To accompany our second symposium, “Designing for Dignity: A Convening of Possibilities”, Deem once again organized a three-day Reference Room, located at the MCA Chicago, which served as a public gathering space for people to experience some of the reading materials that inspired our five issues, as well as the content of the convening’s programming. These books, articles, and essays represent a combination of our research, specific mentions from our pages, and recommendations from contributors and symposium participants. We hoped not only to provide context and access to educational tools around Deem’s processes and beliefs, but also to create a haven for reflection and repose. The Reference Room was open from May 17–19, 2024.

List of Titles:

Design After Capitalism: Transforming Design Today for an Equitable Tomorrow, by Matthew Wizinsky (2022). Suggested by the MCA Library.

Let’s Become Fungal!: Mycelium Teachings and the Arts: Based on Conversations with Indigenous Wisdom Keepers, Artists, Curators, Feminists, and Mycologists, by Yasmine Ostendorf-Rodríguez (2023). Suggested by the MCA Library.

Who Is the City For?: Architecture, Equity, and the Public Realm in Chicago, by Blair Kamin, Lee Bey (2022). Suggested by the MCA Library.

Brown in the Windy City: Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in Postwar Chicago, by Lilia Fernandez (2014). Suggested by the MCA Library.

Design Struggles: Intersecting Histories, Pedagogies, and Perspectives, by Claudia Mareis, Nina Paim (2021). Suggested by the MCA Library.

This Way to Change: A Gentle Guide to Personal Transformation and Collective Liberation, by Jezz Chung (2024).

Art for People’s Sake: Artists and Community in Black Chicago, 1965-1975, by Rebecca Zorach (2019). Suggested by Englewood Arts Collective.

Where the Future Came From, by Meg Duguid (2020). Suggested by Ciera McKissick.

In Conversation, 2020-2021: Dialogues with Artists, Curators, and Scholars, from Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts (2022).

Decolonizing Nature: Contemporary Art and the Politics of Ecology, by T.J. Demos (2016).

Collaborative Social Design with Mexican Indigenous Communities, by Carmen Malvar (2023). Suggested by Marquise Stillwell.

Afterglow: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors, edited by Grist (2023). Suggested by Ami Mehta.

Urban Acupuncture, by Jaime Lerner (2003). Suggested by Helen Slade.

A Renaissance of Our Own: A Memoir and Manifesto on Reimagining, by Rachel Cargle (2023). Suggested by Rachel Cargle.

Decolonizing Design, by Dr. Elizabeth Tunstall (2023). Suggested by Dori Tunstall.

Record Magazine: Issues 7, 8, 9, by Record Magazine (2016–2019). Suggested by Darlene Jackson / DJ Lady D.

Living for Change, by Grace Lee Boggs (2016). Suggested by Jezz Chung.

Collective Courage: a History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice, by Jessica Gordon Nembhard (2014). Suggested by Andrea Yarborough.

Black Women Curators: A Brief Oral History of the Recent Past, by Kemi Adeyemi (2019). Suggested by Ciera Mckissick.

To Make A Public: Temporary Art Review, 2011-2016, by Sarrita Hunn, James McAnally (2016). Suggested by Ciera McKissick.

The Black Atlantic, by Paul Gilroy (1993). Suggested by Joseph Henry.

Warmth of Other Suns, by Isabel Wilkerson (2010). Suggested by Germane Barnes.

The Color of Law, by Richard Rothstein (2017). Suggested by Paola Aguirre Serrano.

The Arsenal of Exclusion and Inclusion, by Interboro Partners (2014). Suggested by Paola Aguirre Serrano.

Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds, by adrienne maree brown (2017).

Worldmaking After Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination, by Adom Getachew (2019).

Our Bodies, Ourselves, by Boston Women’s Health Book Collective (1970).

Our Work is Everywhere: An Illustrated Oral History of Queer and Trans Resistance, by Syan Rose (2021).

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, by Robin Wall Kimmerer (2013).

Freedom Dreams, by Robin D.G. Kelley (2002).

Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir, by Akwaeke Emezi (2021).

Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need, by Sasha Costanza-Chock (2020).

Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution, by Adrienne Rich (1976).

The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins, by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing (2015).

Kingdom Animalia, by Aracelis Girmay (2011).

Explaining Humans: What Science Can Teach Us About Life, Love, and Relationships, by Camilla Pang (2020).

Joyful Militancy: Building Thriving Resistance in Toxic Times, by Carla Bergman, Nick Montgomery (2017).

The Terms of Order: Political Science and the Myth of Leadership, by Cedric J. Robinson (1980).

Magical Criticism: The Recourse of Savage Philosophy by Christopher Bracken (2007).

Les Mystères de Paris [Mysteries of Paris] by Eugène Sue (1842).

Towards What Justice? Describing Diverse Dreams of Justice in Education, by Eve Tuck, K. Wayne Yang (2018).

The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque, by Gilles Deleuze (1988).

Race and Modern Architecture: A Critical History from the Enlightenment to the Present, by Irene Cheng, Charles L. Davis, Mabel O. Wilson (2020).

Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, by James C. Scott (1988).

The University Is Now on Air, Broadcasting Modern Architecture, by Joaquim Moreno (2018).

Will to Live: AIDS Therapies and the Politics of Survival, by João Biehl (2007).

How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective, by Keeanga Yamahtta Taylor (2012).

Never Settle! by New Red Order (2019).

Thinking Architecture, by Peter Zumthor (1998).

Learning from Las Vegas, by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour (1972).

Creative Visualization, by Shakti Gawain (1978).

Beyond the Periphery of the Skin: Rethinking, Remaking, and Reclaiming the Body in Contemporary Capitalism, by Silvia Federici (2019).

All Incomplete, by Stefano Harney, Fred Moten (2021).

The Arcades Project, by Walter Benjamin (2002).

From our Digital Archives:

Evee Shockley, “On Seeing and Reading the ‘Nothing’: Poetry and Blackness Visualized” (New Literary History 50 [2019])

Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (1961)

Silvia Federici, Wages Against Housework (1975)

Deepa Iyer, “The Social Change Ecosystem Map” (2018)

Andrew Cole, “Those Obscure Objects of Desire: The Uses and Abuses of Object-Oriented Ontology and Speculative Realism” (Artforum, Summer 2015)

Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi, “Learning from Levittown” (1970)

Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” (New Dimensions Vol. 3, 1973)

Anoushka Khandwala, “What Does It Mean to Decolonize Design?” (Eye on Design, 2018)

Danah Abdulla, “Against Performative Positivity” (Futuress, 2021)

David A. Banks, “Same Difference: Creativity has become one of capitalism’s biggest growth sectors and best alibis: On Oli Mould’s Against Creativity” (Real Life, 2018)

Diana Budds, “The Design Collective Taking on Structural Racism in the Industry” (Eye on Design, 2020)

Hella Jongerius & Louise Schouwenberg, “Beyond The New: A Search For Ideals In Design”

Jamie Tyberg, “Unlearning: From Degrowth to Decolonization” (2020)

Una Lee and Dann Toliver, Building Consensual Tech

Ari Melenciano, “Building a Museum 353 Years in the Future” (Distributed Web of Care)

Francis Tseng, “Who Owns the Stars: The Trouble with Urbit” (Distributed Web of Care)

Mindy Seu, “Making Space in Online Archives” (Distributed Web of Care)

Cedric Tai, an Accessible ADHD Guide for / by Artists

Jesse Meadows, “You Are Using the Word ‘Neurodiversity’ Wrong” (Medium, 2021)