April Theodore Talk

April 27 – Sunday – 3:30 PM – April Theodore Talk: When the World Came to Chicago: The World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. In 2003, Eric Larson’s book The Devil in the White City sparked widespread popular interest in the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, 1890s Chicago, and world’s fairs generally. While readers were enthralled by the grisly details of the murderous H.H. Holmes, the fair was more than just a setting for a true crime tale (and was not, in fact, the location of the murders); it was an important moment in Chicago’s history that set the trend for subsequent fairs for decades.

In this lavishly illustrated Zoom presentation, Dr. Nicholas McCormack will examine a brief history of world’s fairs and the context for Chicago playing host to the first one in the U.S. You’ll learn how the fair was designed, what its intended purpose was, and its impact on Chicago and the future of world’s fairs, especially Chicago’s second world’s fair in 1933-34. There is a vibrant scholarship — a historiography — of world’s fairs that highlights serious issues such as colonialism, classism, and racism, which many popular tellings of the Columbian Exposition and other world’s fairs either ignore or distort. This talk will engage with those debates and issues as well. Registration: https://tinyurl.com/4n3sctsh.