutal working conditions on the bloody killing floors, the emergence of literature about Chicago in the early 1900s, the importance of Lithuanians in Chicago history, the life of Upton Sinclair, his urban realist and naturalist writing style, and his political ideas as seen in The Jungle.

Our expert guests are historian Dr. Dominic Pacyga, co-founder of Chicago's Packingtown Museum, and novelist Dr. Douglas Cowie, creator of the Literature of Chicago Course at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Visit the Packingtown Museum, voted the best small museum in Chicago. More information is available here: https://www.packingtownmuseum.org/

Happy Pride Month!

We celebrate with an episode about Queer Chicago featuring two historians of Queer History, Owen Keehnen and Timothy Stewart-Winter.

Topics include the following:

Check out Owen's Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/owenkeehnen/

In our third episode celebrating Jewish American History Month for the ChicagoHamburg30 Sister-City Anniversary podcast, we turn to the career of Studs Terkel. Studs was the child of Russian Jewish immigrants, a Pultizer-Prize winning author, and a celebrated oral historian. He became the voice of Chicago over his lengthy career as a radio host.

The conversation touches on many themes, including his seminal work, Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do (1974) and Division Street: America (1967).

Our expert guests are Peter T. Alter, Chief Historian at the Chicago History Museum and Director of the Studs Terkel Oral History Center.

Mark Larson is an oral historian and author of Working in the 21st Century: An Oral History of American Work in a Time of Social and Economic Transformation (2024).

You can buy Mark Larson's books here: https://rb.gy/ajivqf

Don't forget to visit the Chicago History Museum's research materials here: https://www.chicagohistory.org/

And you can listen to the Studs Terkel Radio Archive here: https://studsterkel.wfmt.com/

"I am an American, Chicago born—-Chicago, that somber city-—and go at things as I have taught myself, freestyle, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent." -The opening lines of The Adventures of Augie March (1953)

In this episode celebrating Jewish American Heritage Month, Douglas Cowie and Riley Moore (Royal Holloway, U. of London) discuss The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow, the most decorated American author, who won three National Book Awards, a Pulitzer Prize, as well as the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976.

Bellow was a 'dreamer,' for he was a Jewish immigrant who entered the United States illegally with his parents as a chid. The Bellows settled in Chicago where Saul was raised. As an undocumented migrant, he could not enlist in the army during World War II despite his desire to join the war effort, and this disappointment influenced much of his writing.

In this show, our expert guests discuss the connections between Bellow's life and the life of Augie March as well as the unique authorial style of Bellow. They also assess the claim that Augie March is the Great American Novel.

Happy Jewish American Heritage Month! In this episode, we explore the rich and complex history of Jewish Chicago, from the 1850s to the present.

Topics include the following:

-the first Jewish settlers and politicians in Chicago

Throughout, you will learn about famous Jewish Chicagoans, such as Henry Greenebaum, Dankmar Adler, Edward Solomon, Hannah Shapiro, Joseph Schaffner, and Julius Rosenwald.

Our expert guests are Dr. Tobias Brinkmann (Penn State University) and Dr. Joe Kraus (University of Scranton).

In this episode celebrating Chicago poets for National Poetry Month, Douglas Cowie and Adrienne Brown (University of Chicago) discuss the life and poetry of Pulitzer-Prize-winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks. They talk about her poems that document life in Chicago, "Kitchenette Building," "In the Mecca," "Chicago Picasso," and "The Wall," and unpack the social, economic, racial, cultural, and political history that informs her life and work.

Please see these links for further information about topics mentioned in the episode:

Gwendolyn Brooks and others reading her poetry:

The Library of Congress Audio: https://www.loc.gov/item/85755182/

The Wall of Respect (City of Chicago, Department of Cultural Affairs):

https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/dca/supp_info/wall_of_respect.html

History of The Mecca and IIT (Segregation by Design):

https://www.segregationbydesign.com/chicago/iit-and-the-mecca-flats

Tool maker, Stacker of Wheat,

They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.

Happy National Poetry Month! We will celebrate poetry by featuring two episodes about two giants of Chicago poetry: Carl Sandburg and Gwendolyn Brooks.

In our first episode, host Douglas Cowie and his guest, Professor Michael Coyle (Colgate University), discuss Carl Sandburg's 1919 collection, Chicago Poems.

The panel discusses the origins of Chicago's Poetry Magazine, which is the oldest English-language publication devoted to poetry. They also contrast Sandburg's popular, everyman style with the literary elitism of Modernist poets, such Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot.

Sandburg's poetry is now in the public domain. You can find his work at many sites, including http://www.esp.org/books/sandburg/chicago/chicago-poems.pdf

Our Women's History Month Literature of Chicago episode features a classic novel about a Latina girl coming of age in Chicago by a Latina Chicagoan:The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

Host Douglas Cowie and his guest, poet and teacher Alina Borger, begin by exploring why the novel makes for useful study on a high school curriculum. They then embark on a wide-ranging discussion about the novel's structure, its status as a Chicago novel, and the many themes that emerge from its core narrative as a story about a Latina girl's tentative steps towards adolescence.