Dumpster diving, ghost hunting and the CTA are among the subjects that DePaul University students will explore in a new course being offered this fall by the College of Communication.

“Although most courses about urban life feature some discussion of the night, the scheduling of these classes prohibits a consistent firsthand collective experience and analysis of the city at night. This class seeks to provide students with an opportunity to study urban communication and culture in the context of the night,” said Daniel Makagon, an associate professor in DePaul’s College of Communication, who is teaching the course.

Students in the 10-week “City at Night” course, which meets from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m., will also learn about the death of neighborhood taverns and help night ministry workers feed the homeless.    

“One of the most powerful dualisms is day and night. Not only do the rhythms of the city change with the shift from day to night, but the representational power of light versus dark infuses our sense of who moves through the city at night,” he said.

Makagon’s teaching and research interests include urban communication, ethnography, cultural studies, documentary films and community. Other areas of expertise include alternative music and culture, community radio, independent media, and pop culture in urban public spaces.

An upcoming book Makagon co-authored with Mark Neumann, titled “Recording Culture: Audio Documentary and the Ethnographic Experience” (Sage Publications October 2008), explores how researchers can use audio documentary to reach a larger audience and provide more opportunities for collaborative work in the pursuit and representation of knowledge and experience. He also wrote a book on New York’s Times Square titled “Where the Ball Drops: Days and Nights in Times Square,” and has published articles on guerilla art, democracy, urban life and youth and loud car stereo systems.

Since its inception in 2007, DePaul’s College of Communication has added two new graduate programs and developed five distinct undergraduate majors. It offers graduate programs in journalism; media, culture and society; organizational and multicultural communication; and public relations and advertising. Undergraduate programs include communication studies; journalism; media and cinema studies; PR/advertising; and communication and media.

DePaul is now the second-largest provider of bachelor’s degrees in communication in Illinois and the fourth-largest provider of master’s degrees in communication in the state.