Honors
HNRS 188-01: Cities in Cross-Cultural Perspective
When Apolodorus criticized the
Roman emperor Hadrian’s plans for the Temple
of Venus, Hadrian promptly murdered
Apolodorus, such was the consequence of challenging an emperor’s claim to
legitimacy through architecture that symbolically united him with the people of
Rome. To the
present day the city continues to be a site where relationships of power are
expressed, and the built environment a means through which societies make
themselves visible. In ancient Greece,
the built environment of the Senate and the gymnasium spoke clearly of
democracy, citizenship, and beauty, but our contemporary cities tell stories
that are far less easily read. While the Athenian (male) citizen traversed his
city in naked celebration of the harmony between flesh and stone, people now
travel in insulated “passive freedom” and reside in gated communities. What can
we learn from the cities of the past, and how can we make our cities more
humane public realms?
This course considers the history
of the city throughout Western civilization, and provides a consideration of
the causes and consequences of our modern urban lives. We draw theoretically on
the writing of Weber, Simmel, Le Corbusier, Foucault, Lefebvre, and Jameson,
and discuss ideas of sovereignty and confinement, abjection and excess, fantasy
and paranoia.
In our discussions we will consider the following
questions, among others: What was the relationship between the naked bodies of
Perikles’ Athens
and the practice of democracy? How did ideas of contamination emerge in the
construction of the Jewish ghetto in 16th century Venice? How does Bakhtin’s work on carnival
lead us to consider the political connotations of urban mobility? How did the
streets of eighteenth century Paris
both quell and prompt revolution? How do societies remember and why do dead
bodies have political lives? What are the intellectual and moral consequences
of postmodernity? Why do we love Disneyland, and what can we learn from
polycentric, polycultural, polyglot Los
Angeles?
Spring Term: 2008
Credits: 4
Fulfills: GE Requirement in Interdisciplinary Studies (I)
Cross-listed: INTL-200-03 & SA-245-01
Meeting times: 3:00-4:20 TR
Instructor: Ruth Toulson
Open to: First-years/Sophomores/Jrs/Srs
