Reform—a term, activity, or idea dedicated to dissent from existing conditions—is also, history demonstrates, slippery in its ambivalence. As the setting for both Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle and Hull House’s historical founding, Chicago has long been associated with activism and reform in the Progressive Era. Yet violent conflicts like the Haymarket Affair and Chicago Race Riots of 1919 made manifest continuing racial and class-based divisions and attested to the limits of so-called progressive social reform in this time/place. This panel seeks to further discussions about what lessons, both cautionary and instructive, can be taken from the reform movements of the Progressive Era while living in what has been (arguably) described as a second “Gilded Age.” How have the legacies of Progressive Era public figures/activists shaped current cultural landscape(s)? How have early activism or reform movements influenced 20th/21st-century America? What connections exist between current and former media campaigns for social causes? What do previous reform movements focusing on race/gender/class/sexuality teach us about intersectionality? How does dissent influence the formulation and critique of reform movements? Topics need not be Chicago-bound. Please send 300-word abstracts and short bio to heather.chacon@greensboro.edu or Julie.naviaux@uah.edu by 1/20.