Classes

"The Power of Place"

Calumet Quarter 2024

The Calumet Quarter, part of the Chicago Studies Quarter programs, offers a one-quarter, intensive, experience-based program focused on human land use in the Calumet Region, which hugs the shores of Lake Michigan just south and east of the city. It features three integrated courses with associated projects, field trips, guest lectures, and presentations, and combines perspectives from the sciences, humanities, and social sciences in the study of local environments and communities.  Calumet Quarter 2024 will explore "the power of place."  

Through a concatenation of cultural practices, social relations and economic processes—all within the indomitable crucible of nature—people don’t just create places, they produce vastly different sorts of places: urban and rural, towns, cities, neighborhoods and villages and their myriad interconnections. This rich geographical tapestry is reason enough for the juggernaut of global tourism. 

At the University of Chicago, we study places because of their intrinsic interest but perhaps more importantly, we study places to learn what it means to be human. During Spring 2024, students can embark on this intellectual journey in an immersive learning experience called the “Calumet Quarter.”  Through three linked courses, students will take a deep dive into the very specific historical geography of the Calumet region south and east of Chicago and, along the way, gain insights and analytical skills relevant to understanding other places:  we develop an approach to place and learn its power.  The Calumet Quarter is a collaboration between Chicago Studies and the Committee on Environment, Geography and Urbanization

Students interested in enrolling in the Calumet Quarter may apply now through January 26, 2024.  Determination of participation in the Quarter will be made before pre-registration for Spring; students accepted into the Quarter will be batch-enrolled for all classes prior to other bidding.  For more information, contact Tess Conway (CEGU) at tconway@uchicago.edu

Courses (Spring 2024)

    The course, which is offered in collaboration with the Field Museum of Natural History, considers the global phenomenon of so-called cultural and historical “heritage sites” and explores the processes and rationales through which vastly different sorts of places earn that designation. Within that context, students will analyze the sustained effort to create a “Calumet National Heritage Area” in the southern reaches of Chicago and adjacent northwestern Indiana comprised of diverse landscapes, people and their often contentious histories.  (Staff)

    Objects are not only formed and interpreted through ideas of place and power, but also shape place and identity. This course looks at how material culture has, in part, formed understandings of the Calumet. Through methods drawn from art history and museum studies, we will look closely at objects, collections, and institutions in the region to analyze the power and politics of representation in placemaking.  (Jessica Landau)

    The course considers changes wrought in the natural landscape of the greater Calumet region beginning with indigenous Potawatomiand their forced removal.  Students will examine how the Calumet’s natural environment became collateral damage of the industrial capitalism that transformed the region into an economic powerhouse and explore efforts to rehabilitate the Calumet’s rich biodiversity, identifying the challenges and achievements of this most recent environmental transition.  (Mary Beth Pudup)