SHARE WITH STUDENTS: Spots still available in Engaged Humanities Initiative Courses HUM 201 this Fall 2020!

Spots are still available in HUM 201, which is the entry point into the funding pipeline for the Engaged Humanities Initiative (see details below).

HUM 201 is open to any student who has taken ENG 161. If a student is graduating in December 2020 or May 2021, we will put them on a waitlist (since the course is a pipeline to the larger program). Students in HUM 201 receive up to $1000 in funding to attend lectures, workshops, and events (online or off) during AY 2020-2021, and have the option to go on with a mentor and research project (and receive $3500 next summer).

HUM 201 is only offered in the fall semester.

We are offering two courses, both online and synchronous. Interested students CANNOT register directly- have them contact ehi@uic.edu for a simple form to fill out to indicate interest (and which class they want to take). Thank you!

HUM 201: The “Beloved Community": The Classroom in the

Building of The World House
W 3-5:30
Professor Johari Jabir
The work of Josiah Royce inspired Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to craft his vision of a global community of humanity he called, The Beloved Community. During the 1960s and 1970s, Black musical artists such as Curtis Mayfield, Marvin Gaye, and the Staple Singers offered social critiques in their music, but they also created sonic visions of a Beloved Community. In the Black musical tradition of call and response, this course stages a conversation between Black music from the soul and pop era and voices of American Pragmatism. By listening to learn and learning to listen, we will explore how the classroom can serve as a site in the making of The Beloved Community. Our collective reading, writing, and dialogue will result in a podcast called The Beloved Community of UIC.

HUM 201: Border Crossings: Narratives of Displacement and Belonging
TR 11-12:15
Professor Laura Hostetler (History)
This course explores the human experience of displacement and the subsequent search for belonging. Displacement can include experiences ranging from international migration, internal migration, and the consequences of social mobility (up or down). Displacement normally means a shift in geographic location, but almost always has economic, social, and cultural ramifications as well. In each of these instances, those affected need to learn new skills in order to survive—and hopefully thrive—in a new environment. We will also consider what constitutes a border, how boundaries are formed and maintained, and the skills and cost required to cross over. International borders are not the only ones that can be difficult to cross. Course readings include personal narratives and ethnographic accounts that engage the full human experience of what it means to be displaced and to search for a sense of belonging. As a class we will also research and examine the historical reasons for experiences of displacement described in the readings. Finally, we will look at ways in which specific instances of displacement, border crossing, and the ongoing quest for belonging, have been treated in the public arena through media coverage and in political discourse.

The EHI is an exciting program at UIC that offers undergraduate students up to $10,000 in funding to support humanities-related activities and research on and off campus. Students take innovative courses that bridge the campus and the community, and, with the help of the EHI, develop research projects with faculty mentors that they begin in the summer following their second (or third) year. The funding supports internships with community partners (such as the Chicago Humanities Festival, the Freshwater Lab, the Center for Neighborhood Technology), research in libraries or archives (such as the Newberry Library, the Gerber-Hart archives, the DuSable Museum), study abroad, or participation in a faculty research project. Faculty mentors guide students as they develop their research into a variety of creative projects, such as websites, podcasts, creative work, art exhibits, journalism, and short films.  Students in the EHI gain first-hand knowledge of how their experiences inside and outside of the classroom can transform the world to make it more human and humane. Students can join the EHI by taking HUM 120 and/or HUM 201.