The University of Cincinnati Department of History and the Center for the City are pleased to announce the 2022 Zane L. Miller Symposium. This year’s symposium will feature renowned urban historian Kenneth T. Jackson who will speak on Cincinnati’s place in “The Future of Cities.” Jackson’s talk is free and open to the public and will take place on Thursday, April 7, at 7 pm at Pinecroft, the Powell Crosley Estate, 2366 Kipling Ave, Cincinnati, OH 45239. Free parking will be provided.

Drawing on his encyclopedic knowledge of American urban history, Professor Jackson’s talk will explore Cincinnati’s place in the future of American cities and ask, “what is left of the city?” Using lessons from the past, Jackson will explore the future of urban centers and suburbs including seemly enduring landscape features like shopping malls and even cars. Jackson will reflect on the recent demise of retail in central business districts, changing patterns of urban transportation, and the diminished role of urban centers as little more than hubs for culture, sports, entertainment, and upscale housing. A sampling of Professor Jackson’s publications will be available for sale by Downbound Books following Professor Jackson’s talk. Kenneth T. Jackson is the Jacques Barzun Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University.

His best-known publication, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (Oxford, 1985), won both the Francis Parkman and the Bancroft Prizes, and the New York Times chose it as one of the notable books of the year. By 2018, it had been reprinted forty times in paperback. Center for the City Director, Anne Delano Steinert, said “we are thrilled to have Professor Jackson join us for the Miller Symposium this year to help us honor and amplify the values of Cincinnati’s own Zane L. Miller. Jackson is a gifted scholar, a dynamic speaker, and an innovative teacher. His perspectives on American cities, and Cincinnati in particular, are sure to activate new understandings of even our most familiar places.” Beyond Crabgrass Frontier, Jackson is the author of Silent Cities: The Evolution of the America Cemetery (with Camilo J. Vergara: Princeton Architectural Press, 1989), The Ku Klux Klan in the City (Oxford, 1967); Atlas of American History (Scribner’s, revised edition, 1978); and Cities in American History (with Stanley K. Schutz: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972). His latest book, written in collaboration with David Dunbar, is Empire City: New York Through the Centuries (Columbia, 2002).

Launched in 2016, the Zane Miller Symposium: Conversations in the City is an annual event that honors Professor Miller’s contributions to the field of urban history, as well as his more than three decades of contributions to the civic life of Cincinnati as activist, mentor and publicly engaged scholar. Professor Miller firmly believed that “civic activity makes democracy tick,” and “scholarship, history, and public history all help improve society.” Symposium events are designed to engage a broad audience, and connect critical academic thought to contemporary urban issues, especially as they pertain to the greater Cincinnati region. This event is a part of the UC History in the City Initiative, which publicizes and energizes the long-standing outreach by History Department faculty members and graduate students across all three UC campuses to bring urban history to the general public, as well as their efforts to bring history to life for twenty-first century city residents. This year’s Miller Symposium will feature an opening tribute to Professor Miller given by Dr. Charles Lester of Ohio University and based on Dr. Lester’s contribution to the forthcoming book, Bringing the Civic Back In: Zane L. Miller and American Urban History. Zane L. Miller joined the faculty of the University of Cincinnati in 1968 and taught in the Department of History for thirty-five years. During his career at UC, Miller published numerous books including Boss Cox’s Cincinnati, a classic in the field of urban studies. In 1983 he was awarded the George Reiveschel, Jr. Award for Excellence in Scholarly and Creative works, and in 1996 he was awarded the Oscar Schmidt Public Service Award. Throughout his life Zane was an observer of and an active participant in American political, social, and civic life. He was a co-director of the UC Center for Neighborhood and Community Studies, and served on the Historic Conservation Board for the City of Cincinnati and was one of the founders and later president of the Urban History Association. Upon retirement in 1999, he was appointed Charles Phelps Taft Professor Emeritus of American History.

Founded in 2020, the Center for the City at the University of Cincinnati is a community of scholars who interpret and narrate the urban past and present. Using historical inquiry, observation, community engagement, storytelling, and spatial analysis, we examine cities around the globe in the pursuit of creating a more equitable and sustainable future. For more information see the Center’s website at www.uchistorylab.com/centerforthecity.