Before I had made my deposit to the school, officially deciding to attend Illinois Wesleyan University, I applied to multiple special first-year experience opportunities in hopes of getting into one of the seven I applied for. The top of my list? The First-Year Humanities Fellowship. I was accepted and throughout first semester, half of the humanities fellowship was also in my gateway class as we bonded and prepared for this semester.
The humanities fellowship focuses on different aspects of the humanities that relate to art, history, literature, public speaking, music, architecture, theater, you name it and it can correlate to the humanities in one form or another. In a simple phrase, the humanities add color to our lives and make life all the more worth living. We attend events on and off campus and have traveled on single day trips to both Chicago and St.Louis prior to our Spring Break Immersion. The Spring Break Immersion was another part of the appeal to apply for first-year experiences; an all expense paid for, four day trip to Chicago during the first half of spring break. My experience in Chicago, how I connected to each part of the humanities while we were on our trip, humanities connection to history, as well as overall lessons that were learned over second semester and seen in our Chicago experience will all be addressed throughout this post.
Day 1 – Monday March 11th
The first day started off rocky with the late arrivals of many, including myself, to Chicago if they were not taking the train up with the professors. After lunch at the hotel we went on a walking architecture tour of Chicago, more specifically in correlation with the information our tour guide gave us a history and timeline of Chicago architecture. Buildings originally very ornate and built to show what it’s purpose was instead of built to be built, the older architecture and gold/silver/metal leafing of buildings often goes under appreciated. Modern constructions such as the river walk and modern steel and glass buildings built with clean energy closer to the lakefront continue to pop-up in our skyline. Often gone unnoticed by the regulars of Chicago, old limestone buildings next to steel and concrete buildings, next to marble towers all blend into one another in a way that no other city could attempt to do.
After our tour and few “L” stops later we were at The Music Box Theater, one of the oldest in the Chicagoland area that is still capable of playing film movies on film and a variety of types (mm) of film. Opened in 1929, ll of the architecture is original to the theater, the inside viewing area of the movie theater built to make it look as if we were under an Italian night sky. Most projects at the theater have been for maintenance and restoration projects for the good of the theater and preservation of the Music Box Theater’s Historical architecture.
Day 2 – Tuesday March 12
The majority of this was day spent in Hyde Park, having the pleasure of book browsing in the cute bookshops surrounding the University of Chicago as well as going to the Oriental Institute on the UChicago campus. While I was able to find a collection of Shakespeare’s sonnets with the recommendation of English department chair Professor Diaz and a small books about Chicago, the greatest city in the world, the bigger part and more problematic one was the visit to the OI. Having grown up with biracial friends mainly in my friend group, we often discussed the problematic language surrounding our cultures, and one that I’ve known of for a long time as problematic is oriental. I brought this up during lunch which led to the researching of many articles and discussion over lunch.
Trying to keep an open-mind heading into a place with a distasteful name, I appreciated the architecture and beauty found on the UChicago campus. To my surprise, almost the entirety of the exhibits focused on Ancient Civilizations before Western Europe, Africa, and Asia had fully developed societies; the museum focused on places like ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Ancient Iran and Iraq, among others. If decisions were left to me the OI would focus it’s title around ancient world treasures instead, seeing that the name of the institute distracted me from most of my enjoyment while there. Some of the most interesting parts of the museum had to do with the development of language with an iron cast of the Rosetta stone, defining hieroglyphics, and how culture, religion, and politics came together through the expression of language, as well as the day to day life connections in culture displayed from these ancient times.
After finishing our time at the OI we had lunch and later went on to listen Ilya Kaminsky give a reading of his poetry at the poetry foundation. A poet on the traumas of living in the Soviet Union with a collection of poetry that reads as a personal story that impacted your life directly, Kaminsky’s poetry was emotional and captivating, providing the listener with an interwoven experience of humanities, literature, politics, and history all in one. The intersectionality present during the poetry was outstanding, motivating myself to make all parts of my education and intersectional identity present in everything I do.
Day 3 – Wednesday March 13th
With an earlier wake up time than the past previous days, this early morning meeting was the most impactful for me of the events we had gone to earlier that week. We spoke to IWU Alumni and MacArthur Genius, Juan Salgado. Talking about the importance of education, community, and importance of civic duty and responsibility on a local and generational level. The chancellor of the City Colleges of Chicago and before this, teaching English to immigrants in much needed areas, Juan Salgado had great speaking skills and was passionate about everything he spoke on. By the end of our time with him, I was able to network and will hopefully be doing an internship with him this upcoming summer.
Of all of our days, Wednesday was probably my favorite as we went on to the Newberry Library, a nonprofit curatorial library open to almost everyone as long as you have proof of residence and an email. While there we received a tour and got to interact with some exceptionally cool pieces from the collection there, like one of Shakespeare’s first folios. After seeing how they store and organize the extensive book collection in the library we had the opportunity to check out books and conduct some research in the Newberry relating to our end of the semester projects.
Day 4 – Thursday March 14th
For our final day of our humanities fellowship spring break we went to my favorite place in Chicago. Upon our arrival we received a private art tour of the third floor modern and contemporary art portion of the museum, a part of the museum I had not visited until then. While modern art falls into a time period of sometime in the past half a century, our tour guide explained the reasoning and meaning behind all of the paintings we saw, as well as the history. Spending an enriching afternoon in one of the most famous art galleries in the world, among some of the most well-known masterpieces in existence was a perfect closing to our spring break. With modern art and those explanations in the back of my mind while going through nineteenth century paintings and impressionism later in the day gave me a different outlook on each painting and what they try and try to express in a societal/cultural context to their contemporary viewers and how that speaks to present day viewers.