The MAPH Community

The Master of Arts Program in the Humanities (MAPH) is dedicated to supporting our students as whole people.  

We believe the foundation of intellectual life is a genuine, supportive social community. In order to build a community among each year’s MAPH cohort, we offer regular social events on and off-campus as well as planned outings to Chicago cultural offerings. Events have included trivia nights, bake-offs, picnics, hikes, outings to museums, plays, the opera, the symphony and sporting events.   

MAPH staff provide layers of support for students in both academic, career and community events. Students have access to office hours with any of our staff including MAPH mentors, the program coordinator, manager of student affairs, associate director, the faculty director, and our instructional professors.  

We start the year with our two-week intensive known as Colloquium both to start our core course and to get students familiar with the resources of the campus and the greater Chicago community. By the time the full academic year starts our students already know their favorite spot in our MAPH lounge or one of the many libraries and coffee shops on campus. 

There are many opportunities available for MAPH students to enrich their experience in the program and develop their approaches to employment or further study. First, MAPH offers a limited number of paid internships during the year and after the program, which currently engage organizations including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Newberry Library, the Poetry Foundation's Poetry Magazine, and the independent publisher CITA Press. Students can participate in student government through the Arts & Humanities Division's Graduate Student Council, The International Graduate Student Advisory Board, or the all-graduate-inclusive Graduate Council, and are also free to engage with the wider UChicago community through the many informal and unofficial student interest groups that form and meet throughout the year.

Academically, MAPH students are welcome and encouraged to participate in the wide range of workshops offered through each department, such as those listed for the English department here; these are an excellent way for MAPH students to meet faculty and other graduate students while learning how to present professional academic work in progress. MAPH hosts its own mid-year academic conference for which students can apply to present, and MAPH students may also submit work to our journal Common Forms or apply to be an editorial fellow. MAPH offers regular career and academic talks, workshops, and advisement opportunities to help students prepare for PhD applications and a variety of potential careers outside the academy, while UChicago Grad, the university's graduate support office, offers two career fairs, a graduate lounge space with snacks, and a range of academic and career programming of its own. Students can also apply to both MAPH and the Graduate Council for the limited reimbursement of costs to present their work at academic conferences. 

Naturally, UChicago's campus regularly offers a wide variety of opportunities for students to attend lectures, concerts, plays, films, and exhibits at an extensive array of both student-focused and public facilities, which makes our campus a place full of options for involvement and extracurricular activity. The city of Chicago offers world class museums and cultural organizations offered free or at a discount to MAPH students through the UChicago Arts Pass. 

MAPH alumni become part of a thriving community. MAPH alumni come back for a range of events during the MAPH year and MAPH Alumni Mentors offer their contact information to current students who want advice on specific careers or graduate programs.  Alumni join a large LinkedIn MAPH group and receive weekly job postings curated specifically for MAPH graduates. 

Students are also encouraged to bring their own interests and projects to the MAPH community whether they are working on a creative thesis project and casting members of the MAPH community in a film or just sharing their secondary interests with other members of the cohort. Student driven activities have included:  

• Quarterly service projects
• Reading groups
• D&D groups
• Film nights
• Craft groups
• Writing groups 
• Student films
• Literary journals 
• Theatre performances