Author: jshanahan

Just before the most recent season ended on April 30, 2018, Mihaela Stoica of the “Reading Chicago Reading” project team sat down with Jennifer Lizak, Coordinator of Special Projects for Cultural and Civic Engagement at the Chicago Public Library to discuss the work that goes into planning, creating, and promoting events for the One Book One Chicago program. With only a few days of respite after the end of a successful 2017-18 program, and just before she started thinking about the upcoming season, Lizak gave us a glimpse of what goes on behind the curtain of this annual citywide program.… Read more

The One Book One Chicago program is a useful optic to capture how readers engage with literature in various ways across time. As contemporary literary experience continues to evolve with and across mobile platforms, and to disperse and thicken in measurable pools of social media data, those who seek to capture and analyze reading behavior increasingly need the tools of data science. As so-called smart cities entangle civic life with code (and its associated rhythms and metrics), the very imagination of the city — by residents, planners, cultural workers, and more — changes, … Read more

Mihaela reports: The second event in a tentative three-part series of One Book One Chicago programming at DePaul took place on Wednesday, January 31, 2018, on the Lincoln Park campus and paired a screening of Jessica Edward’s film Mavis! with a special appearance by Greg Kot, Chicago Tribune music critic and author of I’ll Take You There.

The event was hosted by the English Department, and Professor Francesca Royster moderated the Q&A session at the end of the evening. The discussion covered many subjects as Kot touched on a variety of topics: the difficulty of describing music in layman’s… Read more

Mihaela reports: With the help of more than twenty community partners, the Chicago Public Library’s One Book One Chicago program has focused on expanding citywide community relations through events that facilitate learning and engagement not only with the OBOC selection but also with a book related theme essential to the lives of all Chicagoans.

DePaul University’s English Department has a longstanding partnership with OBOC. This winter quarter, Professor Francesca Royster of the English Department is teaching an undergraduate course exploring the current season’s selection,… Read more