+ What is the Dis/Placements project?

Dis/Placements is a collaborative, digital, public history project that traces stories of everyday peoples’ resistance in the wake of urban “development” in the northside Chicago neighborhood of Uptown. Anna Guevarra and Gayatri Reddy began this project in 2017, originally intending to explore the history of global Asian displacements to Chicago. They began this exploration in Uptown – metaphorically captured by the “asia on argyle” sign that is prominently displayed on Argyle Street. In the process of doing archival and secondary research and engaging with community organizers in Uptown, they encountered the long history of peoples’ displacements and the ongoing struggles over land, housing, health care and education stemming from urban renewal policies. The Dis/Placements project, therefore, grew from these beginnings to become a story about Uptown and its vibrant, multiracial, working class histories. It visualizes and narrates the displacement of multiple racial and ethnic groups, largely working class and poor people, as a result of renewal policies, as well as their intentional acts of place-making, resistance, and solidarity that produced Uptown as the multiracial, affordable anomaly that it is within a segregated and rapidly gentrifying Chicago.

+ Why are we undertaking this project?

As noted above, in the process of doing research and engaging with community organizers in Uptown, Anna Guevarra and Gayatri Reddy encountered and learned about the long history of peoples’ displacements and the ongoing struggles over land, housing, health care and education stemming from urban renewal policies. These histories are what community historian Dr. Paul Siegel refers to as “submerged traditions” of resistance and solidarity, work led by the same residents and organizers who fought - and continue to fight - for a neighborhood that is affordable, multiracial, and for the people. Dis/Placements attempts to capture their stories. The project seeks to highlight “submerged traditions” of subaltern resistance and multiracial solidarity in response to sustained efforts at urban renewal, racial segregation, and state and imperial violence in the Uptown neighborhood of Chicago. These voices and stories are seldom heard, and their spaces are seldom mapped. With the help of a village of scholars, activists, students, and residents, the Dis/Placements Project seeks to remedy that.

+ How are we carrying out this project?

Working collaboratively with community liaisons and research assistants, as well as undergraduate students in their classes, Anna Guevarra and Gayatri Reddy have collected, curated, and represented these stories, stories that chronicle the texture of resilient lives in Uptown, using a range of digital media and platforms. These include interactive historical timelines, radical history “political” walking tours, GIS storymaps, photographs and digital stories, zines, photoessays, podcasts, a virtual reality platform, as well as a more conventional non-digital edited anthology in formation. Anna and Gayatri live just north of Uptown and volunteer for grassroots organizations such as Northside Action for Justice (NA4J) that have long been a presence in the neighborhood.