People

PEOPLE

Dis/Placements’ co-founders - Anna Romina Guevarra and Gayatri Reddy - both of whom are writers, teachers, and community organizers at the University of Illinois Chicago, are invested in exploring different mediums of storytelling through which to capture the histories, textures, and tenors of grassroots people’s movements in Chicago. Their exploration begins in Uptown, a northside neighborhood of Chicago. The project aims to visibilize less-mapped spaces and tell less-told stories in this neighborhood, tracing the multiple ways space is made place for a range of subaltern activists, artists, workers, and past and present residents of Uptown. Over the course of the past three years, the project’s research assistants and interns have contributed to the creation and curation of these various components of the project. The project also has a curricular arm- through courses like GLAS 300: Global Asia in Chicago and GLAS 248: Afro-Asian Solidarities, taught by Anna Romina Guevarra and Gayatri Reddy – where undergraduate students produced digital stories, photoessays, and zines based on research, fieldwork, or oral histories. This work is conducted in partnership with community liaisons - community organizers in Uptown who represent organizations and collectives engaged in social justice work focused on issues of housing, immigration, cultural preservation, education, and the arts. The various contributors to this project are listed below. If you want to get involved in the project, as a student, community member, activist or artist, please get in touch with us. We would love to hear from you!

Project Co-founders

Associate Professor and Founding Director, Global Asian Studies

ANNA ROMINA GUevarra

Anna Guevarra (she/her) is the Founding Director of the Global Asian Studies Program, a Co-PI of the UIC AANAPISI Initiative, and has been involved in institutional diversity work at UIC. Her interdisciplinary scholarship, teaching, and community-engaged work focus on immigrant and transnational labor, the geopolitics of care work, the Philippine diaspora, and critical race/ethnic studies. She is an award-winning author of numerous works including Marketing Dreams and Manufacturing Heroes: The Transnational Labor Brokering of Filipino Workers (Rutgers Univ Press, 2010) which explores the Philippines’ labor exporting economy and the recruitment of nurses and domestic workers. She is also the co-editor of Immigrant Women Workers in the Neoliberal Age (University of IL Press, 2013). She is currently working on a number of projects that reflect a commitment to telling stories of migration, labor, and race and gender formations including those pertaining to robotics and food studies. Her teaching pedagogy is anchored by social justice and intersectional frameworks, alongside experiential and field-based learning. This Dis/Placements project brings together her interests in migration, labor, bridging the academy and the community, and the possibilities of developing a revolutionary praxis. Dr. Guevarra lives in Uptown and works and volunteers with Chicago-based community organizations that focus on issues of racial and economic justice, immigration rights, and cross-racial solidarity work. She is currently a Public Voices Fellow in the OpEd Project. Her Ph.D. is in sociology from the University of California San Francisco.

Associate Professor, Anthropology/Gender & Women's Studies

GAYATRI REDDY

Gayatri Reddy is an anthropologist, writer, and teacher. She got her B.A. from the University of Delhi, and her M.A. and Ph.D in Anthropology from Emory University. She is an currently an Associate Professor of Gender and Women's Studies, Global Asian Studies, and Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her research, teaching and community engaged work lie at the intersections of sexuality, gender, race, and the politics of subject and community formation in India and the Indian diaspora. She is the author of With Respect to Sex: Negotiating Hijra Identity in South India (University of Chicago Press, 2005), an ethnography of hijras, the so-called “transgender” community in India. Like the larger corpus of her work, this book locates such figures of sexual difference, and the domain of sexuality more generally, within a broader field of social difference, exploring the intersections of gender and sexuality with religion, race, ethnicity, and class in South Asia and its diaspora. More recently, she has begun a research project exploring the contextual meanings of blackness in contemporary India through the lens of Indian Ocean world “African” migrations to India in the wake of slavery’s “abolition.” Tracing these historical routes and geopolitical mappings through the prism of masculinity, this project historically and ethnographically explores the complex ways in which race, blackness, and masculinity are constructed both through global as well as local contours of difference, to shape contemporary belonging. This project—Dis/Placements—brings these analyses of race, gender, and class to bear on the neighborhood she lives and works in—Uptown.

Community Liaisons

+ Marc Kaplan

Marc is a long-time community organizer and leader for Northside Action for Justice (NA4J) and a graduate of the John Marshall Paralegal Program for Community Activist and Social Workers. His connection to Uptown dates as far back as the 1970s with his involvement in numerous grassroots efforts including the Heart of Uptown Coalition, the first Summer Softball League in Uptown, the Uptown Fire Patrol that fought against the arson for profiteers, and the Community of Uptown Residents for Affordability and Justice (COURAJ), which led a successful 10-year campaign that resulted in 150 units of affordable family and senior housing and the new Target on the Wilson Yards. Marc also ran for alderman of the 46th Ward in 2011. In the summer of 2015, he joined the Bronzeville community and other citywide allies on the 34-day Dyett hunger strike, which forced the Board of Education to reopen Dyett High School as an open enrollment neighborhood high school with 17 million dollars in facility upgrades.

+ PATRICIA NGUYEN

Patricia is an artist, educator, and scholar born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Asian American Studies at Northwestern University. She has over 15 years experience working in arts education, community development, and human rights in the United States and Vietnam. Patricia is also the founder and executive director of Axis Lab, an arts organization in Uptown that focuses on inclusive and equitable development for the Southeast Asian community in Chicago. Learn more about Axis Lab here: http://www.axislab.org

+ BRANDON LEE

Most recently, Brandon served as the Communications Coordinator at Asian Americans Advancing Justice (AAAJ) Chicago. Brandon is a 2009 alumnus of UIC where he received a B.A. in Political Science and an honorary minor in Asian American Studies in 2010. At UIC, Brandon served on the Asian American Coalition Committee, a student-led organization that has been instrumental in leading the Asian American movement on campus, including the establishment of the Asian American Studies Program at UIC. Brandon also worked at the Asian American Resource and Cultural Center (AARCC). In 2020, Brandon was elected to the Local School Council of McCutcheon School in Uptown.

+ MICHAEL TAKADA

Mike is the Chief Executive Officer of the Japanese American Service Committee (JASC). He brings a unique combination of private sector and nonprofit experience to lead both the day-to-day operations and long-range planning for JASC. With over 30 years of experience in the financial sector, Mike oversees all strategic planning, project management, financial management, and organizational leadership at JASC, translating JASC’s mission into active services and programs. Mike’s volunteer experience includes serving as past President and Board Member of JASC, anti-racism and diversity facilitator with the Anti-Defamation League and the Unitarian Universalist Association, past President and Board Trustee at the Unitarian Church of Evanston and Evanston’s Kids Can Dance program. Mike received a B.A. from Boston University and an M.B.A. from DePaul University. He helped raise three beautiful daughters in Rogers Park and now calls the Uptown neighborhood home.

+ Emilie Lockridge

Emilie is the Coordinator, Chair, and Convenor of the Winthrop Family Reunion Committee. She has served in this capacity for the last 30 years. Her family has lived on Winthrop Avenue from the 1920s. She is a graduate of Nicholas Senn High School, class of 1973. She attended Loop Junior College and Central YMCA Community College, both in Chicago, IL., and Kendall College, Evanston IL., majoring in Education, minoring in Computer Processing. Although she did not graduate from college, she went on to be employed in the Personnel Department at the Wieboldt Department Store's flagship location on State Street in downtown Chicago. She has also worked in various daycare centers where she taught preschooler cognitive development. She is now retired and lives in the Chatham neighborhood on the Southside of Chicago.

+ VIVIEN TSOU

Vivien Tsou is an experienced organizer, single mom, and currently the National Field Director at the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (NAPAWF). At NAPAWF, she is leading a team of amazing AAPI women and non-binary organizers to build power for our collective agency and impact structural change under the reproductive justice framework. Before NAPAWF, she was the Lead Housing Organizer at ONE Northside, a community organizing group on the northeast side of Chicago for 5 years. In her time at ONE Northside, she has organized directly with local tenants and passed an ordinance to preserve over 1,000 units of affordable housing. Her experience includes working on affordable housing campaigns around homelessness, tent city, Section 8 and SRO tenant rights, local development and anti-gentrification, and holding the Chicago Housing Authority accountable.

+ Steve Hosik Moon

Steve has over 15 years experience in youth development, organizing, civic engagement, and higher education. He was most recently the Director of Organizing at Asian Americans Advancing Justice(AAAJ) Chicago, where he contributed to the organization’s shift towards racial equity and grassroots leadership. During his time with AAAJ, the organization developed a powerful youth organizing program, played a leadership role in significant legislative victories, and achieved historic civic engagement outreach in the Asian American community. Steve serves on the Board of Kuumba Lynx and taught at UIC’s Global Asian Studies Program. He holds an MSW from the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration, an M.A. in Asian American Studies from UCLA, and a B.A. in English from the University of Michigan.

Research Assistants, Collaborators, and Interns

Intern/Artist-in-Residence

+ Gabrielle Angeles

Gabrielle Angeles is a Communication major with a Global Asian Studies minor. She is one of the artists working on recreating old photographs of the Winthrop Family. She loves anything that has to deal with the arts and spends a good chunk of her free time engaged in this activity. She thinks that the arts is one of the many ways that people can express and tell stories of themselves and/or other people.

Research Assistant

+ Themal Ellawala

Themal Ellawala is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he studies gender-sexual ontic and discursive formations in Sri Lanka through the optics of queer theory, Black feminist theory, and postcolonial studies. He is specifically preoccupied with explicating negative space (e.g. absence, silence, inaction, ambiguity) and exploring how the gender-sexual subaltern figure encounters the state and neoliberalism in myriad ways at such sites. These theoretical preoccupations also inform their organizing work in abolition and racial justice.

Research Assistant

+ Shilpa Menon

Shilpa Menon is a Ph.D. student in Anthropology at the University of Illinois Chicago. Her research is on transgender politics in Kerala, a state of India. Specifically, she looks at the consequences of transgender activist and community involvement in welfare politics in India. She's part of the editorial team at Ala ("wave" in Malayalam), a bilingual blog on Kerala studies.

Intern/Artist-in-Residence

+ ANANDITA VIDYARTHI

Anandita Vidyarthi is one of the artists for this project. She is a second year undergraduate student majoring in Interdisciplinary Education in the Arts with a Global Asian Studies minor. She is a multimedia creative, her media stretches from illustration to poetry to 3-D sculpture. She is also the co-founder and organizer of Asian Ink, a Chicago based art collective for Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) creatives.

Music Coordinator-in-Residence

+ MiRaj

MiRAJ is Pakistani American and an up and coming Chicago artist whose love for his city knows no bounds. Being ethnically Pakistani and born and raised on the north side of Chicago, the vibrancy of Uptown made it a second home during his upbringing. The music he makes in partnership with the Dis/Placements Project is a testament to the joys and struggles that he and many other Chicago residents experience on a daily basis.

Research Collaborator

+ Zachary Blair

Dr. Zachary Blair got his Ph.D in Anthropology, with a Graduate Concentration in Gender and Women’s Studies, from the University of Illinois at Chicago. His doctoral research explores racial violence through the development and gentrification of Boystown, Chicago’s gay neighborhood. Current research projects of his also include work on gentrification and displacement in Central Florida and critical analyses of the mass shooting at the Pulse Nightclub on June 12, 2016 and its aftermath.

Intern/Artist-in-Residence

+ Renae M. Encinas

Renae Mijares Encinas is a Gender and Women’s Studies major and Global Asian Studies minor at UIC. They are one the artists working on creating a political map and zine documenting the Single Room Occupancy (SRO) history and struggle in Uptown. It is their longtime dream to teach everyday people’s histories and to unite and uplift BIPOC communities. As a scholar and activist, they hope to dismantle the barriers between the classroom and streets, and to make our streets and our homes, our classroom. They aspire to create alternative spaces of learning, centered on critical ethnic studies and local and transnational issues and movements — utilizing memory, imagination, storytelling, creative arts, and activism while continuing to grow as a farmer.

Research Assistant

+ LAURA SATO

Laura Sato (she/her/hers) is currently working towards her M.A. in Museum and Exhibition Studies. She attained her B.A. in Art History and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Agnes Scott College. She is an art historian focused on making the museum more inclusive, accessible and engaging for all, specifically focusing on underrepresented and marginalized communities. Learn more about her work at https://lauransato.wordpress.com/.

Intern

+ ABDUL BASHEER

Abdul Basheer is a current graduate student in the History department at UIC. His research focuses on Islam in America and the ways the Muslim American community has formulated its own institutions, intellectual traditions, and culture. His current project is about the history of Muslim students at UIC. He is an aspiring public historian who has worked on other projects in the Chicago area, notably American Medina: Stories of Muslim Chicago at the Chicago History Museum.

Research Assistant/Graphic Aide

+ CYRIL DELA ROSA

Cyril Dela Rosa (he/they) is an undergraduate student of Urban Studies, Global Asian Studies, and Geographic Information Systems at UIC. They aspire to build community with everyday human beans through friendship, learning, and solidarity. He also primarily research topics related to (but not exclusively) affordable housing, food justice, land use, and the collective liberation of all oppressed peoples.

Research Assistant

+ GEORGE FLEISSNER

George Fleissner (he/him) is a graduate student in the Master of Arts in the Teaching of History program at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His research interests range from U.S. historiography, social history, structural inequality, and critical pedagogy. He plans on becoming a high school history and social studies teacher at Chicago Public Schools. Learn more about the MAT in History program at https://hist.uic.edu/academics/graduate-studies/mat/.

Research Assistant

+ NIDHI SHARMA

Nidhi Sharma, a "pahari" from the foothills of an obscure Himalayan village in India. She moved to Chicago to pursue her M.A. in Design Criticism and, in time, become a design scholar/educator. Before studying at UIC and working on this project, Nidhi studied architecture and design in India.

Research Assistant

+ KENNETH ALLEN

Kenneth (he/him) is a graduate student in the Master of Arts in the Teaching of History program at the University of Illinois Chicago. His research interests include twentieth century US history, urban history, and the study of transnational patterns of change. In his free time, he enjoys cycling, cooking, and practicing photography.

Research Assistant

+ Aidan Dixon

Aidan Dixon graduated with an M.A. in Urban Planning and Policy in 2019. He currently works as an Associate Transportation Planner for the Thurston Regional Planning Council. His professional interests include exploring ways to leverage the power of data for the public good and creating data visualizations using ArcGIS and R. He loves hiking and backpacking, bicycling, and anything that involves being outdoors. With input from Anna Guevarra and Gayatri Reddy and drawing on publicly accessible data, Aidan created the ArcGIS Storymaps about Uptown that is included on this website.

Research Assistant/Graphic Aide

+ LOUISE MACARANIAG

Louise Macaraniag is an undergraduate student at the University of Illinois at Chicago studying Political Science and Professional Writing. Louise was born in the Philippines and moved to the United States at a young age, hoping to reconnect to their cultural roots through activism and community organizing among Filipino Americans in Chicago and at UIC. They are also an aspiring journalist hoping to cover stories about struggles facing the local community, focusing on topics such as housing, environment, and education.

Research Assistant

+ RIYA SHARMA

Riya Sharma is a PhD student in Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her current research is on the production and consumption of organic food and sustainable lifestyle products in southern India. As part of her previous training in Sociology in India, Riya has also dabbled in alternative schooling, value education, and holistic medicine. When not thinking about the connections between wellness, markets, and social justice, she can be found geeking out over the latest project management tools.

Artist-in-Residence

+ Ashna Konjeti

Ashna Konjeti is a Neuroscience major with a Gender and Women’s Studies minor in the GPPA Medical Scholars Program at UIC. She is currently one of the artists working to tell the stories of the Winthrop Family through postcard renditions of the family members and their individual interests. She is well-versed in both the fine and digital arts, with her favorite mediums being colored pencil and graphite. Her greatest passions are art and the life sciences, and she hopes to pursue a career in medicine while continuing to contribute to the world in meaningful ways through art as well.