Creative Communities

Spring 2026 CCCX 200 - Creative Communities Courses

• CCCX 211: Chicago Performs

  Section 01: Theatre Through Our Lens
  Taught by: Sami Hussain Ismat (Theatre and Dance)
  Tuesdays 9:00-11:50am, 618, #LL01 

  Section 02: Theatre Through Our Lens
  Taught by: Sami Hussain Ismat (Theatre and Dance)
  Thursdays 9:00-11:50am, 33, #302

  This course will introduce students to the diverse and ever-changing topography of the Chicago theatre community, including the role of theatre-making at Columbia College Chicago. Texts will include excerpts from critical works on performance practice, mission statements of representative theatre companies, scenes from plays drawn from the respective seasons of Chicago theatre companies we will visit, and scenes from the Mainstage season at Columbia College Chicago. From this course, students will be able to articulate many of the creative practices of and pressing issues facing theatrical production in Chicago (and the national theatre community) writ large. Moreover, by engaging with the Columbia community and Chicago theatre companies and practitioners, students will be provided opportunities to generate their own theatrical content and formulate their own theatrical aesthetic in ways that may contribute to theatre-making and critique in Chicago and beyond. Students will develop a final project that will demonstrate their ability to create and/or foster interdisciplinary, socially engaged theatrical work.

• CCCX 214: Social Objects

  Section 01: Tabletop Games and Communities
  Taught by: Brendan Riley (Communication and Culture)
  Mondays 12:30-3:20pm, 618, #207

  “I’ve got two stone. Who has some sheep to spare?” “Will you take St. James place for Marvin Gardens?” “My dexterity check succeeds. I stab the orc in the eye.” “I call.” Human beings have been playing games for a very, very long time. From the ancient games of SENET and UR to party games like Cards Against Humanity, we gather around tables to have fun with our friends, and to meet new ones. In this course, you will explore the vibrant world of tabletop games and game communities. You will: play games from a variety of genres and types, read and apply critical theory to explore how games work and how they’re designed, interact with game communities (both in Chicago and around the world), and begin designing your own game. 

• CCCX 215: People, Power, and Narrative

  Section 01: Chicago Noir
  Taught by:Terence Brunk (Communication and Culture)
  Mondays 12:30-3:20pm, 618, #LL01

  “Chicago Noir” invites you to become a detective of city culture. From the glint of rain-soaked streets to the hum of a city that never quite sleeps, we’ll travel into into the dark heart of Chicago to explore how the city’s grittiest stories—written, filmed, photographed, drawn, and digitally rendered—capture the tension between individual and community survival and powerful social forces. We will examine noir as both an aesthetic and a critique: a lens through which race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, and corruption reflect the city’s past and present. Together, we’ll analyze the work of classic and contemporary Chicago creators who have imagined the city’s alleys, newsrooms, and backrooms as sites of struggle and resistance. Through discussions, creative projects, and maybe a little hard-nosed investigation of your own, you will consider how noir storytelling exposes the sometimes invisible systems—political, economic, and emotional—that shape urban life. 

  Section 02: TBD
  Taught by: Alexis Pride (Communication and Culture)
  Thursdays 12:30-3:20pm, 33, #421

  This course focuses on stories people tell about themselves and their communities. By collecting, analyzing, and retelling stories, students will develop a sharper understanding of how and why people use stories to make sense of their lives and local environs. Students will learn about life stories, help make hidden stories visible, and establish connections between diverse stories and diverse communities. Through the process of discovering, understanding, and relaying narratives, students will establish deeper ties with their own communities at the college and in the city. 

   

• CCCX 216: Write in Place

  Section 01: Imaginary Chicago
  Taught by: Joe Meno (Communication and Culture)
  Wednesdays 12:30-3:20pm, 618, #LL01

  Chicago has one of the most diverse literary histories anywhere in the country including its longstanding connection to the strange, mysterious, and fantastic. From Frank L. Baum's The Wizard of Oz to the photographic work of Vivian Maier, Chicago's writers and artists have often juxtaposed the impossible alongside the ordinary. Using the city as both text and classroom, students in this course will explore some of Chicago’s most essential imaginary works through a series of site-specific trips, guest visits, and writing assignments. The final project for the class will be the creation of a narrative project that captures the student's connection to an otherworldly Chicago location or event. 

• CCCX 217: Environmental Justice

  Section 01: Culture of Climate Change
  Taught by: Michelle Yates (Communication and Culture)
  Tuesdays 9:00-11:50am, WEB

  In this class we will learn about climate change and the ways in which writers, artists, filmmakers, activists, journalists, and scholars respond to this issue, arguably the most important and challenging issue facing human societies and global species. Through assignments that introduce its causes and impacts, we will explore the intersectional environmental, social, economic, and cultural dimensions of climate change. We will identify how humans and their activities have exerted powerful forces on the planet, giving rise to what scholars debate as a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene. Students will critically analyze relevant source material, including readings, data, media, and art and design objects and experiences. We will consider the disproportional impacts of increasingly eroding environmental conditions on poor and marginalized communities in the United States and globally as well as how these communities advocate for environmental and climate justice. Students will draw on their own interests and skills to investigate and articulate their understandings of climate change and its impacts, and to envision possible outcomes.

  Section 02: Troubled Waters
  Taught by: Dave Dolak (Design)
  Wednesdays 9:00-11:50am, 600, #306

  In this course students explore the importance of water resources to various communities and ecosystems in Chicago, a city that was founded because of water and whose natural waterways were altered to build a great metropolis. They examine how this process displaced the original inhabitants, altered ecosystems, displaced wildlife, and how access to water for recreation and consumption without effective and egalitarian policy-making can affect some communities unequally, create and perpetuate inequality. Students investigate the nature of water as a finite resource and how changing demographics, politics, and climate uncertainty may challenge existing narratives of water abundance, scarcity, access, and quality for various communities in and around Chicagoland. In a final project, they envision how responsible stewardship of the shoreline or the river could provide more communities with access to Chicago’s waterways and water resources. 

• CCCX 218: Joyfulness and Well-Being

  Section 01
  Taught by: Beatrix Budy (Design)
  Wednesdays 9:00-11:50am, 33, #302

  Section 02
  Taught by: Lisa Fishman (Communication and Culture)
  Wednesdays 12:30-3:20pm, 600, #406

  What makes you joyful? What prevents you from experiencing joyfulness? How is joyfulness related to your well-being? This course examines how experiences of joyfulness and well-being are culturally situated and how such states can be cultivated through physical, mental, social, cultural, and spiritual practices. You will draw upon your lived experiences and engage your creative interests in arts, media, and communication as a means of informing these practices. Through engagement with community resources at Columbia and the wider Chicago area as well as critical analysis of introductory readings and viewings in joy, pleasure, resilience, and the body/mind/spirit relationship, you will expand upon and strengthen your self-care and community care practices to optimize your bio-psycho-social-cultural-spiritual well-being. Some classes require mild to moderate movement. 

Fall 2025 CCCX 200 - Creative Communities Courses

• CCCX 211: Chicago Performs

  Section 04: Theatre Through Our Lens
  Taught by: Sami Hussain Ismat (Theatre and Dance)
  Tuesdays 9:00-11:50am, 33, #302

  Section 05: Theatre Through Our Lens
  Taught by: Sami Hussain Ismat (Theatre and Dance)
  Thursdays 9:00-11:50am, 618, #LL01

  This course will introduce students to the diverse and ever-changing topography of the Chicago theatre community, including the role of theatre-making at Columbia College Chicago. Texts will include excerpts from critical works on performance practice, mission statements of representative theatre companies, scenes from plays drawn from the respective seasons of Chicago theatre companies we will visit, and scenes from the Mainstage season at Columbia College Chicago. From this course, students will be able to articulate many of the creative practices of and pressing issues facing theatrical production in Chicago (and the national theatre community) writ large. Moreover, by engaging with the Columbia community and Chicago theatre companies and practitioners, students will be provided opportunities to generate their own theatrical content and formulate their own theatrical aesthetic in ways that may contribute to theatre-making and critique in Chicago and beyond. Students will develop a final project that will demonstrate their ability to create and/or foster interdisciplinary, socially engaged theatrical work.

• CCCX 214: Social Objects

  Section 01: Mental Health
  Taught by: Olga Goldenberg (Communication and Culture)
  Tuesdays 12:30-3:20pm, 33, #302

  In this course you will learn how mental health contributes to our overall well-being in Chicago’s urban setting. You will explore the reciprocal connection between mental health and circumstances in which people live, work, and create. You will learn how mental health affects people’s ability to cope with life stressors, realize their abilities, learn, work, create, and contributes to building and maintaining relationships, social networks, and communities. Through project-based team learning, you will research factors that influence mental health in Chicago's urban setting, such as urban design (neighborhood-level differences in green spaces, street layout, artistic displays, and social connections), access to services, and community engagement. You will think critically and creatively about currently available mental health services in the city and ways to improve them

  Section 02: Tabletop Games & Communities
  Taught by: Brendan Riley (Communication and Culture)
  Thursdays 12:30-3:20pm, 618, #LL02

  “I’ve got two stone. Who has some sheep to spare?” “Will you take St. James place for Marvin Gardens?” “My dexterity check succeeds. I stab the orc in the eye.” “I call.” Human beings have been playing games for a very, very long time. From the ancient games of SENET and UR to party games like Cards Against Humanity, we gather around tables to have fun with our friends, and to meet new ones. In this course, you will explore the vibrant world of tabletop games and game communities. You will: play games from a variety of genres and types, read and apply critical theory to explore how games work and how they’re designed, interact with game communities (both in Chicago and around the world), and begin designing your own game.

  Section 03: Food & Culture
  Taught by: Dana Connell (Fashion)
  Tuesdays 3:30-6:20pm, 618, #LL01

  In this class, we will learn to think intellectually and creatively about the only social object we must consume in order to live: food. Food is life, and life can be studied and understood through food. We will learn about food as a creative practice linked to culture, family, history, ethnicity, gender, sexual identity, race, class and nationality. By exploring texts from philosophy, cultural studies, sociology, anthropology, literature, film and media, we will learn: How is food shared? How do foodways carry our identity, traditions and memories? How is food linked to power? How is the immigrant history of Chicago linked to its food culture? Why does food MEAN something to us? You will explore the rich food history of Chicago as well as your own food practices. The class will research, write and design a Critical Cookbook as its final collaborative project.

• CCCX 215: People, Power, and Narrative

  Section 01: Unsung Heroines
  Taught by: Gabriela Díaz de Sabatés (Communication and Culture)
  Tuesdays 12:30-3:20pm, 618, #LL01

  This course explores the wide range of unsung women’s life stories in Chicago and beyond, establishing connections between the local and the global. By discovering the rich life stories of unknown heroines around us, students learn about the processes of knowing about, listening, and telling of life stories. It uses an intersectional approach that takes into consideration markers of identity such as gender, sexual identity, class, race, ethnicity, body ability, national origin, religion, etc. This class presents students the possibility to engage with communities of interest, practice and/or purpose that Chicago women inhabit, create, and participate in, while inquiring about the relationships among their stories embedded within creative ecosystems, discussing issues of advocacy and the advancement for gender equity and social change.

   

  Section 02: Indianness in Chicago
  Taught by: Rich King (Communication and Culture)
  Wednesdays 9:00-11:50am, 618, #LL02

  Indianness in Chicago concerns itself with the place of imagined Indians in Chicago and the distinct representational practices and cultural politics that have made such renderings pleasurable, profitable, and powerful. Place names and origins stories, collective memory and commercial brands, as well as sports mascots and holiday celebrations will be examined. Readings and discussion seek not simply to catalog a set of stereotypes but encourage a deeper understanding of the construction and circulation of such representations and a fuller appreciation of the cultural, historical, and political forces shaping the uses and understandings of Indianness. Throughout, attention will be directed at the shifting contours of race, power, and identity as well as the persistence and fecundity of core ideas about indigenous peoples. 

   

  Section 03: Latino Voices
  Taught by: Elio Leturia (Communication and Culture)
  Wednesdays 3:30-6:20pm, 618, #LL02

  In this course, students will learn about the wide range of life stories of Latino communities in the city. Hispanics and Latinos make up the largest minority group in the United States and their stories are of great importance because they have been part of the American landscape for centuries. Nevertheless, these stories continue being overlooked or told by others who lack the understanding of this multiethnic community whose roots come from many Latin American countries in North, Central and South America. By taking this course, students will learn about the narrative nature of Hispanic/Latino life experiences by inquiring, learning, and explaining their histories (identifying similarities and differences) thus avoiding perpetuating stereotypes. Throughout the course, students will explore diverse communities in which Latinos across Chicago live, create, and participate. Students will also engage in discussing issues of immigration, advocacy, language, religion, culture, ethnic background, class, and the advancement for racial equity and social change. As collaborative work is an essential component of this class, students will work in groups to discuss practices and content and to develop their final group presentations. 

• CCCX 217: Environmental Justice

  Section 01: Culture of Climate Change
  Taught by: Michelle Yates (Communication and Culture) 
  Thursdays 9:00-11:50am, WEB

  In this class we will learn about climate change and the ways in which writers, artists, filmmakers, activists, journalists, and scholars respond to this issue, arguably the most important and challenging issue facing human societies and global species. Through assignments that introduce its causes and impacts, we will explore the intersectional environmental, social, economic, and cultural dimensions of climate change. We will identify how humans and their activities have exerted powerful forces on the planet, giving rise to what scholars debate as a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene. Students will critically analyze relevant source material, including readings, data, media, and art and design objects and experiences. We will consider the disproportional impacts of increasingly eroding environmental conditions on poor and marginalized communities in the United States and globally as well as how these communities advocate for environmental and climate justice. Students will draw on their own interests and skills to investigate and articulate their understandings of climate change and its impacts, and to envision possible outcomes.

• CCCX 299: Creative Communities

  Section 01: Envisioning Political Resistance
  Taught by: Rich King (Communication and Culture)
  Thursdays 9:00-11:50am, 33, #302

  In this course, we will use film to think politically about connections between the global and the local in terms of powerful forces of change, such as capitalism, technology, authoritarianism, climate change, and revolution. We will investigate the meaning of community and the practice of resistance in Chicago and beyond by studying a series of films and developing an understanding of the socio-political contexts that produced those films. We will learn about how political communities in Chicago and beyond have worked to visualize and create a better world both in political literature and in film. Students will have opportunities to pursue their own political interests and use their own creative skills to research political communities that envision resistance.