The Associated Colleges of the Midwest offers a semester-long fall seminar and a series of one-month seminars during the winter and spring terms. Seminars are offered on a wide variety of topics, but all seminars are designed to allow students to create their own research project appropriate to the Newberry Library collections.
For information regarding costs, housing, and application procedures for next fall's seminar or any of the short-term seminars listed below, see the ACM / Newberry Library homepage or call the ACM office at 312.263.5000.
Previous seminar themes | Student paper topics, 1989-2004
Fall 2008 Seminar
"Community and Memory: Texts, Images, and Monuments"
September 2 - December 12, 2008
Instructors:
Ellen Joyce, History, Beloit College
Hannah Schell, Religious Studies, Monmouth College
August 28 - December 8, 2007
During the fall seminar, students explore the course topic together in seminar meetings and complete individual research projects under the guidance of the course instructors. The subjects of the research papers are related to the broad theme of the seminar. Over the years, courses have covered a wide range of issues. Recent topics include “The Problem of Slavery and Visions of Freedom in Western Culture,” “Encountering Worlds: Human Views of Nature,” “Frontiers of the Land, Frontiers of the Mind,” “Picturing the Past: Studies in the Visual Representation of History,” and “Unmasking Gender.”
Students in the ACM Newberry Seminar in the Humanities work alongside the Library's visiting scholars and scholars-in-residence, and draw upon the expertise of the Library staff. Students are encouraged to attend exhibits, conferences and other public programs, and to participate in special events, such as city tours and a weekly Library-wide gathering to hear guest speakers and exchange ideas.
As well, program participants can take advantage of city life and enjoy Chicago's many cultural activities, including its world-famous symphony and museums, distinguished architecture and eclectic neighborhoods.
The 2008 Newberry Seminar in the Humanities will investigate the intersection of community and memory in Western culture, from the Middle Ages to the present.
How do communities remember their past and how do those narratives of memory influence the present? How do such narratives form the identity of a community, whether social, political, or religious in nature? How does literature reflect or reshape memory? How do communities remember their dead? Seminar participants may look at a variety of communities, from medieval monks and nuns to Mormons on the American frontier, from planned communities such as the Pullman company in South Chicago to more abstract notions such as "textual communities."
This program is open to undergraduate students from ACM and GLCA colleges; interested students from non-ACM / GLCA institutions should contact the ACM office for more information at 312.263.5000, or at acm@acm.edu.
Spring 2009 Short-Term Seminars
While short-term courses are open to students from all ACM and Great Lakes College Association, Inc. (GLCA) member colleges, they are scheduled and administered primarily for the benefit of the two ACM colleges on the block or One-Course-at-a-Time plan, Colorado and Cornell Colleges.
In most cases, students and teachers in short-term courses are from the same school. Students receive the same amount of credit as they would for one course on campus. In many cases, courses taught at the Newberry have the same titles and course numbers as courses taught on campus. These courses are not the same, however, as courses on campus. They heavily emphasize independent research, using the Newberry Library's collections as a base.