Creative Communities

Fall 2022 Creative Communities Courses

• CCCX 210: Art, Design, and Change

  Section 01
  Taught by: Mel Potter (Art and Art History)
  Wednesdays, 9-11:50am, 618, #B02 

  In this course, students will explore concepts of community engagement within the practices of art and design. The class will examine how individuals and institutions collaborate to employ creative practices that address social justice. Students will learn skills, strategies and principles of social practice to build toward successful reciprocal engagements with community groups. Through a series of site visits, case studies and interviews, students will investigate the aesthetics, structure and practice of artists, performers and designers who seek to affect social change. Strategies for fundraising, assessment, research and reflection will be considered within the context of Chicago-specific projects.

• CCCX 211: Chicago Performs

  Section 01: The Art of Drag
  Taught by: Khalid Long (Theatre)
  Tuesdays, 3:30-6:20pm, 618, #B02

  In the Art of Drag, students will explore the art form of drag and gender performance as it pertains to community building, nightlife, and performance art. Students will analyze the role of drag in Columbia College Chicago, in Chicago itself, and in its current status as a global phenomenon. Texts include queer theory on drag as performance from scholars such as Judith Butler, ethnographies of drag such as Mother Camp by Esther Newton, and films such as Paris is Burning. Students will develop a contextual understanding of drag and its history in 20th century queer history and performance, as well as contemporary Chicago drag and the issues facing the art form today. The course will help establish student relationships with current working drag performers in Chicago, drag nights and venues, and help students identify areas where the community could be uplifted and supported. Students will be able to choose among options for a final group project which include creating a unique drag performance, researching the history of a particular project or point in time in Chicago drag, or developing a new way for drag to interact with the Columbia College Chicago community. 

  Section 02: Theatre Through Our Lens
  Taught by: Bill Williams (Theatre)
  Fridays, 12:30-3:20pm, 618, #207

  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 212: Fashion Ethics and Aesthetics

  Section 01
  Taught by: Lauren Downing Peters (Fashion Studies)
  Thursdays, 9-11:50am, 618, #B01

  This interdisciplinary course engages the city of Chicago as a site for investigating the ethics and aesthetics of contemporary fashion. Building on the foundational experience of the first semester Big Chicago courses (and specifically, "Chicago Fashion Tribes"), this course frames fashion as one of the most polluting and exploitative global industries as well as a creative medium through which designers can challenge inequality and further environmental and social justice initiatives. In thinking broadly about the ethics of fashion, this course takes a deep dive into tough topics such as environmental sustainability, fast fashion, sweatshop labor and style piracy, and will introduce students to local groups who are using the medium of fashion to effect meaningful change in Chicago and beyond. Through site visits, participant observation, craft-based workshops and community partnerships, students will be challenged to develop an understanding of the place they occupy in the fashion system, to devise actionable solutions to the myriad problems plaguing the industry, and to hone their creative and critical voices as future leaders in the fashion industry.

• CCCX 213: Listening to the City

  Section 01
  Taught by: Rami Gabriel (Humanities, History, and Social Sciences)
  Mondays, 12:30-3:20pm, Spertus #421

  This course explores communities connected through sound. Such communities form through networks both local and virtual, coalescing around shared interests in particular genres and venues, roles and expertise, economies and missions. Through reading, deep listening, discussion, and construction of sonic artifacts, students will engage with foundational theories of auditory culture while they encounter the city through sound.

• CCCX 214: Social Objects

  Section 01 and 02: The Material World of Childhood
  Taught by: Marni Nissan Olmstead (Humanities, History, and Social Sciences)
  Section 01: Wednesdays, 9-11:50am, Web
  Section 02: Wednesdays, 12:30-3:20pm, Web 

  What comes to mind when you think about your childhood? Is it your favorite park? Family pet(s)? Bike rides? A toy? A game? A book or story? Objects mediated everything you did when you were a child. Your first connection with your caregiver involved feeding objects. Your communications with your best friends in middle school likely involved handwritten notes or text messages. Your learning experiences in classrooms were mediated by the desk where you sat. The hours you spent after school were likely mediated by objects you used to fill that time. Material objects, including but not limited to: decorative art, clothing, gifts, utilitarian items, religious icons, modes of transportation, digital "things," and communication devices, always provide the physical context for human social engagements. Current theories about the material world of childhood will help students examine case studies about the manufacture, the trade, and the use of objects designed for and used in childhood from several different world areas. Students will develop broader understandings of the ways objects enable and facilitate interactions with and around children. 

  Section 03 and 04: Tabletop Games and Communities
  Taught by: Brendan Riley (English and Creative Writing)
  Section 03: Mondays, 12:30-3:20pm, 618, #B01
  Section 04: Mondays, 3:30-6:20pm, 618, #B01

  “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 com- munities (both in Chicago and around the world), and begin designing your own game.

• CCCX 215: People, Power, and Narrative

  Section 01: Latino Voices
  Taught by: Elio Leturia (Communication)
  Thursdays, 3:30-6:20pm, 618, #B01

  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.  

  Section 02: Unsettling Chicago
  Taught by: C. Richard King (Humanities, History, and Social Sciences)
  Tuesdays, 9-11:50am, 618, #B02

  Unsettling 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, museum installations and world’s fairs, collective memory and commercial brands, as well as sports mascots and public art 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: Unsung Heroines
  Taught by: Gabriela Diaz de Sabates (Humanities, History, and Social Sciences)
  Tuesdays, 3:30-6:20pm, 618, #B01

  In this course students will learn about the wide range of women’s life stories in the Chicago metropolitan area and beyond, establishing connections between the local and the global. Women’s life stories are of importance because they invent, reform, and refashion personal and collective identity. By taking this course, students will learn about the narrative nature of life experiences by exploring the process of knowing about, listening, and telling of life stories. This class uses an intersectional approach, which takes into consideration markers of identity such as gender, sexual identity, class, race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, etc. Throughout the class, students will be exposed to communities of interest, practice and/or purpose that Chicago women inhabit, create, and participate in, while exploring the relationships among their stories embedded within creative ecosystems, discussing issues of advocacy and the advancement for gender equity and social change. It is important to note that, in this class, the term “woman" is not understood as a concept based on essentialist and narrow notions rooted in biology, but rather as one that is inclusive of all persons who identify as women, in the broadest sense.

   

• CCCX 217: Environmental Justice: Troubled Waters

  Taught by: Dave Dolak (Science and Mathematics)
  Mondays, 9-11:50am, 618, #B02

  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 299: Creative Communities

  Section 01: Joyfulness and Well-Being
  Taught by: Jessica Young (Dance)
  Tuesdays, 12:30-3:20pm, Web

   Section 02: Joyfulness and Well-Being
  Taught by: Susan Imus (Dance)
  Wednesdays, 3:30-6:20pm, 618, #B01

  What makes you joyful? What prevents you from experiencing joyfulness? How is joyfulness related to your well-being? This course examines how experiences of joy and well-being are culturally situated, and how such states can be cultivated through physical, mental, social, and spiritual practices. Furthermore, students will engage their 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, students will expand upon and strengthen their self-care practices to optimize their bio-psycho-social-spiritual well-being.

Summer 2022 Creative Communities Courses

• CCCX 299: Creative Communities

  Section 01: Troubled Waters
  Taught by Beth Davis-Berg (Science and Mathematics)
  5-week session, 5/31/22 – 7/1/22
  Tuesdays/Thursdays, 9:00 a.m. – 1:50 p.m., Web

  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.

Spring 2022 Creative Communities Courses

• CCCX 210: Art, Design, and Change

  Section 01
  Taught by: Mel Potter (Art and Art History)
  Mondays, 9:00-11:50 a.m., WEB

  In this course, students will explore concepts of community engagement within the practices of art and design. The class will examine how individuals and institutions collaborate to employ creative practices that address social justice. Students will learn skills, strategies and principles of social practice to build toward successful reciprocal engagements with community groups. Through a series of site visits, case studies and interviews, students will investigate the aesthetics, structure and practice of artists, performers and designers who seek to affect social change. Strategies for fundraising, assessment, research and reflection will be considered within the context of Chicago-specific projects.

• CCCX 211: Chicago Performs

  Students in this class will explore the performance of self, performance in the everyday, performance as ritual, as well as performance on the stage and screen. Through engagement with culturally diverse performances, community partners, and critical analysis of introductory text in dance, theatre, and performance studies, students will draw on their specific skills and interests to articulate course concepts in writing and in collaborative interdisciplinary performance projects and installations. As collaboration is a key component of this course, a portion of each class session will be devoted to the development of skills necessary to create a final performance in small groups.

   

  Section 01: Theatre Through Our Lens
  Instructor: Justin Brill (Theatre)
  Fridays 12:30-3:20 p.m., 618, #207

  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 performances.

   

  Section 02: Committing Acts of Theatre
  Instructor: Steph Shaw (Theatre)
  Thursdays 3:30-6:20 p.m., 618, #207

  Folks can be forgiven for thinking that Chicago theatre stops at Steppenwolf, the Goodman, or Chicago Shakespeare.  But there is a community of roughly 200 small theatres in the city, all of them facing extinction daily, and none more so than the experimental theatres (with the exception of the Neo-Futurarium, which continues to flourish.) Students in the class will become familiar with options that exist and the long history behind alternative theatre; how expectations came to be set, and then changed, and then changed again. Time will be made to examine how the Columbia College theatre department is examining alternative ways of approaching theatre (especially during the pandemic.)  The class itself will grow into a close community as it creates, presents, and responds to one another’s personal work.  

• CCCX 212: Fashion Ethics and Aesthetics

  Section 01
  Instructor: Lauren Downing Peters (Fashion)
  Wednesdays 9:00-11:50 a.m., 618, #207

  Section 02
  Instructor: Lauren Downing Peters (Fashion)
  Thursdays 12:30-3:20 p.m., Hybrid, 618, #901

  This interdisciplinary course engages the city of Chicago as a site for investigating the ethics and aesthetics of contemporary fashion. Building on the foundational experience of the first semester Big Chicago courses (and specifically, "Chicago Fashion Tribes"), this course frames fashion as one of the most polluting and exploitative global industries as well as a creative medium through which designers can challenge inequality and further environmental and social justice initiatives. In thinking broadly about the ethics of fashion, this course takes a deep dive into tough topics such as environmental sustainability, fast fashion, sweatshop labor and style piracy, and will introduce students to local groups who are using the medium of fashion to effect meaningful change in Chicago and beyond. Through site visits, participant observation, craft-based workshops and community partnerships, students will be challenged to develop an understanding of the place they occupy in the fashion system, to devise actionable solutions to the myriad problems plaguing the industry, and to hone their creative and critical voices as future leaders in the fashion industry.

• CCCX 213: Listening to the City

  Section 01
  Instructor: Ted Hardin (Cinema and Television Arts)
  Wednesdays 12:30-3:20pm, SPER, #421

  Section 02
  Instructor: Philip Seward (Music)
  Tuesdays 9:00-11:50 a.m., 600, #101

  Section 03
  Instructor: Jesse Seay (Audio Arts and Acoustics)
  Thursdays 12:30-3:20 p.m., Hybrid, 623, #109

  This course explores communities connected through sound. Such communities form through networks both local and virtual, coalescing around shared interests in particular genres and venues, roles and expertise, economies and missions. Through reading, deep listening, discussion, and construction of sonic artifacts, students will engage with foundational theories of auditory culture while they encounter the city through sound.

• CCCX 214: Social Objects

  This course encourages students to explore some of the diverse ways that human groups create and use material objects, including but not limited to: decorative art, clothing, gifts, utilitarian items, religious icons, modes of transportation, digital "things," and communication devices. Students will engage with current theories of the material world; examine case studies about the manufacture, trade, and use of objects from around the world; investigate how objects mediate relationships among individuals and community groups; and create their own "social objects."

   

  Section 01: The Material World of Childhood
  Instructor: Katie Paciga (Humanities, History, and Social Sciences)
  Wednesdays 9:00-11:50 a.m., WEB

  Section 02: The Material World of Childhood
  Instructor: Marni Nissan Olmstead (Humanities, History, and Social Sciences)
  Wednesdays 9:00-11:50 a.m., WEB

  Section 03: The Material World of Childhood
  Instructor: Marni Nissan Olmstead (Humanities, History, and Social Sciences)
  Wednesdays 12:30-3:20 p.m., WEB

  What comes to mind when you think about your childhood? Is it your favorite park? Family pet(s)? Bike rides? A toy? A game? A book or story? Objects mediated everything you did when you were a child. Your first connection with your caregiver involved feeding objects. Your communications with your best friends in middle school likely involved handwritten notes or text messages. Your learning experiences in classrooms were mediated by the desk where you sat. The hours you spent after school were likely mediated by objects you used to fill that time. Material objects, including but not limited to: decorative art, clothing, gifts, utilitarian items, religious icons, modes of transportation, digital "things," and communication devices, always provide the physical context for human social engagements. Current theories about the material world of childhood will help students examine case studies about the manufacture, the trade, and the use of objects designed for and used in childhood from several different world areas. Students will develop broader understandings of the ways objects enable and facilitate interactions with and around children.

   

  Section 04: Artist Letters and Mail Art
  Instructor: Ames Hawkins (English and Creative Writing)
  Tuesdays 3:30-6:20pm, 618, #207

  What inspires artists and poets to write letters to each other? How does letter writing inform creative practices and enhance collaboration? Each week, we will read specific artist exchanges and explore different instances of mail art. Through these examples we will explore some of the purposes and affordances of letter writing as they have been connected with and to the creative ecologies of artists, writers, and poets. You will engage in weekly letter-writing activities and connect with and to creative communities in and beyond our class. Overall, the class invites you to explore how you might apply these principles in your own creative work.

• CCCX 215: People, Power, and Narrative

  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.

   

  Section 01: Gender, Power, Romantic Comedy
  Instructor: Deborah Holdstein (English and Creative Writing)
  Wednesdays 3:30-6:20pm, SPER, #421

  “Power, Gender, Romantic Comedy” closely examines a history of romantic comedy in film (not the history), analyzing—as indicated by the title—power relationships, conventions of genre, social class, gender, storytelling, and the like. Each week, students will read brief chapters or articles that will be provided to help us examine, discuss, challenge, and write about films that conform to and occasionally “stretch” the expectations of this particular and still-highly popular genre. Why has this cinematic genre been so popular for over ninety years? How might we challenge and analyze—and yet still appreciate—the politics and power relationships evident in most films that seem to conform to the genre? How does analysis of individual, sometimes (but not always) predictable narratives and characters within these films reveal assumptions about gender and the power relationships that merit constructive challenge? How has the romantic comedy evolved—if it has—and for what reasons? Have power dynamics changed?  Remained static? Why? Additionally, we will consider how we might and can define “communities of purpose” and “communities of interest” related to the political and power relationships in these films.  How do these films—for good or ill—reflect or defy community and social expectations and contexts, respective to their time(s)? Once we determine what, if any, are the “communities of interest,” how have these community “interests” changed—or not? Do underlying interests, particularly economic ones, remain the same? Why or why not?

   

  Section 02: American Prisons
  Instructor: Teresa Prados Torriera (Humanities, History, and Social Sciences)
  Thursdays 12:30-3:20 p.m., Hybrid, 618, #207

  This class will examine why and how the United States relies on mass detention as a strategy to impose order, and how the current judicial system has relegated millions of poor people to a second-class status. Why is the U.S. one of the most punitive countries in the world? Who gets punished? What are the lives of incarcerated people like? Ultimately, we will explore the question: Can we imagine an alternative to the current system? Students will draw on their own interests and skills to investigate and understand global and local issues through the lens of mass incarceration. They will be exposed to and connect with Chicago creative communities engaged in developing new solutions to address this social problem.

   

  Section 03: Chicago’s Literary Communities
  Instructor: Aviya Kushner (English and Creative Writing)
  Thursdays 9:00-11:50 a.m., WEB

  We will attend virtual readings and literary events, and we will hear from writers, translators, booksellers, and arts administrators who will give us a window into the tremendous literary diversity of this great city. At the end of this course, you will have a stronger understanding of how literary community works and what the literary ecosystem is like. Every member of the class will be empowered to enter Chicago’s literary community as an informed literary citizen.

   

• CCCX 299 Topics in Creative Communities

  Section 01: Troubled Waters
  Instructor: Dave Dolak (Science and Mathematics) 
  Mondays 9:00-11:50 a.m., 600, #101

  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.

   

  Section 02: Joyfulness and Well-Being
  Instructor: Jessica Young (Dance)
  Tuesdays 12:30-3:20 p.m., WEB

  Section 03: Joyfulness and Well-Being
  Instructor: Susan Imus (Dance)
  Wednesdays 3:30-6:20 p.m., WEB

  What makes you joyful? What prevents you from experiencing joyfulness? How is joyfulness related to your well-being? This course examines how experiences of joy and well-being are culturally situated, and how such states can be cultivated through physical, mental, social, and spiritual practices. Furthermore, students will engage their 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, students will expand upon and strengthen their self-care practices to optimize their bio-psyho-social-spiritual well-being.

   

  Section 04: Culture of Climate Change
  Instructor: Michelle Yates (Humanities, History, and Social Sciences)
  Thursdays 9:00-11:50 a.m., 618, #207

  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 05: Rethinking Museums
  Instructor: Onur Ozturk (Art and Art History)
  Tuesdays 9:00-11:50 a.m., SPER, #421

  In this course, students will explore, study, question, and reimagine historical and contemporary curatorial practices. Mini lectures, class discussions, and field trips will investigate permanent and temporary exhibitions of the Chicago area museums, archival materials of Chicago world expositions, and current scholarship on curating Islamic art as special case studies. Exposing students to current debates around museums and curators, the course will pose various questions: How and why museums have been giving priority and authority to some forms of knowledge and objects over others? How do museums organize, categorize, and present their collections? How can museums address colonialist, orientalist, and racist origins of their practices and collections? How can museums represent missing or misinterpreted histories, stories, and traditions of indigenous and global cultures? Students will be asked to apply their academic research and critical thinking skills as they reimagine a portion of the Art Institute of Chicago for their final project.