Are all public spaces inclusive? Through examining this question, this course intends to question the inclusivity of public space and which individuals have access, focused in particular on the physical conditions at the NU Library in direct comparison with those of other institutions in the Chicago-area. The course will cover such deeply-entrenched topics as gender, sexuality, sexual identification, race, class, religion, and ability. A major goal of this course is to provide an understanding of what public spaces look like, rendering visible the vicissitudes of what constitutes public and accessible among different populations. The main project for this course will require analysis and research at the NU library in order to explore and analyze the NU community’s experiences accessing library resources at these institutions. Students will produce research that will illustrate their understanding of the spaces constituted as public and issues concerning public space in comparison with other campus communities. As part of the brand new Chicago LOCC (Local Online Collaborative Course) project, this course will run parallel to similar courses at other key Chicago-area institutions. For the Winter 2015 term, this course will run concurrent with an Undergraduate Honors Seminar at University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) taught through African American Studies by Teresa Helena Moreno. With a focus on local populations and collaborative learning, this course is meant to provide an alternative to the MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) model of online learning and extend the feminist DOCC (Distributed Online Collaborative Course) model. Students will join their counterparts at UIC to form a body of research regarding the ways in which access to library spaces at each institution’s respective library can be impacted by the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality religion, and ability. In addition to communicating with other students at UIC via online methods. There will be weekly synchronous conferencing between classes to discuss shared readings and research findings, and an NU-hosted Wordpress site for collaborative contributions of weekly writing assignments and joint final project showcases. One time during the quarter, students from both courses will come together at UIC (a required fieldtrip) to discuss findings regarding each institution’s library.
