***We're sad to announce our spring conference, #ALT_MKE: Stories of a 21st Century City, has been cancelled. It was going to be an extraordinary gathering, but in many ways, the work of the conference must now be done in our communities and in the forms of care and activism that we practice. Please stay tuned for alternative ways to engage with the themes and scholarship of the conference, including these assembled talks and resources from our plenary speakers and a livestreamed talk by L.A. Kauffman on May 8!***

The Center for 21st Century Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee presents its spring 2020 conference, “#ALT_MKE: Stories of a 21st Century City.” In 2020, the City of Milwaukee will host the Democratic National Convention, marking a supposedly transformational moment from which new solutions will emerge. During the DNC, predictable narratives will be trotted out about Milwaukee: of segregation, crime, poverty, and blight, alongside those championing a resurgent economy and new forms of capitalist urban development. The DNC marks a supposedly transformational moment from which new solutions will emerge. But the narratives of blight and rebirth–articulated not only by political leaders but often by academics as well–often reify what they are intended to counteract.

At this critical juncture, we must rethink our political imaginations and critical engagements. Can Milwaukee, and other urban areas like it, offer novel answers to the intractable problems that confront us? If the city is an answer, what questions must we ask? #ALT_MKE will highlight how the temporality and space of the ordinary city offers new epistemologies and practices that are engaged in the global struggle to combat racialized disinvestment, a fractured body politic, ecological crisis, and urban abandonment. The spectacles offered by the DNC—whether political, mediated, or financial in nature—lead only to institutional inaction and failure, wherein lie opportunities for ongoing forms of resistance to find new and stronger footings.

Confirmed plenary speakers for the conference are: Dasha Kelly Hamilton (Milwaukee’s Poet Laureate), L.A. Kauffman (author/activist), Juan De Lara (University of Southern California), Brian Larkin (Barnard College/Columbia University), Monique Liston (Ubuntu Research), Rick Lowe (University of Houston), and AbdouMaliq Simone (University of Sheffield).

Photo Credit: Overpass Light Brigade (Milwaukee, WI)

While the conference is free and open to the public, we do ask all attendees and presenters to register in advance. Registration helps us estimate attendance in order to better plan for seating, breakfast/lunch orders, and hotel arrangements.