Urban Studies
Overview
Cities have played a key role throughout history as centers of power, culture, economic wealth, migration, social interactions, and as home of our greatest artistic works, buildings, and infrastructure projects. Incredibly complex and multidimensional, the city has been called humanity’s “greatest invention.” At the same time, the city has also been the locus of our greatest social problems and inequities, including racial discrimination, poverty, homelessness, environmental degradation, and unsustainable forms of urban expansion. Students in the urban studies minor explore the physical, conceptual, spatial, social, cultural, historical, economic, environmental, and political dimensions of the urban realm as they complete the minor, drawing from the principles and methods of the humanities and social sciences.
Learning Goals
Students who complete a minor in urban studies should gain facility with utilizing the principles and methods of the humanities and social sciences to consider the physical, conceptual, spatial, social, cultural, historical, economic, environmental, and political dimensions of the urban realm.
They will acquire the knowledge and core competencies to:
- Identify key elements in the development and transformation of cities.
- Recognize the diversity of urban forms across time and place, and acquire familiarity with cities outside the US.
- Evaluate and utilize data, sources, and materials (both quantitative and qualitative) on the social, political, economic, and environmental facets of urban life.
- Interpret literary, artistic, or historical representations of cities and urban life.
In addition, students will acquire the following skills and abilities through their coursework in the minor to:
- Critically read and analyze texts.
- Find and evaluate a range of primary and secondary sources of information and data.
- Identify effective methodologies for pursuing particular research questions.
- Craft discipline-appropriate questions, approaches, and arguments.
- Communicate effectively across disciplines.
- Synthesize insights from different social science and humanities disciplines.
Minor Advisors: Theodore C. Greene, Jill Pearlman‡, Rachel Sturman
Minor Staff Coordinator: Marybeth Bergquist
Contributing Faculty: Barbara Weiden Boyd, Sakura Christmas‡, Crystal Hall, James Higginbotham, Eileen Sylvan Johnson, Ann Kibbie, Matthew Klingle, Brian Purnell, Jill S. Smith, Robert B. Sobak, Hilary Thompson‡, Carolyn Wolfenzon Niego
Urban Studies Minor
Students interested in urban studies should contact Jill Pearlman, senior lecturer in environmental studies.
Requirements for the Minor in Urban Studies
Urban Studies minors should have an understanding of cities as taking diverse forms across time and place, and as involving distinctive structures, infrastructures, cultures, politics, and modes of social life. While students will likely gravitate toward a particular disciplinary approach, those completing the minor will have exposure to the historical development and transformation of cities; the social and political problems of urban life; and the history, planning, and design of the built environment.
The minor consists of five courses.
| Code | Title | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| Required Courses | ||
| Choose one introductory survey course from the following: | 1 | |
| City, Anti-City, and Utopia: Building Urban America | ||
| Gotham: The History of a Modern City | ||
HIST 2346 Cities of the Global South | ||
| Cities and Society | ||
| One humanities course or one social science course listed as Urban Studies, depending on the discipline of the Introductory Survey. If introductory survey is in the humanities, the student must complete a social science Urban Studies Course. Students who take a social science introductory survey must take a humanities course. c | 2 | |
| One non-US based course listed as Urban Studies c | 1 | |
| Two electives listed as Urban Studies c | 1 | |
- c
For more information about courses that might meet this requirement, please click here.
Additional Information
- Students may elect to minor in Urban Studies.
- One independent study may be counted toward the minor.
- Courses that count toward the minor must be taken for regular letter grades, not Credit/D/Fail, and students must earn grades of C- or better in these courses.
- One course taken at another college or university can count as an elective toward the minor with prior approval by the Urban Studies Committee.
- One course below the 2000 level (which may be a first-year writing seminar that is cross-listed in URBS) may count toward the minor.
- Two courses applied to the minor may be double-counted toward the student’s major.
Information for Incoming Students
The Urban Studies minor started in the 2020 fall semester and draws together faculty from a variety of disciplines rooted in the humanities and social sciences. The faculty contributors from this minor come from many different departments and programs including: Africana studies, classics, digital and computational studies, education, English, environmental studies, German, government and legal studies, history and sociology.
For a full listing of courses in urban Studies, reference the URBS courses section of the Catalogue.
Approaches urban schools and communities as sites of promise and innovation as well as sites for social and political struggle. Examines the significance of community organizing as a form of education and the role of community organizing to improve urban schools. Readings include an examination of organizing tactics from historical figures such as Saul Alinsky, Ella Baker, Myles Horton, and Dolores Huerta. Topics may include 'grow your own' teacher initiatives, parent trigger laws, and culturally-sustaining educational programming. This course originates in Education and is crosslisted with: Urban Studies. (Same as: EDUC 1015)
Terms offered: 2022 Fall Semester; 2024 Fall Semester
An examination of literary, artistic, and cinematic representations of the city of Berlin during three distinct time periods: the “Roaring 20s,” the Cold War, and the post-Wall period. Explores the dramatic cultural, political, and physical transformations that Berlin underwent during the twentieth century and thereby illustrates the central role that Berlin played, and continues to play, in European history and culture, as well as in the American cultural imagination. For each time period studied, compares Anglo-American representations of Berlin with those produced by German artists and writers, and investigates how, why, and to what extent Berlin has retained its status as one of the most quintessentially modern cities in the world. No knowledge of German is required. Note: Fulfills the non-US cinema requirement for cinema studies minors. This course originates in German and is crosslisted with: Cinema Studies; Urban Studies. (Same as: GER 1152, CINE 1152)
Terms offered: 2025 Fall Semester
American cities have been historic cauldrons of racial and ethnic conflict. Concentrates on urban violence in American cities since 1898. Students study moments of conflict during the early republic and the nineteenth century. Topics examined include the post-Reconstruction pogroms that overturned interracial democracy; the Red Summer and its historical memory; the ways race and ethnicity shaped urban residential space; the effects of immigration on urban political economy and society, and the conflicts over space, labor, and social relations that arose; and the waves of urban violence that spread across the country in the mid-1960s. Note: This course is part of the following field(s) of study: United States. This course originates in Africana Studies and is crosslisted with: History. (Same as: AFRS 1320, HIST 1320)
Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2024 Spring Semester
Introduces students to college-level historical thinking, writing, and analysis. Covers the history of New York City from the geological formation of what became Manhattan Island through the present; however, most of the history covered spans the 1600s through the end of the twentieth century. In part, narrates a history of the United States from the colonial era to the present through the story of New Amsterdam and New York City. Another focus is the history of modern, capitalist cities and the cultures, people, economies, and governments they produce. Students work mostly with primary sources and learn how New York City became one of the preeminent modern cities in the world. Note: This course is part of the following field(s) of study: United States This course originates in History and is crosslisted with: Urban Studies. (Same as: HIST 1321)
Terms offered: 2022 Fall Semester
Explores the city as the paradigmatic experience and symbol of modern life in Western Europe from the early modern period to the mid-twentieth century through the lens of art. The increasing concentration of people in urban centers produced new forms of political and financial power and created new forms of sociability, bringing people from different places, races, classes, backgrounds, and beliefs together into productive and jarring encounters. Artists both helped shape these new urban geographies and responded to them in their art. Topics covered include the changing infrastructure and visual culture of the urban landscape; public art and the formation of civic identities; new forms of display and sale of art; and artists’ engagement with the physical, social and emotional experience of the city in their artwork. Serves as an introduction to the methods of art history, with an emphasis on close looking and visual analysis. This course originates in Art History and is crosslisted with: Urban Studies. (Same as: ARTH 1805)
Geographical information systems (GIS) organize and store spatial information for geographical presentation and analysis. They allow rapid development of high-quality maps and enable powerful and sophisticated investigation of spatial patterns and interrelationships. Introduces concepts of cartography, database management, remote sensing, and spatial analysis. Examines GIS and remote sensing applications for natural resource management, environmental health, and monitoring and preparing for the impacts of climate change from the Arctic to local-level systems. Emphasizes both natural and social science applications through a variety of applied exercises and problems culminating in a semester project that addresses a specific environmental application. Students have the option of completing a community-based project. This course originates in Environmental Studies and is crosslisted with: Digital and Computational St. (Same as: ENVS 2004, DCS 2335)
Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2022 Fall Semester; 2023 Fall Semester; 2024 Fall Semester
Examines politics in American cities. Whereas public attention tends to focus on national and international levels of politics, highlights the importance of local and urban institutions and behavior. Considers competition between cities and suburbs, the internal environment of suburban politics, state-city and federal-city relations, racial conflict and urban governance, and the impact of private power on local decision-making. Focuses on the various individuals and institutions that shape the foundation of urban government including politicians, municipal bureaucracies, parties, political machines, interest groups, and the public. This course originates in Government and Legal Studies and is crosslisted with: Urban Studies. (Same as: GOV 2039)
Terms offered: 2025 Spring Semester
Explores visual cultural trends in modern China with socialist and post-socialist conditions as the contextual setting and visual cultural studies the theoretical framework. Discussion topics include but not limited to the following: architecture, from the Imperial Palace to the Bird’s Nest stadium; art, from socialist realism to post-socialist experiment; advertising, from Shanghai modern to global consumerism; and digital media, from the Internet to bloggers. Questions central to the course ask how visual cultural trends reflect and react to China’s social-economic transitions, and how the state apparatus and the people participate in cultural production and consumption. This is a research-oriented course. Students gain knowledge about contemporary Chinese culture as well as skills in the critical analysis of cultural artifacts and trends. This course originates in Asian Studies and is crosslisted with: Urban Studies. (Same as: ASNS 2071)
Terms offered: 2023 Spring Semester
Asks what a digital representation of a city could and should be, particularly in a moment when travel is limited, using Florence, Italy as a case study. Examines digital image, text, and spatial data about the city, juxtaposing it against non-digital primary sources, secondary critical readings, reflections on experiences of urban and other spaces, and data that we will create in class. Emphasizes shifting definitions across time, language, and digital artifacts of what and who is Florentine in these representations. Coursework happens in three phases: going “under the hood” of the popular digital artifacts that provide an experience of Florence in order to evaluate strengths and weaknesses of representation; expanding our definition of Digital Florence to find local perspectives on what the essential features of the city could be; and proposing a digital intervention that better reflects the values we have identified throughout the semester. Assumes no programming knowledge. Taught in English. This course originates in Digital and Computational Studies and is crosslisted with: Italian Studies; Urban Studies. (Same as: DCS 2100, ITAL 2100)
Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester; 2024 Fall Semester
Examines the use of geographical information systems (GIS) to organize, analyze, and visualize spatial data within social science and humanities research. Introduces foundational concepts of cartography, database design, spatial data representation, and data visualization. Provides hands-on experience in spatial data collection, three-dimensional modeling, spatial analysis, spatial network analysis, and spatial statistics. The application of GIS to areas of social scientific and humanistic inquiry are explored through examination of case studies, weekly laboratory exercises, and an individual semester project that culminates in a conference-style research poster. Case studies and data sets are drawn from anthropology, archaeology, and related fields, such as sociology, history, and cultural geography. This course originates in Anthropology and is crosslisted with: Urban Studies. (Same as: ANTH 2115)
Investigates the political, economic, and sociocultural development of cities and metropolitan areas with a focus on American cities and a spotlight on neighborhoods and local communities. Traces major theories of urbanization and considers how cities also represent contested sites where diverse citizens use urban space to challenge, enact, and resist social change on the local, state, and national levels. Topics include economic and racial/ethnic stratification; the rise and fall of suburban and rural areas; the production and maintenance of real and imagined communities; the production and consumption of culture; crime; immigration; sexuality and gender; and urban citizenship in the global city. This course satisfies the 'Introductory Survey' requirement for the Urban Studies minor. This course originates in Sociology and is crosslisted with: Urban Studies. (Same as: SOC 2202)
Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2023 Spring Semester; 2025 Spring Semester
Today, camps and prisons are thought of as distinct and separate forms. How might we think of mass incarceration and mass migration together? What might a region like the Middle East and North Africa add to such an inquiry? Situates the region within wider global regimes of movement control by tracking the entangled history of camps and prisons. Centers the struggles and modes of expression of the detained and encamped. Topics include the emergence of camp and penal forms, humanitarianism and refugeehood, migrant workers and dispossession, environmental history and urbanization, partition and race. Engages prison writing and memoir, aesthetic practices, and film making. This course originates in Arabic and is crosslisted with: Urban Studies. (Same as: MENA 2610)
Terms offered: 2023 Spring Semester; 2024 Fall Semester
Approaches urban schools and communities as sites of promise and innovation as well as social and political struggle. Examines the significance of community organizing as a form of education and the role of community organizing to improve, defend, and transform urban schools. Engages in major debates around urban education through readings and films. Features the perspectives of leading education researchers, policymakers, community organizers, and teacher scholars. Includes discussions of popular education, parent trigger laws, privatization, social movement unionism, and culturally-sustaining educational programming. This course originates in Education and is crosslisted with: Urban Studies. (Same as: EDUC 2272)
Terms offered: 2025 Spring Semester
Explores approaches by communities and regions to build resilience in the face of changing environmental and social conditions. Examines the ways communities establish policies and collaborate with state, federal, private and nonprofit sectors towards strengthening local economies, safeguarding environmental values, protecting public health, addressing issues of economic and social justice, and implementing mitigation and adaptation strategies. Provides students with firsthand understanding of how digital and computational technologies including Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are playing an increasingly important role in understanding and informing effective approaches for expanding resilience at a community level to inform policy decision. Students gain proficiency with GIS as part of the course. This course originates in Environmental Studies and is crosslisted with: Digital and Computational St. (Same as: ENVS 2301, DCS 2340)
Terms offered: 2023 Spring Semester; 2024 Spring Semester; 2025 Spring Semester; 2025 Fall Semester
Focuses on journals, plays, poems, and novels in which London itself plays a vital role, including James Boswell’s “London Journal,” Daniel Defoe’s “Moll Flanders,” John Gay’s “Trivia”; or the “Art of Walking the Streets of London,” and Frances Burney’s “Evelina.” In addition to engaging in critical analysis of these literary texts, students learn how to use digital mapping, spatial analysis, and image markup to imagine eighteenth-century London and work collaboratively to create maps charting the movements of real people (such as Boswell) and fictional characters (such as Moll Flanders) within the city. Theaters, coffeehouses, shops, prisons, hospitals, and parks are among the public spaces explored in order to contextualize, enrich, and question the literature. Note: Fulfills the pre-1800 requirement for English majors. This course originates in English and is crosslisted with: Urban Studies. (Same as: ENGL 2305)
Terms offered: 2022 Fall Semester; 2024 Fall Semester
Often called “The City of Dreams,” today’s city of Mumbai has had a reputation for cosmopolitanism, glamor, and opportunity but also for violence, corruption, and extremes of wealth and poverty. From its supposed origins as a swampy archipelago of seven islands to its rise to prominence in the British imperial economy, to industrialization at the hands of an emergent Indian capitalist class, to hub of anti-colonial and radical politics, popular Hindi cinema (“Bollywood”), and increasingly, in recent decades, opulent urban spaces enclosed in sparkling towers of glass and steel, the story of Bombay/Mumbai is often told through a series of highly romanticized (or dystopian) dramatic flourishes. But the history of the city in fact offers a powerful vantage point to trace the history of global capitalism, as well as histories of modern political movements and popular creative expression of all kinds. This course takes up these latter concerns, centering the voices of the city’s everyday actors: Parsi, Muslim, and Hindu trading families, migrant textile-mill workers and women street vendors, anti-caste activists, nativist politicians, social workers, and urban planners. From neighborhood to nation and beyond, we will see how lines of gender, race, ethnicity, caste, and class were frequently consolidated, but also creatively undone. Counts toward the Non-Euro/ US requirement in history and fulfills the Introductory Survey, Humanities, and non-US requirements in urban studies. This course originates in History and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies; Urban Studies. (Same as: HIST 2341, ASNS 2341)
Terms offered: 2025 Fall Semester
Upon his ascent to power after a century of war, Rome’s first princeps, Augustus, launched a program of cultural reformation and restoration that was to have a profound and enduring effect upon every aspect of life in the empire, from fashions in entertainment, decoration, and art, to religious and political habits and customs. Using the city of Rome as its primary text, this course investigates how the Augustan “renovation” of Rome is manifested first and foremost in the monuments associated with the ruler: the Mausoleum of Augustus, theater of Marcellus, temple of Apollo on the Palatine, Altar of Augustan Peace, and Forum of Augustus as well as many others. Understanding of the material remains themselves is supplemented by historical and literary texts dating to Augustus’s reign, as well as by a consideration of contemporary research and controversies in the field. This course originates in Classics and is crosslisted with: Archaeology. (Same as: CLAS 2202, ARCH 2202)
Terms offered: 2024 Spring Semester
We are all now quite familiar with the way in which the American political landscape has been painted (by the pundits at least) in two contrasting colors: Blue and Red. These “states of mind” have become strongly associated with particular spatial differences as well: Urban and Rural, respectively. Examines the various ways in which Roman culture dealt with a similar divide at different times in its history. Explores the manner in which “urban” and “rural” are represented in Roman literature and visual arts, and how and why these representations changed over time, as well as the realities and disparities of urban and rural material culture. Studies the city and the country in sources as varied as Roman painting, sculpture, architecture, and archaeology, and in Roman authors such as Varro, Vergil, Horace, Pliny and Juvenal. Modern authors will also be utilized as points of comparison. Analyzes how attitudes towards class, status, gender and ethnicity have historically manifested themselves in location, movement, consumption and production. One of the main goals of the course is to challenge our modern urban vs. rural polarity by looking at a similar phenomenon within the context of Roman history. This course originates in Classics and is crosslisted with: Urban Studies. (Same as: CLAS 2224)
Examines the changing nature of the urban built environment in four major European cities from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Course considers a wide range of factors that have contributed to shaping the cities’ spaces and forms, among them: politics, money, war, environmental degradation, spatial inequities, industrialization, immigration, public health, heritage, tourism, and gentrification. Explores the changing role these capital cities have played on the world stage while also exploring everyday life at street level, housing from slum life to mansion, urban infrastructure, and the impact of grand schemes of urban planning and design. This course satisfies the non-US requirement for the urban studies minor. This course originates in Environmental Studies and is crosslisted with: History; Urban Studies. (Same as: ENVS 2427, HIST 2005)
Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester; 2024 Fall Semester
Examines major buildings, architects, architectural theories, and debates during the modern period, with a strong emphasis on Europe through 1900, and both the United States and Europe in the twentieth century. Central issues of concern include architecture as an important carrier of historical, social, and political meaning; changing ideas of history and progress in built form; and the varied architectural responses to industrialization. Attempts to develop students’ visual acuity and ability to interpret architectural form while exploring these and other issues. This course originates in Environmental Studies and is crosslisted with: Art History. (Same as: ENVS 2431, ARTH 2430)
Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2023 Fall Semester
Explores the evolution of the American city from the beginning of industrialization to the present age of mass communications. Focuses on the underlying explanations for the American city’s physical form by examining cultural values, technological advancement, aesthetic theories, and social structure. Major figures, places, and schemes in the areas of urban design and architecture, social criticism, and reform are considered. Semester-long research paper required. Note: This course is part of the following field(s) of study: United States. This course originates in Environmental Studies and is crosslisted with: History. (Same as: ENVS 2444, HIST 2006)
Terms offered: 2023 Fall Semester
This course offers an in-depth investigation of the architecture and urbanism of North America’s most celebrated architect, with emphasis on the major themes of his work—particularly the complex relationship between Wright’s buildings, urban schemes, and nature. We will examine key projects for a diverse range of environments and regions while also placing Wright and his works into larger historical and architectural contexts. Throughout the course we will engage in a critical analysis of the rich historical literature that Wright has evoked in recent years. This course originates in Environmental Studies and is crosslisted with: Urban Studies. (Same as: ENVS 2445)
Terms offered: 2022 Fall Semester; 2025 Spring Semester
The centennial of the Bauhaus—the school of modern design opened in 1919 in Weimar, Germany, and closed by the Nazis in 1933—is being celebrated around the world. More than just a school, the Bauhaus gave modernity a distinct physical form by connecting art to nature and industry in new ways. The Bauhaus also advanced the radical notion that modern design had a key social role to play: to improve the lives of all people. The course investigates the social mission, arts, vibrant way of life, and prominent figures at the Bauhaus, many leaders in fields of modern architecture, urbanism, and the arts of design. The course also explores the Bauhaus legacy that flourished throughout the twentieth century, focusing on US and Europe. The Bauhaus changed the world and even today we feel its impact, in the smallest of objects, our built environments, and the cities in which we live. Students will work closely with the Bauhaus exhibition that opens March 1, 2019, at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art and will carry out their own research projects. This course originates in Environmental Studies and is crosslisted with: Art History. (Same as: ENVS 2470, ARTH 2470)
The city has long been central to the creation of theater. From Athens to Beijing and Abydos to London, performance is deeply connected to the places where it is created. But the opposite is also true—performance creates cities. This course explores how theater and performance shape the ways people move, connect, build, remember, and generally live in cities. Through readings, theater attendance, and performance-making, students examine how performance has influenced various global cities’ histories, architecture, environments, and economies. Cities examined may include Portland, Maine; New York; Grahamstown; Mexico City; Beijing; London; Berlin; Athens; Buenos Ares; or Tokyo. This course originates in Theater and Dance and is crosslisted with: Urban Studies. (Same as: THTR 2507)
Terms offered: 2023 Spring Semester; 2025 Fall Semester
A megalopolis of 37 million people, Tokyo is the largest city on the planet, a title it has held on and off since the early eighteenth century. Yet Tokyo as we know it today—as a futuristic city of glass, steel, cement, and neon—obscures its deeper past. From its founding four hundred years ago, it has endured fires, earthquakes, epidemics, and bombings, reinventing itself each time. This course takes Tokyo as its subject of study, from its supposed origins as a fishing village to its explosive growth as the castle headquarters of the Tokugawa shoguns, the command center of the Japanese empire, and finally an essential node in the global economy. Considering Tokyo as a series of transformations reveals both the power and problems of capitalism, consumerism, and industrialization, especially through the analytics of gender, class, and ethnicity. Lectures, readings, and films pay close attention to Tokyo’s design, architecture, and infrastructure as shaping and being shaped by the shifting political and cultural landscape of Japan and the wider world. This course originates in History and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies; Urban Studies. (Same as: HIST 2410, ASNS 2410)
Terms offered: 2024 Spring Semester; 2025 Spring Semester
This course takes up the life of twentieth-century US poetry in the city, including in public school systems, urban social movements, cafes and bars, on the radio, at poetry slams, and elsewhere. Students will attend to the public contexts in which poetry takes place and consider the role of poetry in urban society and the influence of urbanism on verse. Serious attention is paid to both the formal intricacies of language on the page and the social analysis of the context of poetry’s creation, reproduction, and reception in cities. We explore three cities—Chicago, New York, and San Francisco—through the eyes of poets, including Philip Levine, Adrienne Rich, Jack Spicer, Frank O’Hara, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, and Amiri Baraka. This course originates in English and is crosslisted with: Urban Studies. (Same as: ENGL 2557)
Terms offered: 2024 Spring Semester
Explores the historical and cultural connections between anti-racist struggles in Urban America and anti-caste struggles in urban India. Examines how 'liberation' is imagined by their participants, through writing, scholarship, artistic production, spiritual practice, political participation, and direct action. Engages with the works of W.E.B. Dubois, Angela Davis, Saidiya Hartman alongside B.R. Ambedkar, Jyotirao Phule, Namdeo Dhasal, and Du Saraswathi. Delves into historical and ethnographic studies of liberation movements in American and Indian cities. This course originates in Anthropology and is cross-listed with: Africana Studies; Asian Studies; Urban Studies. (Same as: ANTH 2600, AFRS 2460, ASNS 2600)
Intermediate seminar. Postwar US cities were considered social, economic, political, and cultural zones of crisis. African Americans -- their families; gender relations; their relationship to urban political economy, politics, and culture -- were at the center of this discourse. Uses David Simon’s epic series “The Wire” as a critical source on postindustrial urban life, politics, conflict, and economics to cover the origins of the urban crisis, the rise of an underclass theory of urban class relations, the evolution of the urban underground economy, and the ways the urban crisis shaped depictions of African Americans in American popular culture. This course originates in Africana Studies and is crosslisted with: Urban Studies. (Same as: AFRS 2220)
Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester; 2023 Fall Semester
Intermediate seminar. Covers the history of people of African descent in what becomes New York City from the Dutch colonial period through the present. Students read key books on all major historical themes and periods, such as the early history of slavery and the slave trade; black life and religion during the early republic and gradual emancipation; the Civil War and draft riots; black communal life during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; the Harlem Renaissance; the Great Depression; the civil rights era; the age of urban crisis; the 1980s and the rise of hip-hop; and blacklife since 9-11. Students gain wide exposure to working with primary sources. This course originates in Africana Studies and is crosslisted with: Urban Studies. (Same as: AFRS 2626)
Terms offered: 2023 Spring Semester
Seminar. America is an urban nation today, yet Americans have had deeply ambivalent feelings toward the city over time. Explores the historical origins of that ambivalence by tracing several overarching themes in American urban history from the seventeenth century to the present. Topics include race and class relations, labor, design and planning, gender and sexual identity, immigration, politics and policy, scientific and technological systems, violence and crime, religion and sectarian disputes, and environmental protection. Discussions revolve around these broad themes, as well as regional distinctions between American cities. Students are required to write several short papers and one longer paper based upon primary and secondary sources. Note:This course is part of the following field(s) of study: United States. This course originates in History and is crosslisted with: Gender Sexuality and Women St. (Same as: HIST 2660, GSWS 2662)
Terms offered: 2023 Spring Semester; 2025 Spring Semester
Seminar. Examines major contemporary cities shaped by histories of colonialism, the Cold War, and contemporary neoliberalism. Considers how these large-scale forces interacted with local, regional, and national cultures and economies to produce specific spatial politics and patterns of urbanization (such as through race, class, caste, gender, sexuality, and ability). Course materials to include primary sources from a range of genres (e.g., film, personal narrative, municipal regulations, planning documents, graffiti), as well as secondary source works of recent historical and ethnographic scholarship and selected critical readings in urban theory. Key themes include segregation and urban mixing; urban infrastructures and technological change; formally recognized and unrecognized economies; impacts of war, mass migration, and mass violence; and the everyday sensory life of the city. Medium-length independent research project developed in stages over the semester. Fulfills the non-Euro/US requirement for history majors and minors. Not open to students who have taken HIST 2346. This course originates in History and is crosslisted with: Asian Studies; Urban Studies. (Same as: HIST 2805, ASNS 2583)
Terms offered: 2024 Fall Semester
Advanced seminar. An exploration of the ways contemporary planetary consciousness has influenced conceptions of the human and the animal, as well as their supposed difference. Examines, in light of modern and current world literature, new models for both the exemplary world citizen and human species identity. Investigates to what extent, and by what creative means, reconsiderations of humans’ impact on the planet and place in the world are recorded in narratives of other creatures and the perceptual possibilities of their worlds. This course originates in English and is crosslisted with: Urban Studies. (Same as: ENGL 3012)
Terms offered: 2023 Fall Semester
Sicily has long been a contested, multicultural space. At once starkly rural and vibrantly urban, environmentally barren and resource rich, economically wealthy and impoverished, the island is both a part of Italy, part of the Mediterranean, part of Europe, and apart from all of them. This course investigates digital textual representations of Sicily and Sicilian culture by residents to document and challenge prevailing images of the island created primarily by foreign tourists, mainland Italians, and regional conquerors. Combined with a planned trip to Sicily, students will compare perspectives on the ground with the results of distant and computational reading of literature, history, social media, and generative AI texts about the relationships among the built, natural, and cultural environments of Sicily. Does not require knowledge of Italian, but does require previous experience coding in Python or R. This course originates in Digital and Computational Studies and is crosslisted: Italian Studies; Urban Studies. (Same as: DCS 3114, ITAL 3114)
Through the exploration of art, literature, architecture and the unique worldview of the ancestral Andean societies, this course will take a look at the different ways in which the three main countries in the Andes—Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia—have dealt with processes of social, political, and cultural modernization since the late nineteenth century until the present day. Readings will include works by Peruvian, Bolivian, and Ecuadorian writers to examine modernist, avant-garde and postmodernist aesthetics. Students will analyze how internal migration to the cities of Lima, Quito and La Paz has reconfigured them, changed their urban dynamics, and impacted the economy and the natural environment. One example students will engage with includes architecture from iconic Bolivian architect Freddy Mamani ,who invented the construction of the Cholets in the city of El Alto, Bolivia. Cholets offer a unique way of connecting urban space to Aymaran identity (an identity that is very connected to the land in Boliva). Students will also address the issue of migration and the reconfigurations of Andean identities in the United States, through the works of Bolivian author Edmundo Paz Soldán and the Ecuadorian-American writer Ernesto Quiñónez and his experience living in Harlem. Taught in Spanish. This course originates in Romance Languages and Literatures and is crosslisted with: Ltn Am, Caribbean & Latinx St; Urban Studies. (Same as: HISP 3211, LACL 3215)
Terms offered: 2022 Fall Semester
Complete a semester-long research project in United States metropolitan history. During the first weeks, students learn about some major research methodologies historians use when researching and writing history of US metropolises. Addresses how historians use demography, spatial theory, and histories of LGBT communities; financial, political, and cultural institutions; electoral politics; public policies; popular culture; African Americans; immigrants; women; workers; and capitalists to uncover the ways cities and suburbs change over time. Students design a topic, research primary historical sources, locate a historical problem relating to the topic from secondary historical sources, and develop a hypothesis addressing the question. The result is a paper of at least twenty-five pages. Choose any feasible topic on the history of modern US cities and suburbs that takes place during the twentieth century. The coursework involved is advanced, but the greatest challenge is the need for self-direction. 3000-level research course fulfills the capstone requirement for Africana studies and history majors. Note: This course is part of the following field(s) of study: United States. This course originates in Africana Studies and is crosslisted with: History. (Same as: AFRS 3230, HIST 3230)
An in-depth exploration into the evolution and practice of urban ethnography within sociological research. Examines various questions and topics of interest to urban ethnographers, including community, race, class, ethnicity, families, crime and violence, (im)migration, culture, gender and sexuality, and community organizing. Attends to methodological and ethical issues pertaining to how to do fieldwork and ethnographic writing. Considers the strengths and limitations of ethnography in developing social theory and illuminating social phenomena. Students also develop their “ethnographic lens” by conducting, sharing, and providing feedback on original ethnographic research. This course originates in Sociology and is crosslisted with: Urban Studies. (Same as: SOC 3310)
The mythical fate-driven foundation of Rome and the city’s subsequent self-fashioning as caput mundi (capital of the world) have made the city an idea that transcends history, and that has for millennia drawn historians, poets, artists, and, most recently, filmmakers to attempt to capture Rome’s essence. As a result, the city defined by its ruins is continually created anew; this synergy between the ruins of Rome -- together with the mutability of empire that they represent -- and the city’s incessant rebirth through the lives of those who visit and inhabit it offers a model for understanding the changing reception of the classical past. This research seminar explores the cycle of ancient Rome’s life and afterlife in the works of writers and filmmakers such as Livy, Virgil, Tacitus, Juvenal, Petrarch, Shakespeare, Keats, Goethe, Gibbon, Hawthorne, Freud, Moravia, Rossellini, Fellini, Bertolucci, and Moretti. All readings in English. This course originates in Classics and is crosslisted with: Urban Studies. (Same as: CLAS 3310)
Terms offered: 2024 Fall Semester
Seminar. Studies the relationship between economics and urban geography, specifically focusing on how individuals, firms, and other organizations make economic choices across urban areas. Provides theoretical and empirical analyses of cities from both historical and contemporary vantage points. Topics include the development of urban areas, patterns of land use within cities, and the causes and consequences of urban poverty, segregation, congestion, and crime. Also examines the merits of policy responses to these urban problems. This course originates in Economics and is crosslisted with: Urban Studies. (Same as: ECON 3560)
Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester; 2025 Fall Semester
Seminar. Focuses on important issues in the history of the American city during the past half century with some comparative excursions to cities beyond. Issues include urban renewal and responses to it, historic preservation, gentrification, high-rise syndrome, the loss and creation of public places, and the making of a humane and successful city today. Considers both the city’s appearance and form and the social and cultural issues that help shape that form. Examines these issues in depth through primary and secondary source readings. Throughout the semester students pursue a research project of their own, culminating in a presentation to the class and a substantial (twenty-five page) paper. This course originates in Environmental Studies and is crosslisted with: Urban Studies. (Same as: ENVS 3998)
Terms offered: 2023 Spring Semester