Spring 2009
E 397M • Imperial Cities, Global Cities
| Unique | Days | Time | Location | Instructor |
| 34805 |
TTh |
2:00 PM-3:30 PM |
CAL 200 |
Carter |
Course Description
In this literature, film, and cultural studies seminar we will be reading a series of books and essays on colonial, postcolonial, and urban landscapes; we will additionally be examining both real and cinematic landscapes. Some of the subjects we will be examining include imperial cartography and urban planning as both uplift/improvement or development projects, as well as strategies of order and control, containment and surveillance; globalization, migration, and immigration; local and global economies; and the utopian/dystopian city. Students enrolled will be expected to have a selected city on which to focus for their seminar paper.
Texts
Proposed Texts:
Arjun Appadurai. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization and Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Anger (selections).
Victor Burgin. In/Different Spaces: Place and Memory in Visual Culture (selections).
Pierre Bourdieu. Algeria 1960: The Disenchantment of the World: The Sense of Honour: The Kabyle House or the World Reversed: Essays. Custom copied at U. T. Co-Op.
Mike Davis. City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles.
Matthew H. Edney. Mapping an Empire: The Geographical Construction of British India, 1765-1843 (selections).
Jane Jacobs. The Death and Life of Great American Cities.
Jane M. Jacobs. Edge of Empire: Post-Colonialism and the City (selections).
Frederic Jameson. The Geopolitical Aesthetic: Cinema and Space in the World System (selections).
Timothy Mitchell. Colonising Egypt (selections).
Proposed Literature:
Walter Benjamin. The Arcades Project.
Italo Calvino. Invisible Cities.
Orhan Pamuk. Istanbul: Memories and the City.
Ivan Vladislavic. Portrait with Keys: The City of Johannesburg Unlocked.
Proposed Films:
Thom Andersen. Los Angeles Plays Itself.
Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennes. La Promesse or Rosetta.
Claire Denis. No Fear, No Die.
Patrick Keiller. London.
Jocelyn Saab. Once Upon a Time, Beirut.
Farida bin al-Yazid. Door to the Sky.
