Jacqueline Najuma Stewart

Jacqueline Stewart is the former Director of the Gray Center and a Professor in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies and the college. Her research and teaching explore African American film cultures from the origins of the medium to the present, as well as the archiving and preservation of moving images, and "orphan" media histories, including nontheatrical, amateur, and activist film and video. She directs the Southside Home Movie Project and is co-curator of the L.A. Rebellion Preservation Project at the UCLA Film and Television Archive.  She also serves as an appointee to the National Film Preservation Board.  She is currently researching the racial politics of moving image preservation and is also completing a study of the life and work of African American actor/writer/director Spencer Williams.

Stewart is the author of Migrating to the Movies: Cinema and Black Urban Modernity, which has achieved recognition from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies and the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. She participated in the Public Voices Thought Leadership Fellowship Program, offered by Northwestern University, and the OpEd Project. She has also been awarded fellowships from the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton University, and the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture Scholars-in-Residence Program. 

Stewart earned her AM and PhD in English from the University of Chicago and an AB in English with interdisciplinary emphasis from Stanford University.

News

Jacqueline Stewart named Interim Director of the Gray Center

Aug 04, 2015

Jacqueline Stewart, professor in Cinema and Media Studies and the College, has been named interim director of the Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry. Stewart, who has served on the Gray Center Advisory Council, will lead the collaborative arts center from July 1, 2015 to June 30, 2016 while the Gray Center’s current director David Levin is on leave as a Faculty Fellow at the Franke Institute for the Humanities.

Events

4

Jan

 Jan 04, 2018, 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM
 Harper Theater

5238 S Harper Ave.

The landmark visual album Lemonade (Beyoncé, 2016) draws inspiration from the evocative imagery of Julie Dash, Arthur Jafa and Carrie Mae Weems, and the haunting poetry of Warsan Shire, to protest the invisibility of Black women, and offer a radical, but complicated, revisioning of Black female bodies and struggles. The screening will be followed by conversation with filmmaker Julie Dash, singer, songwriter, and poet Jamila Woods and Cinema 53 curator Jacqueline Stewart (University of Chicago, Cinema & Media Studies).

19

Aug

 Aug 19, 2017, 1:00 AM – 3:00 AM
 Stony Island Arts Bank

6760 S. Stony Island Ave.
Chicago, IL

Vanguard L.A. Rebellion filmmaker and founder of Kaos Network Ben Caldwell kicks off a week-long workshop on visualizing the future of our community with this presentation of his work around the transformation of LA’s Leimert Park. 

18

Aug

 Aug 18, 2017, 6:00 AM – 6:00 AM
 

What will the South Side of Chicago look like in 2021? As we anticipate the construction of the Obama Presidential Center, this workshop brings South Side residents and University of Chicago students together to visualize our desired futures for our community. 

28

Sep

 Sep 28, 2017, 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM
 Harper Theater

5238 S. Harper Ave., Chicago, IL 60615

This multimedia presentation kicks off Ripples and Waves, 4-part a series of programs observing the 40th anniversary of the Combahee River Collective Statement, the radical articulation of the tenets and goals of a truly revolutionary Black feminist theory and praxis. 

27

Aug

 Aug 27, 2017, 7:00 AM – 9:00 AM
 Connect Gallery

1520 S. Harper Court
Chicago, IL

Participants in Sankofa City Summer School: South Side Design Fiction Workshop present their visions for the future of our neighborhood, in the form of speculative design videos and objects that imagine new possibilities for public spaces. 

2

May

 May 02, 2017, 12:00 PM – 3:00 PM
 Logan Center for the Arts Performance Hall

915 E. 60th St.
Chicago, IL 60637

Day two of the two-day summit, What is an Artistic Practice of Human Rights?, features a public forum comprising two artist panels moderated by members of the summit's organizational team.

29

Mar

 Mar 29, 2018, 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM
 Harper Theatre

5238 S Harper
Chicago, IL

Cinema 53 kicks off its spring series, Intimités: Everyday Life in Contemporary Afro/French Cinema, with a screening of films by Alice Diop and Mati Diop, followed by conversation with Jennifer Wild (University of Chicago, Cinema & Media Studies, Romance Languages & Literatures), Jacqueline Stewart (University of Chicago, Cinema & Media Studies, Gray Center for Arts + Inquiry), and director of the Black Film Center/Archive, Terri Francis.

10

May

 May 10, 2018, 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM
 Harper Theatre

5238 S Harper
Chicago, IL

Quartier Lointains: Screening and conversation with Claire Diao and Josza Anjembe

31

May

 May 31, 2018, 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM
 Harper Theatre

5238 S Harper
Chicago, IL

Part urban fantasy and part ethnographic group portrait, Swagger (Olivier Babinet, 2015, 84 min) focuses on a dozen teenagers getting by in the streets, projects and schools of Aulnay-sous-Bois, a suburb of Paris that made the headlines during the riots of 2005. Screening followed by a conversation with Jennifer WildJacqueline Stewart, and Global Girls.

8

Mar

 Mar 08, 2018, 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM
 Harper Theatre

5238 S Harper, Chicago, IL

In solidarity and dialogue with her fellow L.A. Rebellion filmmakers, Zeinabu irene Davis convenes the group of artists brought together by the UCLA film program—including notable directors Julie Dash (Daughters of the Dust) and Charles Burnett (Killer of Sheep)—to recall their experiences and historicize their legacy on film and far beyond. Screening followed by conversation with Davis, University of Chicago film scholar Allyson Nadia Field, and Cinema 53 curator Jacqueline Stewart.

17

Oct

 Oct 17, 2015, 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM
 Humanities Day at University of Chicago, Logan Center for the Arts

915 E. 60th St, Screening Room 201

Composer George Lewis reflects on Afterword, an Opera as a “Bildungsoper”—a coming-of-age opera of ideas and testament—whose libretto he drew from his 2008 book, A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music (University of Chicago Press). 

25

Jan

 Jan 25, 2018, 1:00 PM – 2:30 PM
 Harper Theater

5238 S Harper, Chicago, IL

An Evening with Judy Hoffman
In conversation with Tracye Matthews and Jacqueline Stewart

 

29

Nov

 Nov 29, 2018, 5:30 PM – 7:00 PM
 Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry

929 E. 60th St.
Chicago, IL 60637

The Gray Center is pleased to announce the launch of Portable Gray, a new journal dedicated to the weirdness found at the heart of the arts and scholarship(s). Free food. Free drinks. Meet contributors. Complimentary copies of the inaugural issue.

23

Oct

 Oct 23, 2019, 7:30 PM – 9:30 PM
 Logan Center for the Arts Performance Hall

915 E 60th St, Chicago, IL 60637

Following Loose Machinery: A Symposium on the Chicago Race Riot of 1919, a screening of Oscar Micheaux’s Within Our Gates, accompanied by a new live score by DJ Rae Chardonnay.

The earliest surviving feature film by an African-American director, Within Our Gates (1920, 79min) was made as a direct response to the Chicago Race Riots of 1919 and in the aftermath of D.W. Griffith’s famously racist The Birth of a Nation (1915). Presented on 35mm film, print courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Screening will be followed by conversation with DJ Rae Chardonnay, Jacqueline Stewart, Professor, Cinema and Media Studies, and Allyson Nadia Field, Associate Professor, Cinema and Media Studies, moderated by Eve Ewing.

The symposium and film screening were organized by Eve L. Ewing, Assistant Professor, School of Social Service Administration & John Clegg, Collegiate Assistant Professor, Social Sciences.