Week 1. Experience of the City
Background reading: Ed Soja “Putting Cities First: Re--mapping the Origins of Urbanism” (in Bridges and Watson); Richard Sennett, “Introduction”
Texts discussed in class: Edgar Allan Poe, “The Man of the Crowd”.
Topics for discussion: the difference between rural and urban lifestyles; the rise of cities and the development of civilization; crowds; sensory overload; distraction; anonymity
Week 2. City and Modernity
Background reading: Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (Chapter 1); John Urry, “City Life and the Senses” (in Bridge and Watson)
Texts discussed in class: Charles Baudelaire, “The Painter of Modern Life”, Walter Benjamin, “The Flâneur”
Topics for discussion: the flâneur, the artist, and the bohemian; the pleasures and the perils of city life
Week 3. The City of Two Tales: the Victorian Metropolis
Background reading: Peter Ackroyd, “Night in the City”, Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (Chapter 19); Bridge And Watson, “The City Imaginaries”
Texts discussed in class: Charles Dickens, Sketches by Boz (Chapter 1, “The Streets - Morning”, Chapter 2, “The Streets- Night”)
Charles Dickens, Bleak House (Chapter 1)
Topics for discussion: the rich and the poor; class, race and gender in Victorian London; the impact of inequality on the topography of urban space.
Week 4.1 Crime and Punishment in the City
Background reading: D. A. Miller, The Novel and the Police (Chapter 6)
Texts discussed in class: Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Adventure of the Red-Headed League”, “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle”
Topics for discussion: crime, surveillance, and the private eye.
Week 4.2 Dreaming in the City
Background reading: Steve Pile “Sleepwalking in the City” (Watson and Bridge, Ch. 8)
Texts discussed in class: Robert Louis Stevenson, “Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”
Topics for discussion: the urban imagination, cities as dreamscapes, desire and fear.
Week 5. City of Light, or Urban Utopia
Background reading: Le Corbusier, The City of Tomorrow (excerpts); Raymond Williams, Chapter 23 (“The City and the Future”)
Texts discussed in class: Jules Verne, The Begum’s Fortune (excerpt); J. G. Ballard, “Concentration City”
Topics for discussion: how the modernist urban utopia turned into a nightmare.
Week 6. The Traumatized City
Background reading: Sennett, Chapter 7 (“Fear of Touching”)
Texts discussed in class: Peter Ackroyd, “Blitz”; Art Spiegelman, In the Shadow of No Towers (graphic novel, excerpts)
Topics for discussion: cities and catastrophe, urban apocalypse, disease and contagion.
Week 7. The Divided City
Background reading: Gary Bridge and Sophie Watson City Differences (Ch. 21); Peter Marcuse, Cities of Polarization and Marginalization (Bridge and Watson, Ch. 23).
Texts discussed in class: Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere
Topics for discussion: class, ethnic and racial divisions in the city.
Week 8. Visible and Invisible Cities
Background reading: James Donald, “The Immaterial City: Representation, Imagination and Media Technologies”: (Bridge and Watson, Ch. 5)
Texts discussed in class; Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere; Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
Topics for discussion: representation, media and cyber-cities.
Week 9. The Global City 1: Culture and Representation
Background reading: Anthony King, “Postcolonialism, Representation and the City” (Bridge and Watson, Ch. 22) Lily Kong, “Value Conflicts, Identity Construction and Urban Change” (Bridge and Watson, Ch.30)
Texts discussed in class: Calvino, Invisible Cities;
Topics for discussion: the rise of the global metropolis.
Week 10. The Global City 2: Fear and Hope
Background reading: Sennett, “Conclusion: Civic Bodies”
Texts discussed in class: Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 (Chapter 1 and 2)
Topics for discussion: how the heterogeneous, global, multicultural metropolis creates a new sense of self and a new relationship with the Other.
Week 11. City of the present?
Background reading: Rem Koolhaas, “The Invention and Reinvention of the City”
Texts discussed in class: China Miéville, The City and the City
Topics for discussion: have big cities become uninhabitable?
Week 12. City of the Future?
Background reading: Erik Swyngedouw and Maria Kaika, "The Environment of the City ... or the Urbanisation of Nature" (Bridge and Watson, Ch. 47), Raymond Williams, “Cities and Countries” (Ch. 25)
Topics for discussion: how can urban experience be reimagined in the 21st century?
The final grade is given on the basis of the following:
1. Two class presentations (30 %)
2. A research paper (30 %)
3. Final exam (40%)
A Companion to the City, Gary Bridge and Sophie Watson, eds
Flesh and Stone, Richard Sennett
The Country and the City, Raymond Williams