“What drew me to MAPH drew me to Colloquium,” explained Jessi Haley, AM’13.

In 2012 a group of students in the Master of Arts Program in the Humanities (MAPH) founded the online journal Colloquium to highlight the work and scholarship of current students, alumni, and friends of MAPH. Two years and five issues later, the editors of Colloquium have condensed that scholarship and creativity into a printed 132-page anthology.

Colloquium mirrors the interdisciplinary and boundary-crossing thinking encouraged by the MAPH program. Colloquium: The First Two Years (An Anthology) includes collages, photography, a play, short poems, and other writings on topics spanning cinematic engagement with Chicago, the Fort Dearborn Massacre, the art of Chris Ware, and atomic-era American culture in the 1966 film Batman: The Movie.

“Colloquium lets contributors follow impulses that they couldn't necessarily develop in another kind of forum, either one that was more traditionally academic or non-academic,” noted Hilary Strang, PhD'09, Deputy Director and English and Literary Studies Coordinator of MAPH. 

“What we have in the anthology are really interesting ways of talking about a tiny handful of disparate things in the world,” said Bill Hutchison, AM’12, Editor-in-Chief of Colloquium. “It’s amazing when somebody who is interested explains something to you in a way that is infectious, that make you interested.”

The Colloquium anthology contains 19 examples of this infectious, wide-ranging writing, including two pieces exclusive to the anthology. The printed volume “serves as a nice capstone on the first years of Colloquium,” said Haley, a member of Colloquium’s editorial board and former MAPH student and mentor. “It captures that enthusiasm and outpouring of those first years.” 

Colloquium can be viewed online and the anthology is available from the MAPH office for a suggested donation of $10.