Social Justice Institute at ASA 2026

The Social Justice Institute is a unique collaboration between the Social Justice Initiative at University of Illinois Chicago and the American Studies Association. Hosted primarily at the Chicago Justice Gallery, SJI’s art and event space on the UIC campus, the Institute is designed to foster and deepen connections between social justice scholars and to bring members of the ASA community together with some of the key thinkers, organizers, writers, artists, and community members who are working toward social justice in Chicago and its surrounding communities.

The Social Justice Institute is open to the public, and we invite ASA members as well as the broader community to attend. All sessions except for the environmental justice tour are free. Each session requires separate registration. There will be a free shuttle between the Palmer House ASA conference site and our UIC venues during programming hours.

We hope you’ll join us.

SESSION DESCRIPTIONS

Please note that each session is first come, first serve for seating. We kindly request that you register for each session you plan on attending to assist us in planning our food and refreshment orders.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 22

We Call Each Other: A Film Screening & Pedagogical Workshop
10.22.26 | 2:00 - 4:00 PM | Chicago Justice Gallery (1344 S. Halsted Street)

Facilitated by filmmaker Sarah Oberholtzer.

We Call Each Other is a short film written and directed by independent filmmaker Sarah Oberholtzer that is designed as a tool for engaging with students and community members around abolitionist principles of safety and repair. During this workshop, attendees will have the opportunity to watch the film before engaging in a discussion and series of exercises with the filmmaker about how to integrate this film, and creative storytelling more broadly, into lessons about moving beyond carceral responses to harm and crisis.

From Blitz to Surge: Alt Media in a Time of Crisis
10.22.26 | 6:00 - 7:30 PM | Chicago Justice Gallery (1344 S. Halsted Street)

Facilitated by Natalie Y. Moore (Northwestern University). Panelists include Dan Feidt (Unicorn Riot), Niko Georgiades (Unicorn Riot), Madison McVan (Minnesota Reformer), Vanan Murugesan (Sahan Journal), Ari Bloomekatz (In These Times), and Aydali Campa (Investigative Project on Race & Equity).

Beginning in late 2025, immigration enforcement actions in the Chicagoland and Twin Cities metro areas led to the deaths of three people and the arrests and detentions of thousands of immigrants, while also disrupting and traumatizing local communities for weeks at a time and sparking protests across the nation. In this session, reporters and journalists at alternative media outlets that closely covered operations Midway Blitz and Metro Surge come together for a discussion about the realities and consequences of their work and the necessity of continuing their essential reporting in the face of the ongoing ICE onslaughts across the country.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23

Black Studies Under Fire
10.23.26 | Panel from 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM,  lunch & breakout sessions from 12:00 - 1:00 PM
LOCATION NOTE: UIC Student Center East, Tower Room 301 (750 S. Halsted Street)

Facilitated by Charlene Carruthers (Founding Director, Black Youth Project 100). Panelists include Jafari Allen (Columbia University), Roderick Ferguson (Yale University), Jaden Janak (St. Olaf College), Barbara Ransby (University of Illinois Chicago), Ashanté Reese (University of Texas at Austin), and Ula Taylor (University of California, Berkeley).

On March 5, 2026, a cohort of colleagues at Columbia University led by Jafari Allen convened a national forum on Black studies in the wake of a series of Black and Africana studies departments and programs being cut, defunded, and consolidated across the country within the span of a few short weeks. This session, an extension of that critical March convening, provides a space for Black studies scholars to collectively strategize how to respond to the escalating attacks on the field and on scholars and students of color more broadly. The panel discussion will be followed by lunch and an opportunity to gather with colleagues in smaller break-out sessions.

Dispatches from the Midwest
10.23.26 | Panel & book signing 1:00 - 3:00 PM | Chicago Justice Gallery (1344 S. Halsted Street)

Facilitated by Delia Fernández-Jones (Michigan State University) and Terrion Williamson (University of Illinois Chicago). Panelists include Kasey Keeler (University of Wisconsin-Madison), Rebecca Jo Kinney (Bowling Green State University), Jacqueline Lazú (DePaul University), Juan Ignacio Mora (Indiana University Bloomington), Thomas Xavier Sarmiento (Kansas State University), Michael Staudenmaier (2025-'26 Mellon Rooted+Relational Fellow at Hunter College), David Stovall (University of Illinois Chicago), and Elizabeth Todd-Breland (University of Illinois Chicago).

Facilitated by the editors of the University of Nebraska book series Reimagining Race and Region in the American Midwest, this session brings together authors of recently published books that center the stories, experiences, and struggles of racialized Midwestern communities that are often left out of popular narratives of “flyover country.” While highlighting and celebrating each of these books, we will also strategize how to collaborate across institutions and disciplinary fields to build a capacious Midwestern studies that is rooted in a commitment to racial, economic, and social justice. The session will be followed by a collective book signing with the authors. Books will be available to purchase.

Black Midwest Initiative Reception
10.23.26 | 3:00 - 5:00 PM | Chicago Justice Gallery (1344 S. Halsted Street)

A reception for members of the BMI community and anyone interested in the life, culture, or work of Black people in the Midwest.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 24

Environmental Justice Tour
10.24.26 | 10:00 AM - 1:00 PM | $50 fee to be paid separately
LOCATION NOTE: Bus pickup at the Palmer House hotel (17 E. Monroe Street)

Co-sponsored by the Black Midwest Initiative and UIC Freshwater Lab.

Join the pre-sale list today! Additional details to be announced soon. Space is limited.

Familial Activism Toward the End of Carceral Violence
10.24.26 | Panel & book signing 2:00 - 4:00 PM | Chicago Justice Gallery (1344 S. Halsted Street)

Facilitated by Avalon Betts-Gaston (Illinois Alliance for Reentry & Justice). Panelists include Souzan Naser (Moraine Valley Community College), Erica Meiners (Northeastern Illinois University), Nadine Naber (University of Illinois Chicago), and C. Hope Tolliver (Black on Both Sides).

This session brings together contributors to two recent Haymarket books—Radical Mothering: Caregiving and Resistance Across Prison Walls (2026) and How to End Family Policing: From Outrage to Action (2025). Organizers, family and community members, and scholars who have been intimately involved in the struggle to defend incarcerated survivors and end family policing in Chicago will share their experiences and offer tools for resisting carceral violence within our homes and communities. The session will be followed by a book signing with the authors. Books will be available to purchase.

Listening for Liberation: A Justice Salon
10.24.26 | 6:00 - 8:00 PM | Chicago Justice Gallery (1344 S. Halsted Street)

Hosted by Ayana Contreras (Rocky Mountain Public Media). Featuring DJ John West (University of Illinois Chicago). Presenters include Bella BAHHS (poet & arts activist), Regina Bradley (Kennesaw State University), Charles Hughes (Rhodes College), Johari Jabir (University of Illinois Chicago), Britt Julious (Chicago Tribune), Elliott Powell (University of Minnesota), Francesca Royster (DePaul University), Matthew Morrison (Stanford University), and Roy Kinsey (CPL librarian and rapper).

In 2016, Daphne Brooks asserted that #BlackLivesMatter had ushered in “a new set of jams” that registered the “heightened awareness of state violence.” During this interactive listening and talkback session, music scholars, journalists, and artists will consider the form and function of the “protest” song in the contemporary moment by discussing and sharing a collective playlist of songs from across a range of historical time periods and musical genres that help to inform the conditions of dissent ten years after the musical revolution that Brooks named. Come throw up your hands and groove with us as we affirm the power of music and the creative arts in the long struggle toward freedom. Light bites will be served.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 25

Chicago Justice Gallery open hours
10.25.26 | 10:00 AM - 3:00 PM | Chicago Justice Gallery (1344 S. Halsted Street)

Drop in any time between 10:00 AM and 3:00 PM to visit our upcoming exhibition, Ink as Witness: Chicago Artist Collectives, Printmaking, and the Politics of Social Justice.