What is Design History?

Required:

  • Mendoza, Hannah Rose. 2012. “Beyond Doing Good: Civil Disobedience as Design Pedagogy.” Thresholds. 233–236.

  • Chin, Elizabeth. “Bauhaus and the People Without Design History.” In Bauhaus Futures, edited by Laura Forlano, Molly Wright Steenson, and Mike Ananny, 85–94. (MIT Press, 2019).

Recommended:

  • hooks, bell. “Introduction,” “Engaged Pedagogy” from Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (Routledge, 1994).

  • Abloh, Virgil. Insert Complicated Title Here (Sternberg Press, 2018), 13–25.

Design History as Labor History

Required:

  • Gehl, Paul. “Printing.” In The Encyclopedia of Chicago, 2004.

  • Rosemont, Henry. “My Years in the Chicago Typographical Union” [1978]. In American Labor’s First Strike, 107–113. Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company, 2007.

  • Brown, J. Dakota. “Typography, Automation, and the Division of Labor: A Brief History,” Amalgam #4, 2023.

Recommended:

  • Brown, J. Dakota. “As the Ink Fades: An Interview with Michael Neuschatz,” Jacobin, 2017.

  • Solomon, Sam. “Offsetting Queer Literary Labor,” GLQ 24 (2–3), 2018.

Design and Disability

Required:

  • Halstead, Josh. “Disability Theory.” In Extra Bold: A Feminist, Inclusive, Anti-Racist, Nonbinary Field Guide for Graphic Designers, 36–40. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2021.

Recommended:

  • Ott, Katherine. “Disability Things: Material Culture and American Disability History, 1700–2010.” In Disability Histories, edited by Susan Burch and Michael Rembis, 119–135. University of Illinois Press, 2014.

  • Williamson, Bess. “Access.” In Keywords for Disability Studies, edited by Rachel Adams, Benjamin Reiss, and David Serlin. New York: New York University Press, 2014.

The Neighborhood as Archive

Required:

  • Sir Charles. Letters to Chicago (Almighty & Insane Books, 2021).

  • Jinx and Mr. C. “Foreword” and “Introduction.” Compliments of Chicagohoodz: Chicago Street Gang Art & Culture. 10–42. (Feral House, 2019).

  • @VintageFiends on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/vintagefiends/

Recommended:

  • Engster, Daniel. Summer, 2005. “Rethinking Care Theory: The Practice of Caring and the Obligation to Care.”Hypatia. 50–74. 

  • Margolin, Victor. Spring 1994, "Narrative Problems of Graphic Design History." Visible Language. 233–243.

Black Design History

Required:

  • Baldwin, Davarian. "Chicago's New Negroes: Consumer Culture and Intellectual Life Reconsidered," American Studies 44.1/2 (Spring–Summer 2003): 121–152

  • Bivens, Joy. "Inspiring Beauty: 50 Years of Ebony Fashion Fair," Nka 37 (2015): 80–89 

  • Winslow, Vernon. "Making the Negro's Art Practicable," Opportunity 18.9 (Sept. 1940): 262–263, 277–278

Recommended:

  • Helton, Laura E. "A Space for Black Study: The Hall Branch Library and the Historians Who Never Wrote," in Scattered and Fugitive Things: How Black Collectors Created Archives and Remade History (Columbia University Press, 2024), 129–151

  • Rebecca Zorach, “Claiming Space, Being in Public,” in Art for People’s Sake: Artists and Community in Black Chicago, 1965-1975 (Duke University Press, 2019), 30–84

Community History

Required:

  • Radke, Heather. “Hull-House Arts.” Taft, Maggie, Robert Cozzolino, Judith Russi Kirshner, and Erin Hogan, eds. Art in Chicago: A History from the Fire to Now. (The University of Chicago Press, 2018).

  • Addams, Jane. “Arts at Hull-House.” Twenty Years at Hull-House: With Autobiographical Notes. (Macmillan Co., 1930).

Collections and Archives

Required:

  • Wilson, Leslie. “nothing & everything,” from not all realisms: photography, Africa, and the long 1960s. Smart Museum of Art, 2023.

  • Chipstone Foundation Object Lab: “This is Not a…”

  • Face Jug Poetry Slam, Milwaukee Art Museum https://chipstone.org/module.php/56/351/Face-Jug-Poetry-Slam

Recommended:

  • Vagnone, Franklin D, and Deborah E. Ryan. “Introduction” and “Community Markings,” Anarchist’s Guide to Historic House Museums. United Kingdom: Routledge, 2016.

 
 
 

The Chicago Designs workshop is part of Art Design Chicago, a citywide collaboration initiated by the Terra Foundation for American Art that highlights the city’s artistic heritage and creative communities.

We also acknowledge the School of the Art Institute of Chicago as the institutional host of this program for 2024.