Courses
Note: For students participating in the Chicago Programs spring quarter/trimester, course credits should be equivalent to those of a full quarter/trimester. Please contact ACM and/or the Registrar at your college for any questions about the distribution of quarter/trimester credits.
Core Course - Chicago: A City of Many Dimensions
Instructors: Dave Amrein, Robyne Hart, & Mary Scott-Boria
Required course, 4 semester credits
Click here to see a course syllabus
All students in the Chicago Programs enroll in the interdisciplinary Core Course, which aims to introduce the concepts of place and identity in Chicago. The three Chicago Programs will integrate by exploring how the arts, business, and socio-political issues intertwine. This course intentionally views the city through three lenses, asking important questions that cross disciplinary boundaries. Guest speakers from around the city will spark discussions and reflections. Common readings and projects will prompt conversation, creativity, research, and exploration. Most importantly, Core Course will engage students with the city as they meet the people who are making its art, defining its culture, confronting its problems, and reshaping its business. Through the experience, students will contextualize the Chicago they live, study, and work in for the semester within its rich and complex history, while imagining how the city's identity might continue to evolve.
The theme of the Core Course is Chicago: A City of Many Dimensions. The course begins with the question "What is Chicago?" Is it a city that "makes no little plans," as proclaimed a century ago by architect, visionary, and father of city planning Daniel H. Burnham? Carl Sandberg's "city of big shoulders?" Or a "city in the make," as portrayed by novelist Nelson Algren in 1951? No matter the characterization, Chicago is a city of complexity and contradictions, noted for its natural and artistic beauty, its innovation, its self-determination, and as a place where change commands the landscape. The "Burnham Plan of Chicago" establishes the historical context for making certain claims about Chicago; it opens the discussion, engaging students in an on-going conversation that views the city with hindsight into the past century and insight into current issues centered on contemporary interpretations of identity, power, beauty, and place. By questioning their assumptions about Chicago, participants in the course will discover themselves as transformed agents of change in the arts, as innovators in business, and as individuals reshaping their communities.
Seminar - Chicago and the Creative Process
Instructor: Martina Nehrling
Required course, 4 semester credits
Click here to see a course syllabus
The Creative Process Seminar focuses on how creators, performers, and scholars in various artistic fields approach their process. Our exploration includes Chicago-based guest artists, visits to city arts venues and events, academic readings, regular in-class exercises, individual and collaborative projects, investigations into the processes of active local and renowned historic artists, and self-reflection on personal processes, inner critics, external obstacles, and artistic growth. Students are challenged both to approach their principal discipline from a fresh perspective and to stretch their creative imaginations into less familiar territory. For different students the content may be approached at different times from a creative, interpretive, scholarly, or blended perspective. This seminar encourages students to develop an expressive personal voice while providing a safe space in which to experiment and take risks. It also embraces contemporary methods of technological communication, particularly in the development of a digital web portfolio. Much of the work in the Seminar provides the foundation for a more focused Workshop and Independent Study Project.
Workshop & Independent Study Project
Instructors: Dave Amrein & Martina Nehrling
Required course, 4 semester credits
Click here to see a course syllabus
Students will be assigned to one of the Workshops offered in any given semester based on their major and/or artistic goals for the semester . In Fall 2009, two Workshops will be offered - one focused on Creative Writing and Theater, and one on Studio Art and Art History. These topics have been chosen based on the students’ collective applications to the program. If students desire, there will be opportunities for them to produce work outside or on the fringes of these categories (i.e. music, film, etc). During the first half of the semester, each Workshop will include projects, guest speakers, and field visits directed toward these specialized. While some of these Workshop guest speakers and field visits might continue into the second half of the semester, most of the students’ energy in will become devoted to the design and creation of an Independent Study Project. In collaboration with the Workshop leader, students will design a substantial creative, interpretive, and/or scholarly project. Students will also meet regularly with the Workshop leader and student peers in both one-on-one mentoring and group feedback sessions to share their progress and receive guidance.
Internship
Instructor: Martina Nehrling
Required course, 4 semester credits
Click here to see a course syllabus
The internship offers students the opportunity to gain practical/professional experience working inside a Chicago organization in their area of interest, as well as to learn how the city works and how they may contribute its quality of life. Chicago is a working class city, a professional city, a global city, and an artistic city. Hundreds of opportunities await students in the fields of business, art, social service, politics, education, urban planning, law, medicine and health care, recreation and neighborhood development, and more. For a total of at least 150 hours (at least 12-14 hours weekly), students will work with, and be supervised by, professionals to gain valuable work skills. Discussion groups and writing assignments facilitated by the program faculty will guide students to contextualize and reflect on these experiences as they consider their future professional careers.