Christopher Schroeder

Tag: Chicago Public Library

  • Conversations and Conflicts

    I had hopes for a recent Chicago Public Library event, which was co-sponsored by the Clarence Darrow Commemorative Committee, about the 1925 Scopes trial and banned books.

    I didn’t expect such a sparse audience, which given the venue might have surprised the organizers as well. Nonetheless, I settled into a seat and later focused on a hanging screen, which featured a recorded introduction to the trial from a historian who had recently published a book. Then I watched a moderated conversation between an ACLU of Illinois First Amendment lawyer and an American Library Association Freedom to Read program administrator.

    I had hoped that the panelists would debate a thesis or otherwise engage in challenging conversation. Instead, they mostly agreed, and mostly offered observations about their backgrounds, current events, and their organizations without any sustained discussion of intellectual independence for example or civil liberties or related issues.

    Perhaps the problem was the relatively diffuse focus, which spanned one hundred years. Maybe part was the moderating, which seemed to consist of mostly closed questions that didn’t encourage debate or even discussion.

    Most agree that evolution is no longer a controversial idea and that book challenges have increased. What are the contested limits or unclear perspectives about these issues, such as gendered bias in evolutionary models or racist ideas in canonical content, on which thoughtful people might disagree or at least could reconsider?

    I’m not advocating for spectacle or controversy for its own sake. These already comprise too much of contemporary life on social media for example and elsewhere. Rather, I’m suggesting that conflicts when handled properly can be productive, and engaging, and central to the Scopes trial, book challenges, and other related issues.

    That would have been a more useful experience, and evening. And it could help if word of such experiences got out with the attendance at this and too many other potentially provocative CPL events.

  • No More Author Events Please

    Local author Renée Rosen discussed her most recent book Let’s Call Her Barbie in a conversation with another local author Shelby Van Pelt at the Harold Washington Library Center last week.

    Rosen was personable, and shared interesting information that would appeal to anyone who read her book. Van Pelt was well-prepared with a list of open-ended questions that encouraged elaboration and allowed for responses.

    I just couldn’t understand why I was there, and left before the Q&A could start.

    I should have expected from the event description that the “conversation” would center upon Rosen’s new book. I just don’t know why these conversations appeal to anyone, and why the library would continue to sponsor these.

    These events reflect a cult of celebrity that fetishizes authors and writing as ends rather than means. As such, book tours are marketing campaigns — come for the celebrity, leave with a purchase — that seem more concerned with increasing sales than promoting ideas.

    Contemporary society is already too saturated with advertising for me to donate an hour to endure even more, especially when I leave with little more than I could have gotten from consuming the content on my own.

    I realize that I’m the minority on author events. I actually overheard someone praise this specific event at one of my book clubs this past weekend.

    I certainly am not advocating for the decontextualization of ideas, and believe in the need for historical and conceptual contexts. I’m just less interested in authors, and seen enough to know that production processes are idiosyncratic.

    I am also sympathetic to the forces felt by my librarian friends, who might have mixed motivations, and have to make compromises for the greater good, including the relevance of libraries. I just wonder whether they might be limiting efforts to reimagine libraries in contemporary democratic societies.

    A better event would be one that asked Rosen to use her research and experience for something more than the book she already wrote. For example, she could have been asked to elaborate on the effects of Barbie upon the cultural zeitgeist or to consider the ways that toys reflect the politics of their creators.

    Anything that involved an argument, or offered a position or a perspective that couldn’t have been obtained from her book, would have been worth the forty-five minutes I sat in the sparse audience on that cold February night.

  • Promoting Public Possibilities

    I attended earlier this week the People Powered Policy Panel, which was a Chicago Public Library event to explore a public options platform generally and specifically municipally-owned grocery stores and public banking initiatives.

    Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson addressed the audience. Then local media maven Sylvia Ewing moderated a conversation among sociologist Ruha Benjamin, community activist Dorian Warren, and city policy chief Mayumi Grigsby.

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