Accomplishments

Visual & Critical Studies Department Highlights

Professor Romi Crawford published a monograph, Cauleen Smith: Breaking Cinema. Experimental Film 2010–2023 (Mousse, 2024), and contributed essays to the catalogs Tavares Strachan - In Broad Daylight (Isolated Publishing x Perrotin, 2023) and Is Anything The Matter? Drawings by Laylah Ali (Research & Development, 2024).

Associate Professor, Adj. Josh Rios and his Sonic Testimonio performance featured in the Summer Slab Series at The Capsule in Chicago. The Charlotte Street Foundation in Kansas City featured excerpts from Rios' Lightning Snatched from the Tyrant of Time, which mixes sonic installation with collage works dealing with social political notion of being out of time, belatedness, and anachronism. In January, Rios facilitated the autonomous study group Sound, Power, and Culture IV, with Johann Diedrick, supported by March: A Journal of Art and Strategy and the Great Lakes Association of Sound Studies. Rios and Deanna Ledezma gave an artist talk at the "Reworking Communities of Practice" colloquium, James Gallery, Center for the Humanities, CUNY. Rios, Ledezma and Anthony Romero are preparing a collaborative exhibition and book project for the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, entitled The Place Where the Creek Goes Underground. Rios' collaborative chapter on Latinx experiences of power within a Sound Studies framework is forthcoming in Situated Listening: Attending to the Unheard (Routledge, 2025). 

Professor Shawn Michelle Smith's essay "The Evidence of Lynching Photographs" was translated into German and published in the edited collection Gewaltsames Wissen (Violent Knowledge), edited by Adam Czirak, Barbara Gronau, and Sebastian Köthe. She also co-wrote (with Maurice Wallace) a piece on Frederick Douglass published in the book Collaboration: A Potential History of Photography, edited by Ariella Azoulay, Wendy Ewald, Susan Meiselas, Leigh Raiford, and Laura Wexler. She was invited to consult with scholars and curators at the National Gallery of Art about a new collection of early African American photography at the Ross J. Kelbaugh Collection Study Day, and she gave an invited talk on the work of Ken Gonzales-Day at the University of British Columbia. Her artwork Reading Uncle Tom's Cabin was exhibited at The Gallery at Penn College in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.

Professor Joseph Grigely had a major survey: In What Way Wham? (White Noise and Other Works, 1996–2023) at Mass MoCA (May 2023–June 2024). The exhibition and Grigely were profiled by Max Norman in The New Yorker. Grigely's recent group exhibitions include Museum Without Borders at Kunstmuseen Krefield (catalogue); In Conversation: The Museum and the Collection, Es Baluard Museu d’Art Contemporani de Palma; À Table!, Galerie Robespierre, Grande-Synthe; Speech lives in a series of daily attempts: artists & publishing at the Wagner Foundation, Boston (catalogue); Tell Me What You Want at Bel Ami, Los Angeles; and Circus: Contemporary Art Gstaad (with Air de Paris, Paris). Grigely's recent publications include a book, Acknowledgments (Mass MoCA, 2024), and an editioned game of flash cards titled 50 Words (Mass MoCA, 2023). He also contributed to Remember to Dream!  Ed. Hans Ulrich Obrist (London, Heni, 2023). During the past year Grigely also completed two book-length manuscripts: Disability Shit and Otherhow: Essays and Documents on Art and Disability, both forthcoming in 2025. In February 2024, Grigely received the American Museum of Fly Fishing's Austin Hogan Award for his essay on trout flies and angling history, "Edward Hewitt and the Neversink Skater," which appeared in the Journal of the American Museum of Fly Fishing, Vol. 49, No. 2 (Spring 2023). He also wrote and organized "A Selection of Flies and Fly-Tying Materials," in Tongue and Cheek, ed. Tim Simonds, which will be published by the Montez Press, London.

Associate Professor, Adj. Patrick Durgin published a prose poem, culled from his ongoing series of "exegeses," in a special issue of Bath House Journal (#25, Surveying the Border). In late June, Durgin read his and others' translations of Miyo Vestrini with Clara Briceño Zappacosta and the editorial team of extrême contemporain at the EXC Librarie in Paris, a tri-lingual event to celebrate the publication of Grenade dans la bouche. Durgin and frequent collaborator Jen/Eleana Hofer composed a remembrance of Lyn Hejinian in the form of an open letter, published this spring by Jacket2. Durgin also collaborated with Every house has a door to publish Glimmerings and Constellations: Creative and Critical Responses / Selected Plays of Jay Wright, Volume Three. "Right now I am editing a second, expanded edition of Hannah Weiner's Open House for Nightboat Books, revising and expanding the introductory essay for that book, and finishing a full-length book of poetry and hybrid-genre texts. Both books should appear in 2026." 

Professor, Adj. Terri Kapsalis's work on the history of the speculum and experimentation on enslaved women was featured in a viral video on xiaohongshu, Chinese social media and her appearance on Gastr del Sol's "Harp Factory on Lake Street" was reissued as part of Drag City's lavish box set We Have Dozens of Titles. Kapsalis is in the finishing stages of a book project that began as a reading at the Poetry Foundation in May 2023.  

Assistant Professor, Adj. Danny Floyd has spent the summer devouring poetry, which has initiated a project excerpting phrases from the readings into sculptural objects working towards a room-sized installation. He spent time working on this project while serving as the Programming Manager for session two of Artists' Cooperative Residency and Exhibitions' (ACRE) summer residency program in the Driftless Region of Wisconsin. While in this position at ACRE, he facilitated opportunities for learning and sharing work by staff and residents, including his own workshop on wheel throwing.

Professor Karen Morris: "My colleagues and I wrapped up the 5th year of the LGBTQ+ Intergenerational Dialogue Project, and are getting ready to welcome a new cohort of 30 older and younger adults. This year will be the 2nd year of a 3-year research study funded by the Spencer Foundation that assesses the impact of intergenerational learning for LGBTQ+ people and the potential of intergenerational dialogue as a tool within LGBTQ+ education. We have a forthcoming publication in American Psychologist. Over the summer, we organized events for project alumni including a queer elder history panel at a local lesbian bar and a gallery tour and portrait session with renowned Pilsen photographer (and project alum) Diana Solis. Last spring, I joined the Board of Directors of One Roof Chicago, a non-profit organization I've been working with for two years developing an intergenerational residential community on the South Side of Chicago for LGBTQ+ older adults and young people most in need of affirming housing and social services. This summer, I wrote an op-ed on LGBTQ+ intergenerational connection for the Chicago Reader's 2024 Pride Issue."

Associate Professor Kamau Patton premiered a new piece, Sekhet Hetepu, and presented screenings of archival films and videos from the Sun Ra/El Saturn Collection at Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago—including Phill Niblock’s experimental film of the Arkestra The Magic Sun, rarely seen archival interview and performance footage, music videos created by Sun Ra and the Arkestra in collaboration with Bill Sebastian and his “visual music instrument” (the OVC), a rare audio recording of one of Sun Ra’s UC Berkeley lectures, and more. The program was held in Chicago this April and presented by Roulette, in collaboration with Experimental Sound Studio. Patton also contributed work to Artpapers' special project, guest edited by SAIC alum Sherae Rimpsey, Afterlife Geographies | The Past and Other Dreams. He also contributed to the "Dream Path" section of Creative Time's Cosmologyscape.

Professor Emerita Maud Lavin: "This sixth year of my READINGS series at Printers Row Wine continues to be a beaut. And I did a reading gig at U Chicago's Gray Center with Taylor Byas, Faylita Hicks, Nicky Ni, Mallory Qiu, and Rachel DeWoskin, which we then gathered for the Gray's journal Portable Gray into a portfolio; along with our words, we included others by some regulars from READINGS like Calvin Forbes and Sungjae Lee. It's out now in the Spring Portable Gray. I was nominated for a Pushcart in fiction by Papeachu Press, a Best of the Net in poetry by Roi Faineant, and a Best of the Net in creative nonfiction by Heimat Review. Cowboy Jamboree Press is publishing my CNF chapbook SILENCES, OHIO—cover designed by Adam van Winkle. And on May 13, From Beyond Press will publish my eco-novella MERMAIDS AND LAZY ACTIVISTS: A LAKE MICHIGAN TALE, which was really fun to write. Part of the proceeds will go to the nonprofit FLOW: For Love of Water. My heart is in both works."