Friends Teams Up with DePaul for HumanitiesX "Rivers of Life" Project

Friends teamed up with local educators at DePaul University to immerse students in the oral histories of residents and activists in the Calumet River watershed on Chicago’s South Side. The Spring 2023 course, “Rivers of Life: Chicago’s South Side and Its Waterways in Words and Images,” empowered undergraduate and graduate students at DePaul to apply their training in the humanities—disciplines that study languages, texts, and social forms—to local contexts impacting the Calumet River system. The course, co-taught by DePaul Professors Steve Harp (Art) and Miles Harvey (English), invited Friends’ Director of Environment, Equity, and Engagement, Becky Lyons, to work with students to consider environmental justice and environmental racism, while documenting human interaction with the river. “I supported the class by sharing the history of the river system and the Calumet region, putting it in the context of the past and present. I also led the students on a field trip, so they had first-hand knowledge of the places and people they were learning about,” Lyons shares.

“Rivers of Life” is a HumanitiesX project, an initiative to demonstrate how humanities methods—such as historical inquiry, critique, preservation, curation, writing, and artistic expression—can foster critical dialogue and reciprocal exchange between universities and local communities. Operating through yearlong fellowships supported by interdisciplinary teams of professors and community partners, HumanitiesX programming is an experiential learning model aimed at developing and delivering co-taught, project-based, community-engaged courses in DePaul’s spring quarters. Friends is honored to have worked alongside the brilliant students and educators at DePaul to produce this vital, interdisciplinary, and locally centered educational programming.

The spring class concluded with a “Rivers of Life” gallery exhibit and celebration at DePaul in early June. The exhibit featured the students’ work on environmental and racial justice along the Calumet River system, displaying powerful interviewee quotes and documentary photographs. Students also worked with Friends to create custom maps about the Calumet region for the exhibit, using Friends’ recently launched Natural Solutions Tool. Using the 84 data layers of the innovative web-tool, students were able to visualize and customize data to address complex environmental challenges along the Calumet. “I was proud to be part of the final event that the students put together," Lyons notes, "it brought their work to life.”  

The long-term goal of the “Rivers of Life” project is to publish a collection of oral histories and photography that explore and document human interaction with the Calumet River system. We imagine DePaul Publishing Institute and Big Shoulders Books will continue to support the “Rivers of Life” oral histories archive. We look forward to sharing more information about the collection’s publication and where copies of Rivers of Life will be available in the future.