Loren Kruger’s research and teaching focus on theatre performance and theory in Europe, Africa, and the Americas, South African literature and visual culture, and on cultural theory, mostly the Marxist tradition in German, English and other languages, and its transnational legacy. She is also affiliated with the Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture and the U Chicago Urban Network. Kruger’s most recent book, Imagining the Edgy City, brings together film and fiction, public art, architecture, and history with previous work on theatre and other performances in Johannesburg. The book shows how apparently new claims for Johannesburg as global city hide a long history of images of Johannesburg as the wonder city of Africa and the world, with comparisons both pertinent and impertinent with other cities from Chicago to Paris, Berlin to Bogotá, Sydney to Sāo Paolo. Johannesburg has been called the “Chicago of South Africa” partly because of gangster culture in both places, but Johannesburg also owes a lot to the influence of Chicago architects and urbanists. For more on this connection, see the blog post on the UChicago Urban Network.