Led by top scholars and practitioners in their fields, these first semester courses connect students to the city of Chicago and encourage reflection on those experiences with a cohort of student peers. Students investigate aspects of Columbia College Chicago's diverse urban and cultural setting. Courses introduce students to different learning environments, issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and deeper ways of engaging the urban contexts and communities of Chicago.
Section 01: Everything is a Photograph
Taught by: Ross Sawyers (Visual Arts)
Thursdays 12:30-3:20pm, 623, #109
Since its inception, photography has and continues to change our understanding of the world around us and it is estimated that 3.2 billion photographs are uploaded to various online platforms every day. Using the city of Chicago as a backdrop, we will explore some of the most photographed locations in the city such as Cloud Gate (aka “The Bean”) as well as more obscure locations in Chicago. Through making photographs with our cell phone cameras, and reading about and looking at photographs, we will investigate how photography reshapes our understanding of reality and reshapes our understanding of place, ourselves, and each other.
Section 02: Creative Energy in the City
Taught by: Derick D. Jones, Jr. (Design)
Tuesdays 9:00-11:50am, 618, #207
From the city’s vibrant/muted hues of color to its melodic/dissonant tones of sound and dynamic movements in nature, we will explore and investigate how energy interplays with creativity to manifest itself in our unique creative endeavors. Utilizing the city as our laboratory, together, we will embark on a multifaceted journey to understand the diverse roles and effects of energy on creative expression. Drawing from scientific principles, particularly those governing energy conservation and transfer, scholars will delve into theoretical frameworks elucidating the fundamental nature of energy transformation as a creative. Through rigorous investigation, participants will examine how these principles intersect with and catalyze creative endeavors within Chicago's diverse cultural setting. Field trips to nearby parks and natural settings (Grant Park and Lake Michigan, for example) will provide firsthand encounters with energy dynamics, from seeing the kinetic energy of water bodies to experiencing the vibrant soundscape of the urban environment. Additionally, collaborative engagements with fellow students, faculty, and staff will facilitate experiential learning opportunities, fostering a supportive environment for creative exploration and expression. Moreover, scholars will actively engage with the Columbia College Chicago community, attending student organization meetings and accessing institutional resources to sustain and amplify their creative energy. By integrating scientific inquiry with artistic inquiry, this course aims to deepen our understanding of the synergetic relationship between energy and creativity while fostering interdisciplinary perspectives essential for innovative thinking and problem-solving in the contemporary world as a creative.
Section 04: Chicago Feminists
Taught by: Mel Potter (Visual Arts)
Wednesdays 9:00-11:50am, 623, #203
Women-identified people have shaped the history of Chicago for centuries - from The Janes, to Mary Blood, the founder of Columbia College Chicago. Come on a journey to uncover an emerging history that will inspire your practice and engage your passion for purpose. We will plan tours including the Jane Addams Hull House Museum, the Field Museum, and the Women’s History Museum, among many others. As this is an evolving history, you will help shape the class with your research and objectives. What is missing from the Chicago Feminist landscape? What is the story you wish to tell? How can we create a more intersectional future with women-identified people properly recognized for their power, conviction, and creativity? Through our work together, we will produce a zine for distribution reflecting your contribution to the story of Chicago Feminists.
Section 06: Haunted Chicago
Taught by: Terence Brunk (Communication and Culture)
Thursdays 9:00-11:50am, 618, #207
Dare you enter? The ghosts of Chicago are waiting for you! Step across the creaking threshold and into the cobwebbed corners of our haunted city. We’ll explore Chicago’s most chilling legends and infamous ghostly tragedies – from Resurrection Mary and the Devil Baby of Hull House to the reported supernatural echoes of the Eastland disaster and the Iroquois Theater fire – to consider how tales of haunting and horror reflect the anxieties, struggles, and resilience of Chicago’s many diverse communities. On our journey, we’ll visit locations celebrated for rumored paranormal activity and cursed by the poignant catastrophes they witnessed. We’ll blend our experiences of the city with eerie readings, architecture analysis, investigations of the psychology of horror, and artistic representations of the uncanny and macabre. You’ll draw from these materials as you collaborate with each other to make creative projects of your own – possessed objects, protective charms, ghastly tales, dramatic spirit summonings, or other manifestations of your spookiest musings about the city, its rich culture, and its collective memory. Through the projects you build, you’ll take part in Chicago's vibrant scene of imaginative expression that blurs the line between fact and phantasm. By connecting folklore, urban history, and contemporary creative practice, we’ll try to understand why tales of the supernatural refuse to die in Chicago - and how they continue to shape the city’s ever-evolving, ever-haunted urban identity.
Section 07: The Ecosystem of Chicago Comedy
Taught by: Grace Overbeke (Theatre and Dance)
Tuesdays 3:30-6:20pm, 618, #207
Chicago is a comedy hub of the United States, especially when it comes to improvisation. This course will introduce students to the vibrant world of Chicago comedy, which includes sketch comedy, improvisation, theatre, stand-up, and more. Through team-learning activities, presentations, comedy writing exercises, and field trips (using public transit), students will learn to navigate their way around the Chicago comedy scene, and analyze how the many comedy clubs, artists, schools, and institutions contribute to the city.
Section 08: Wild in Chicago
Taught by: Beth Davis-Berg (Design)
Tuesdays 9:00-11:50am, 600, #101
How do we notice and consider animals in the city? Pigeons, rats, dogs, cats…. and also red foxes, bobcats, flying squirrels, North American beavers, river otters, little brown bats, peregrine falcons, spiny softshell turtles, leopard frogs, blue spotted salamanders, American eels, deertoe mussels, dark fishing spiders, common green darner dragonflies, monarch butterflies, rusty patched bumblebees…are just a small sampling of the non-human animals navigating life in Chicago environments. Where do these animals live and how do we co-exist in urban environments? The parks, neighborhoods, air, soil, rivers, lake, and even skyscrapers, bridges, train tracks, and sidewalk cracks are homes to the city’s animals. We’ll explore animal and plant habitats on walking tours and site visits around and beyond the Columbia campus, and investigate how development and planning decisions can impact the biodiversity of natural environments over time. We will create a field guide documenting and analyzing our observations and perspectives on nature, recording how, when, and where to find wildlife in the city, and we'll reflect on the meaning, importance, and creative inspiration that nature and animals can contribute to our own urban lives.
Section 09: Close Reading RAP Lyrics
Taught by: Ayo Walker (Theatre and Dance)
Mondays, Wednesdays 10:30-11:50am, 623, #109
In this course we will examine the performance/performativity of Hip Hop music (RAP) and investigate lyrical content using the frameworks of Performance Studies, Cultural Studies, and Critical Race Studies, as well as Global and Racial Capitalism to understand the intellectual and political implications of Hip Hop music. While performance on its own is open-ended, it becomes the fulfillment of a promise as it’s related to performativity, which involves investigating how words are used to describe and define what performatives are “doing.” Does that “doing” expand the social consciousness of Hip Hop music’s lyrical content? How do representations (real) and re-presentations (reel) of Hip Hop music reinscribes the “real” in “keepin it real”? Focusing on the politics of performance in Hip Hop music, you will learn how to critically think about RAP lyrics as a text to explore the politics of performance through the lenses of race, class, and gender identity politics, as well as hypermasculinity and hypersexualization, capitalism, and glocalization (both grounded in local and the real, and capable of articulating local and global considerations for a broader sense of what life is about). By the end of this course, you will have richer understanding of Hip Hop music’s unique juncture in the 21st century as a part of the continuum of Black popular culture in American society.
Section 10: Live Action Roleplaying Game
Taught by: Bill Guschwan (Design)
Thursdays 3:30-6:20pm, 618, #207
In this immersive, role-playing course inspired by Dungeons & Dragons, you will embark on a transformative quest to become a college student in the fullest sense, using the classic story of The Iliad as your guide. Set against the backdrop of Chicago’s iconic urban spaces designed by some of the world’s most renowned architects, this course blends ancient epic with modern city life. As you journey through neighborhoods shaped by visionaries like Louis Sullivan, Mies van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright and Jeanne Gang, the city itself becomes a living text to interpret. You and your team will navigate battles, form alliances, and interpret The Iliad while exploring the design, symbolism, and function of Chicago’s built environment. Your inventory will not be weapons or gold, but the real tools of transformation - emotional intelligence and achievement of self-defined goals.. On this playful journey of self-discovery, you will learn to know yourself and take care of yourself - mind, body, and spirit. Working in teams, you will compete for class glory, earn achievements, and reflect deeply on what it means to be both a learner and a leader. Expect an enlightening, creative, and collaborative adventure across time, text, and terrain.
Section 11: Arts in the Dark
Taught by: Taylor Hokanson (Design)
Mondays 3:30-6:20pm, 618, #207
What do parades and festivals reveal about a city and its people? In this dynamic course, you’ll explore Chicago as a city of neighborhoods, where live arts create community, tell stories, and foster belonging. Focusing on the vibrant Arts in the Dark Halloween parade right here on our Columbia College Chicago campus in the South Loop, we will dive into the planning and meaning behind this dazzling nighttime spectacle that lights up State Street with giant puppets, illuminated floats, and performers from across the city. You'll learn how cultural events like this unite neighborhoods, elevate young artists, and affirm the power of creativity to bridge difference. As part of the course, you'll not only study these public celebrations—you’ll help bring one to life.