Course Info: HACU-0186

This course interrogated concepts of the city and of urban imagination through literature and film. In the first two units, consisting of literary and visual texts from late 19th-century Paris and 20th-century New York, discussions focused on the city and industrial modernity; in the second two units, consisting of readings and screenings of films from 1960s and 1970s Dakar and post-apartheid Johannesburg, discussions focused on postmodern and postcolonial transformations of urban space. Students were asked to reflect on the ways in which urban space has been productive of new literary and cultural forms, and they were exposed to a very wide range of genres, including verse and prose poetry, novels, short stories, autobiography, non-fiction essays, spoken word, detective fiction, science fiction, avant-garde film, and an alien invasion movie. Among the specific themes and problems covered were the crowd and anonymity; urban poverty, social inequality, and social exclusion; the city as a site of collective and cultural memory; and the cultural dynamics of multicultural societies, spanning migration, multilingualism, hyphenated identity, colonialism, cosmopolitanism, and postcoloniality. The course was largely discussion-based, presenting students with regular opportunities to develop their critical and analytical skills. Students were evaluated on the basis of their participation in discussion and on their written work, consisting of two short papers and a longer final project. The final project incorporated independent research; topics were developed by students through a formal proposal process.