Book Talk with Tracy L. Steffes: "Structuring Inequality" [Hybrid Event]

As in many American metropolitan areas, inequality in Chicagoland is visible in its neighborhoods. These inequalities are not inevitable, however. They have been constructed and deepened by public policies around housing, schooling, taxation, and local governance, including hidden state government policies.

In Structuring Inequality: How Schooling, Housing, and Tax Policies Shaped Metropolitan Development and Education (University of Chicago Press, 2024), historian Tracy L. Steffes shows how metropolitan inequality in Chicagoland was structured, contested, and naturalized over time even as reformers tried to change it through school desegregation, affordable housing, and property tax reform. While these efforts had modest successes in the city and the suburbs, reformers faced significant resistance and counter-mobilization from affluent suburbanites, real estate developers, and other defenders of the status quo who defended inequality and reshaped the policy conversation about it. Grounded in comprehensive archival research and policy analysis, Structuring Inequality examines the history of Chicagoland’s established systems of inequality and provides perspective on the inequality we live with today.

Author

Tracy L. Steffes is an Associate Professor of Education and History at Brown University. Her primary research and teaching interests are twentieth-century United States history, the history of American education, and political and policy history. In addition to “Structuring Inequality," she is the author of, “School, Society, and State: A New Education to Govern Modern America, 1890-1940” (University of Chicago Press, 2012).

Event Details

This is a hybrid event. You have the option to attend in-person on the Brown University campus or online.

• In-Person: Join us in Stephen Robert '62 Hall, Room 101, 280 Brook Street, Providence, RI 02912 (View this venue on Google Maps).
• Online: All registrants will receive the link to the live stream. Please note that virtual attendees will not be able to send comments or participate in the Q&A due to the limitations of the platform.