Humanities Courses with Linda Peters

Humanities 122: Contemporary Culture and the Arts

Humanities 121: Western Culture and the Arts: Renaissance through the 20th Century

From Shakespeare to Frank Lloyd Wright – that is the cultural time period that Humanities 121 includes. Cultural artifacts are our objective and so we will consider works of literature, architecture, painting and sculpture and philosophy. Since Chicago has many cultural institutions that can give us first hand experience with the art, the course features several site visits. Take heart! Our visits will be scheduled when the weather is still tolerable.

Humanities 122: Contemporary Culture and the Arts

Humanities 122 focuses on the cultural events of the last fifty years. Cultural events run the gamut from philosophy, literature, painting and sculpture to architecture, music and plays. Chicago has significant cultural institutions and events so the first interim session this summer will be a combination of class meetings on the Des Plaines campus and several trips to Chicago sites. There will be site visits to the Museum of Contemporary Art, where curators organize exhibitions featuring the latest trends in the visual arts, and to the Loop skyscrapers and their lobbies. Chicago also has a decades-long tradition of installing sculpture in public plazas and parks and we will visit three of these installations to observe the tradition's progression. If you wish to get a head start on the reading, there are two texts. Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping is the novel that I have selected for this class. We will also be seeing a live play at Evanston's Blue Herron Theater. They will be performing "Art" by Yasmina Reza. SEE LETTER BELOW

Humanities 122: Contemporary Culture and the Arts Interim class (July/August)
Humanities 122, Contemporary Culture and the Arts, during the interim session in July and August, 2007, will concentrate on the cultural resources of Chicago. Normally, the class meets in a campus classroom and there may be a site visit or two. During this three-week session, we will be in the classroom half the time and traveling to sites in and around Chicago's Loop the remainder of the time. All of the sites are open to the public and conveniently accessible via public transportation. The city is home to a number of significant cultural institutions, such as public art installations, 19th and 20th century architecture and art museums. This class is geared towards taking advantage of them. SEE LETTER BELOW

To: Students in the Contemporary Culture Class, Humanities 122, Summer, 2007

From: Linda Peters, Adjunct Professor

Dear Student:
It is snowing today but it is comfortable in here with the heat still on ….it must be time to think about summer! I am writing to describe the Humanities 122 class and to suggest a couple ways in which you might begin preparing for it.

Humanities 122 is called Contemporary Culture and the Arts and normally it is a classroom course perhaps with a site visit or two included. It concentrates on cultural developments in the last fifty years. For this summer's interim course, we will be emphasizing Chicago's cultural resources and their easy accessibility. Since we are meeting in July and August, and because each day we have a four-hour block of time, we will travel to the city visiting several outdoor sites and cultural institutions. The weather will be cooperating by then and so traveling should be comfortable.

Chicago has the most significant collection of 19th and 20th century architecture in the United States. Two of our trips will concentrate on the built environment mostly in and around the Loop. Although I have not finalized our trip destinations, one will probably concentrate on the skyscrapers and their lobbies while another may feature the architecture of Mies van der Rohe, one of Chicago's favorite-son architects, and his contributions to the campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology as well as his significant influence on the Loop's appearance.

Chicago also has a decades-long tradition of public art. Most of these sculpture installations are located in Grant Park, and its little sister, Millennium Park. One of our site visits will visit focus on three pieces of public art, all within walking distance of each other, where we will observe how public plazas, parks and art contribute to the health of the city's population.

Lastly we will visit two cultural institutions, the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) and the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA). Opening in late June, the AIC will stage a major exhibition of the contemporary photographer, Jeff Wall, and his over-scaled, backlit photographs that capture contemporary tableaus. The MCA prides itself in bringing thought-provoking exhibitions by contemporary visual artists so we will take advantage of seeing the latest in visual trends.

If you have the time and the inclination, you can visit the two museums or take a casual stroll around the Loop and begin to examine the buildings more closely. There is a lively mixture of the historic styles as well as building cranes clustered around our latest monuments, the Trump Tower and the new transportation center across from the former Marshall Field's department store on Washington Street.

The class meets for ten sessions, half will be in the classroom and half will be site visits. All the locations are accessible by public transportation. Many of the sites are located in or near the Loop which is well-served by all the subway lines. Since gas prices are inching up as I write this, public transportation becomes more of an appealing and viable option. Whether you are coming from the north or northwestern suburbs, the subway lines are conveniently located. Public transportation is less expensive and it is far less of a hassle than sitting on the Kennedy or Edens Expressways. Parking fees are less too. It is the method that I will be using.

I'm looking forward to the class and meeting you on July 30th when we will begin three weeks of reading, looking and talking about the Chicago cultural scene.

With Best Wishes,

Linda Peters

Humanities 133: Introduction to Architecture
The Introduction to Architecture, Humanities 133, introduces both the history of the built environment and the design principles of the profession, such as form, space and circulation within a building. Designed for both the student entering the profession and the layperson interested in architecture, the course presents architectural thought and practice from the Egyptians to the present. The content also includes philosophical and practical problems of providing habitable spaces for human beings. Not to be ignored will be bad architecture. We will look at what makes it bad and we will even visit bad architecture. Speaking of visiting, there will be several other site visits in and around Chicago that will take advantage of the significant collection of 19 th and 20 th American architecture that sits at our doorstep.

For more information contact Linda Peters

Click here to read more about Linda Peters

If you have questions about the Department web pages, please contact Hollace Graff
Please direct questions or comments about the web site to the Ananda Spike