In the Community

The Division of the Humanities seeks to build and strengthen the University's relationships with institutions and individuals in the community by utilizing the special abilities and interests on which humanistic inquiry depends. Among these interests is the desire to preserve the treasures of the past (be they texts, objects, performances, films, or languages) and to bring insights derived from these treasures to bear on issues of present importance. Some of our faculty achieve this by participating in established University-wide programs such as the Collegiate Scholars Program, a three-year enrichment program of courses offered by the University specifically for Chicago Public Schools students. Other faculty direct wide-range research that affects communities ranging from Washo people of California to Chinese citizens.

The Office of Community Affairs fully summarizes the educational programming offered across campus. These include programs offered by our professional arts organizations, such as the YouthWrite Program at the University Theater, a Saturday morning playwriting program for students in middle school, or the multi-year engagement of local teachers, students, and families through the education programs at the Smart Museum.

Area Studies Centers Community Programs

Mariachi Band As a provision of their Title VI federal funding, the University's six Area Studies Centers each run community-oriented outreach projects. The South Asia Language and Area Center, for example, holds a teacher's workshop every spring, sponsors various cultural events, and hosts seminars and talks on topics pertaining to South Asia. Their programs and activities focus on developing better educational material and resources for teachers in the Chicago area. The outreach office offers for loan a large range of educational materials, including books on a wide variety of topics, videos, slide sets, curriculum units, and "hands on" teaching kits.

Center for Gender Studies

The Center for Gender Studies was established in 1996 by Leora Auslander and a core group of faculty from across the University to consolidate work on gender and sexuality, as well as feminist, gay, lesbian, and queer studies. Along with fostering teaching, research, and discussion at the University, the center seeks to reach out into public areas where gender and sexuality come together with political, artistic, and intellectual concerns. The center's interdisciplinary approach draws faculty from departments as diverse yet interconnected as literature, history, sociology, anthropology, cinema and media studies, law, and medicine.

Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture

The Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture is dedicated to promoting engaged scholarship and debate around the topics of race and ethnicity, how these ideas and their structures effect and shape people's lives, and how they intersect with other primary identities such as gender, class, sexuality, and nationality. Uniquely situated both geographically and historically on the South Side of Chicago and within the University of Chicago's tradition of excellence in sociological studies, the center maintains close links with local communities, working in partnership with community groups and activists to produce research that is theoretically innovative but also useful and empowering to those communities.

Civic Knowledge Project

The Civic Knowledge Project (CKP) is the office for community engagement within the Division of the Humanities at the University of Chicago. Established in July of 2003, The Civic Knowledge Project aims to build programs and institutional affiliations that enhance the circulation of knowledge on the South Side of Chicago across lines of race, ethnicity, class, and religion. A particular concern for the project is to make the knowledge of the University of Chicago community available to other communities on the South Side and to draw the wealth of knowledge that exists in other South Side communities into the intellectual world of the University. The long-term goal is to weave together the cultural fabric of the South Side's diverse communities, among them the University community, and by so doing to enhance democratic practice.

Collegiate Scholars Program

Two Collegiate Scholars at the Grant Park Film Festival Two Collegiate Scholars (Kai and Ashley) take in the Grant Park Film Festival

The goal of the Collegiate Scholars Program is to prepare talented students in the Chicago Public Schools for academic success at the best colleges and universities. Course work and enrichment activities are designed to help students gain firsthand experience in university-style learning from university professors. A key aspect of the program is the close involvement of faculty members at the University of Chicago, who not only teach classes but who also serve as mentors and advisers.

St. Paul Chamber Orchestra's CONNECT Program

St. Paul Chamber Orchestra Residents Teaching at a South Side School The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra's three-year residency at the University of Chicago has brought about a new partnership between the University and three public schools on the South Side. Bringing their award-winning CONNECT (Chamber Orchestra's Neighborhood Network of Education, Curriculum and Teachers) program with them to Chicago. Musicians visit classrooms on a regular basis throughout the school year, teachers trains in effective methods of bringing music into their curriculum, and students experience music that goes beyond the Western chamber music tradition.

Smart Museum Education Programs

Smart Museum Education The Smart Museum of Art runs a variety of activities and provides resources for teachers, students, and families. The Smart Explorers is a program for fifth graders that involves a number of museum visits and classroom activities leading up to a open evening at the museum when students serve as curators for a chosen artifact to an audience of classmates and family members. Professional development programs are provided for teachers and a range of online activities is also available to teachers and students for use in the classroom or at home.

Uncovering New Chicago Archives Project

Cinema and Media Studies Students Reviewing Files at the Chicago Defender From left to right, Darryl Heller, a PhD student in History, Christina Petersen, a PhD student in Cinema and Media Studies, and Monica Mercado, a PhD student in History, review files at the offices of the Chicago Defender.

Uncovering New Chicago Archives Project aims to improve access to University collections and Chicago-area archives, with a special focus on those related to African American history. At the University, the project will organize and describe the archives of contemporary poetry and the Chicago Jazz Archives located in the Special Collections Research Center of the University Library. On Chicago's South Side, three archives will be surveyed: the DuSable Museum of African American History, the Chicago Defender, and the Vivian G. Harsh Collection of Afro-American History and Literature located in the Woodson Regional Library. The project is generously funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and is directed by Alice Schreyer, Director of the Special Collections Research Center, Regenstein Library. Jacqueline Goldsby, Associate Professor of English, is directing the work related to the African American material. It will produce an online database open to students, researchers, and scholars around the world in 2009.

Washo Documentation and Revitalization Project

The Washo Documentation and Revitalization Project-guided by Alan C. L. Yu, Assistant Professor of Linguistics-aims to create an archive of the language spoken by the Native American Washo people on the Nevada-California border. The main objective of this project is a detailed study of the phonetics and phonology of the Washo language since a solid understanding of the phonetics and phonology of the language is paramount to understanding the other components of the language (e.g., the morpho-syntax, syntax, and discourse). With no more than twenty elderly speakers surviving, the project also aims to preserve the language through interaction and cooperation with the tribe. Accounts of creation myths, rituals, and food preparation have already been collected. Another objective is the creation of a Web-based digital archive to make Washo data accessible to scholars and, of equal or greater importance, to the native community itself.

Xiangtangshan Caves Project

The Xiangtangshan/Northern Qi project focuses on the Buddhist cave temples of Xiangtangshan in China's Hebei province. Owing to their artistic brilliance the caves suffered serious damage in the early part of the twentieth century when many details were forcibly cut from the walls of the caves and taken out of China. These artifacts are now scattered throughout museums and private collections around the world. The project aims to re-contextualize the artifacts and "restore" the caves through a three-dimensional digital reconstruction, which will be made available for educational and research purposes. With generous support from a Getty Foundation Collaborative Research Grant and the Carpenter Foundation, the project is advancing international cooperation with scholars and officials while preserving an significant monument for the citizens of China.

Sustainability Programming

Wangari Maathai portrait In fall, 2007, the Humanities Division will partner with the Chicago Humanities Festival to present programming on environmental and sustainability issues. Collaborative programming will feature a lecture by 2004 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai, as well as panel discussions, films, and other presentations. The theme of this year's annual Chicago Humanities Festival is Climate of Concern. These collaborative initiatives mark the first time the Festival will include south side venues in its programming. Sustainability discourse and programming represents an area of increased interest for the University of Chicago and its neighbors. For more information on fall 07 sustainability-related programs, click here (PDF).