The Prairie Landscape

The Illinois Humanities Council Announces Graduation for the 2003 Spanish Language Odyssey Project

12/01/2003

Ceremony for students in Fundamentos de Educación en Humanidades will be held at the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum December 15

CHICAGO - On Monday, December 15th at 6:30pm at the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum, 1852 W. 19th Street, the Illinois Humanities Council (IHC) will celebrate the graduation of first class of the Fundamentos de Educación en Humanidades, the IHC’s first Spanish Language Odyssey Project. Created and administered by the IHC, Fundamentos de Educación en Humanidades is sponsored by the IHC with support from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). This course offers a free intensive college-level introduction to philosophy and literature for low-income adult Spanish speakers. The IHC provides students with tuition, books, CTA fare, and on-site childcare. 28 students from the inaugural class of the Fundamentos de Educación en Humanidades complete the course and will receive certificates of achievement from UNAM.
Founded on the theory that engagement with the humanities can offer a way out of poverty, the Odyssey Project offers course participants instruction in humanistic disciplines. The Bard Clemente Course in the Humanities (of which the Odyssey Project is a part) is in its seventh year, with 26 sites operating in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The Odyssey Project is in its fourth year here in Chicago.

"The level of enthusiasm that greeted this first Odyssey course for Chicago’s Spanish-speaking community has thrilled us," explains Angel Ysaguirre, Director of Programs at the IHC. "As we begin planning for the fifth year of the Odyssey Project," he says, "we look forward to making the Spanish-language class an essential component of the overall project."

Classes met two evenings a week over a 7-week period at the Gads Hill Center in the Pilsen neighborhood in Chicago, 1919 West Cullerton Street. Syllabi and reading lists were roughly equivalent to those a student might encounter in a first-year humanities survey course at a first-rate university. Dr. Mario Santana, Associate Professor of Spanish, Department of Romance Languages, University of Chicago, taught the literature section of the course; Dr. Maria Herlinda Suárez, Full research-professor, UNAM, taught the philosophy section.

For more information about other Odyssey Project programs, call the IHC at (312) 422-5580 or visit www.prairie.org and click on "Programs."

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