Associate Professor Christine Walley’s Exit Zero Project (www.exitzeroproject.org) uses family stories told across multiple generations to explore the lasting social and environmental impacts of deindustrialization in the former steel mill communities of Southeast Chicago.

More broadly, the project examines the key role that the loss of industrial jobs has played in expanding class inequalities in the United States, and how Americans talk—and fail to talk—about social class.

In addition to a recent book, Exit Zero: Family and Class in Post-Industrial Chicago and a nearly-completed documentary film, also called Exit Zero (directed by Chris Boebel and produced by Professor Walley), the project also includes an interactive documentary website being developed in conjunction with the Southeast Chicago Historical Museum.