At the annual convention of the Modern Language Association held here earlier this month, the MLA’s delegate assembly passed a resolution critical of Israel for its visa policies. The resolution urges the U.S. State Department to challenge Israel’s “denials of entry to the West Bank by U.S. academics.” None of this usually attracts much outside attention, but the session “Academic Boycotts: A Conversation About Israel and Palestine” had generated quite a bit of controversy....

Reverend Anthony Randall stepped to the pulpit at Twelve Gates Missionary Baptist Church, a small congregation that meets in a storefront space on West Division in Austin. “The next voice you’ll hear is from someone who’s become a friend of mine,” he said, “and I hope he’s going to become our next mayor.” Over the last three years Fioretti has emerged as one of the few outspoken critics of Emanuel in the City Council....

Links Hall at Constellation, 3111 N. Western, 773-281-0824, linkshall.org The hottest blind date in dance is the series of unconventional collaborations going on at Links Hall. For each show, different artists—two local dance companies and a musical guest—meet, greet, and get on the floor. Before everyone, audience and performers, takes a seat to listen to a (usually) never-before-heard composition written by the musical guest, the dancers hop around, all piss and vinegar and adrenaline-fueled restlessness....

The rhythmic —thwap of a fist knocking a speed bag reverberates down the stairs of the Beautiful Zion Missionary Baptist Church in West Englewood before even reaching the area the Crushers Club boxing gym has called home for the past two years. Collages of photos line the stairwell leading to showing young boys—their little boxing gloves framing their baby faces—next to their more seasoned, teenaged mentors—muscles gleaming with sweat, sometimes mean-mugging the camera....

Attendees circled the entrance of the church holding signs and yelling chants, including “Pro-life, your name’s a lie, you don’t care if women die” and “Abortion is health care. Health care is a right!” “There is unity between the white supremacy and the patriarchy that we are seeing forced upon us,” said a member of Refuse Fascism. “That’s why Refuse Fascism is saying this regime between Trump and them has to go....

Street View is a fashion series in which Isa Giallorenzo spotlights some of the coolest styles seen in Chicago. See more street style in the Chicago Looks blog.

Soupbox 50 E. Chicago Runner-Up Capt’n Nemo’s

Street View is a fashion series in which Isa Giallorenzo spotlights some of the coolest styles seen in Chicago.

Agamemnon When Court Theatre looked in on King Agamemnon of Argos last year, in a powerful adaptation of Euripides’s Iphigenia in Aulis, he was busy sacrificing daughter Iphigenia to the gods in exchange for favorable winds to take him and his armies to Troy. Now Court is visiting him again, this time through the lens of Aeschylus’s Agamemnon. A decade has passed, Troy has fallen, the king is returning in triumph, and as for his crimes—well, victory is its own justification, right?...

The Owl 2521 N. Milwaukee Runner-Up East Room

Kerry James Marshall www.jackshainman.com/artists/kerryjames-marshall Runner-Up Theaster Gates

Brent Knepper Gamers Johann Sebastian Joust-ing You can hardly throw a game token ten feet without hitting a vintage arcade bar in certain Chicago neighborhoods. The arcade bar boom has been a boon for lovers of old consoles, and it’s also piqued people’s interest in new indie games created by up-and-coming developers (as evidenced by the popularity of the ten-player arcade console Killer Queen at Logan Arcade). On September 6 at Bit Bash, Chicago’s first indie-gaming festival, it’s all cutting edge all the time....

Tomorrow at 7 PM, Northwest Chicago Film Society will present a 35-millimeter print of Out of the Blue (1980), Dennis Hopper’s third directorial effort, at Northeastern University. Hopper described Blue as a follow-up to Easy Rider, even though it contains none of the same characters or that film’s fascination with motorcycle culture; rather, the connection is spiritual and stylistic. As Reader emeritus Jonathan Rosenbaum once wrote, the movie is defined by “the Hopper flavor: relentlessly raunchy and downbeat, and informed throughout by the kind of generational anguish and sense of doom that characterizes both of his earlier films [Rider and The Last Movie]....

One of the most versatile, dynamic vocalists in American history, Chaka Khan returns to her native Chicago this week from her home in Los Angeles. She’ll headline the Chicago Theatre in a concert benefiting the Red Pump Project, a nonprofit that promotes awareness about the effects of HIV on women and girls. Oh wow. I was in the choir with Dr. Lena McLin. Did you study music with her? That was after the Affro-Arts Theater....

Chris Sweda/Sun-Times More whites and fewer blacks are getting into Chicago’s elite public high schools, including Payton College Prep. When the City Council holds hearings on Chicago’s selective enrollment high schools this summer, I hope aldermen consider the larger questions about racial and economic segregation as well as the particular ones that prompted their interest in the subject. Equal access to the “pipeline” is a worthy concern. But the selective enrollment schools are intended to do more than help high achievers....