Annual 2025-2026 Class Schedule: Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities

Annual 2025-2026 Class Schedule

Course #	Course Title	Fall	Winter	Spring
HUM 220-0-20	The World of Homer	Ann Gunter TTh 9:30 - 10:50 am
HUM 220-0-20 The World of Homer Co-listed with CLASSICS 210-0-1 Fulfills FD-HS / Distro 4, Historical Studies What do we know of the world inhabited by the heroes of Homer’s epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey? Do the poems describe a largely imaginary realm, or do they reflect a particular period of ancient Greek history—and if so, which one? How did the circulation of the poems help contribute to a collective sense of Greek identity over a wide area of the eastern Mediterranean? This course explores the society, economy, and culture of Iron Age Greece with special emphasis on the Geometric and early Archaic periods, emphasizing what scholars have learned through archaeological discoveries along with study of the poems themselves. Topics include the excavations at Troy and other sites; contacts with Egypt and the Near East and overseas settlements in the Mediterranean world; trade, exchange, and the technology of travel; literacy and oral tradition; political communities and warfare; gender and family relationships; religion, burial practices, and the art of ritual and commemoration. We will also examine some of the ways scholars and artists today are re-exploring the poems and their enduring themes.
HUM 325-4-20	Refugees/Migration/Exile: A Workshop in Digital Storytelling		Michelle Molina W 3:00 pm - 5:50 pm
HUM 325-4-20 Refugees/Migration/Exile: A Workshop in Digital Storytelling Co-listed with INTL_ST 390-0 and LATIN_AM 391-0 Fulfills FD-HS / Distro 4, Historical Studies In this course, students will research a case study from among the many refugee and migration crises that have dominated the news cycle in recent years. The final project is a short video about your case study. To develop your research projects, the class foregrounds different methodological approaches: 1) To move beyond journalism, we will conduct primary and secondary historical research to understand the complex historical roots of each case study. 2) We will analyze and practice forms of ethnographic writing to better situate and describe the lived experiences of migration and exile, both past and present. 3) We will pay attention to various forms of media, whether print culture, sound, or visual media, to interrogate but also experiment with contemporary modes of narrating and conveying human experience in the digital age. Our work in class will be collaborative, thus a key prerequisite is that you are mature and self-motivated. You do not need to have prior research experience, but you need to demonstrate a desire to dig into your topic and hone your ability to write deeply informed, rigorous, and nuanced arguments and to think about creative ways to bring rigorous historical and ethnographic detail to visual storytelling.
HUM 325-6-20	Ancient Rome in Chicago	Francesca Tataranni MW 2:00 - 3:20 pm
HUM 325-6-20 Ancient Rome in Chicago Co-listed with CLASSICS 380-0-1 Fulfills FD-HS / Distro 4, Historical Studies and FD-LA / Distro 6, Literature and Fine Arts Ancient Rome is visible in Chicago—walk the city and learn to “read” the streets, buildings, and monuments that showcase Chicago’s engagement with the classical past! You’ll gain digital mapping and video editing skills as you collaborate on a virtual walking tour mapping Chicago’s ongoing dialogue with antiquity. With a combination of experiential learning and rigorous research methodologies, you’ll explore architecture, history, visual arts, and urban topography in this quintessential modern American city.
HUM 325-6-20	Telling Chicagoland’s Climate Stories		Jayme Collins MW 11:00 am - 12:20 pm
HUM 325-6-20 Telling Chicagoland’s Climate Stories Fulfills FD-LA / Distro 6, Literature and Fine Arts Chicago, as well as the broader Midwest region, has often been cast as geographically shielded from climate change-induced environmental destabilization. And yet the city and its environs are still affected by the impacts of climate change in increasingly extreme weather patterns, subsidence, and other environmental upheavals, leading the city to declare a state of climate emergency in 2020. How do the stories we tell about place shape how we understand and respond to climate change? In this project-based course, students will be immersed in diverse approaches to telling stories of climate change in a primarily U.S. context. Throughout the quarter, we will examine a wide range of research-driven, place-based stories of climate change across media, from a documentary film about the hottest August in New York City to a StoryMap about climate resilience in the Ohio River Valley and nonfiction writing and journalism about how landscape changes exacerbated by climate change are transforming life for different urban and coastal communities. Alongside our discussion of such storytelling projects, students will work in teams on a quarter-long collaborative project about how a place or community in the Chicagoland area has experienced, addressed, or imagined climate change. Teams will be formed based on student interests in a location/topic and in a particular storytelling medium. Project-based work will require independent travel to off-campus locations.
HUM 370-3-20	Sociology of the Future		Bruce Carruthers MW 11 am - 12:20 pm
HUM 370-3-20 Sociology of the Future Co-listed with SOCIOLOGY 376-0-21 Fulfills FD-SBS / Distro 3, Social and Behavioral Sciences Individually and collectively, we think about what might happen in the time to come. We consider the future over a range of time-horizons, from the immediate (what will happen in the next hour) to the distant (how will things look in a century). We worry about our own individual futures (will I have a job when I graduate from Northwestern?), we worry about other peoples’ futures (will my child get a job after they graduate from college?), and we worry about our collective futures (what will climate change do to our society over the next 50 years?). Frequently, we make plans for the future, either to create a future that we seek, or to avoid a future that is problematic. Public policy is often concerned with how to create better collective futures, and the tricky part is figuring out which alternatives are better than others, and for whom. Sometimes people make contingency plans, deciding what to do if something happens (for example, disaster planning). Such activity generally involves making two types of guesses: what will or could happen in the future, and what will our future preferences be about those various possibilities. In certain cases, the predictions we make are “self-fulfilling” in that the prediction helps to make itself come true (bank runs are a classic example). In this course, we will work through a series of examples where people have thought about the future, sometimes focused on very specific features. Students are expected to participate in class discussions in addition to completing a series of short take-home writing assignments. Readings are a mixture of social science articles (non-fiction) and two novels (fiction) offering visions of the future.
HUM 370-3-20	Race/Gender/Sex and Science			Steve Epstein
HUM 370-3-20 Race/Gender/Sex and Science Co-listed with SOCIOLOGY and GENDER & SEXUALITY STUDIES Fulfills FD-SBS / Distro 3, Social and Behavioral Sciences How do developments in the life sciences affect our understandings of who we are, how we differ, and how social inequalities are created, perpetuated, and challenged? This seminar explores how scientific claims and technological developments help transform cultural meanings of race, gender, and sexuality. Conversely, we will consider how cultural beliefs about race, gender, and sexuality influence scientific knowledge and medical practice. By studying controversies, we will explore the dynamic interplay among expert findings, social identities, and political arguments.
HUM 370-4-21	Monsters, Art, and Civilization			Ann Gunter
HUM 370-4-21 Monsters, Art, and Civilization Co-listed with ART_HIST 319 Fulfills FD-HS / Distro 4, Historical Studies Griffins, sphinxes, demons, and other fabulous creatures appear frequently in the art of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Eastern Mediterranean world. They stand at the intersection of the normal and abnormal, the natural and unnatural. Why did these images become so widespread, and what cultural functions did they serve? Can we connect their invention and dissemination with key moments in human history and cross-cultural interaction? What was the role of material representations of the supernatural in preventing and healing disease and other human misfortunes? This course explores the supernatural subject in ancient art with new perspectives drawn from art history, history, anthropology, cognitive science, and archaeology. We will examine a wide range of objects and representations (including sculptures, figurines, seals, amulets, and other media) along with ancient texts that help us understand their meaning and function.