The conference focuses on the brief-lived magazine to draw attention to intellectual and cultural life at Hull-House and in Chicago during the Depression and war years. Writers and artists associated with Hull-House, some funded through the WPA, explored social and political themes and built important activist networks. They were influenced by events in Mexico and by a Chicago context of racial tensions and interracial cooperation in a period when increasing numbers of African Americans were moving into the Hull-House neighborhood and African American cultural workers were making their mark on Chicago. As writers, journalists, teachers, artists, and activists, the Hull-House circle has left a significant, if unexplored, legacy for Chicago, the United States, and the international community.

Keynote is by Michael Denning; closing plenary by Alan Wald. Other panelists include: Burton J. Bledstein, Fred Gardaphe, Adam Green, James C. Hall, Rick Lopez, Bill Mullen, Kathleen Banks Nutter, Alexander Saxton, Elizabeth Seaton, David M. Sokol, Maren Stange, Al Stein, John Edgar Tidwell, Joel Wendland, Douglas Wixson, and Lisa Woolley.