HUMA 3605: Imagining the European City in Literature and Film

Course Description

At the beginning of the 21st century, over half of the world’s population live in cities. Yet urbanity as a way of life remains notoriously contested terrain. What is distinctive about urban life, and is there anything distinctly European about it? Have the intangible qualities of cities – the scale and intensity of social interactions, the ephemerality of the built environment and constant spatial transformations, the defining presence of diversity and multiethnicity – produced an urban ethos that transcends cultural and national divisions? Where does the tradition of cities being experienced as dangerous, threatening and dirty come from? How do cities relate to their own histories in view of constant migration and accelerated change? What cultural factors influence whether a city “succeeds” or “fails”?

While Europe is no longer setting the pace and shape of urbanization, it is in its traditions of imagining cities that answers to these questions can be found. By exploring the ways cities have been represented in European culture, this course probes the links between urban imaginaries and material cities. The course focuses on the city of modernity but also includes discussions of early modern and postmodern manifestations of urban imaginaries.

Course Learning Objectives

• To become familiar with the key representations of cities since the early modern period;
• To be able to trace significant traditions of imagining the city;
• To understand the contributions of literature and film to the construction and global circulation of images, metaphors and discourses on urban life;
• To understand the connections between urban imaginaries and material cities.

Detailed course syllabus (Passport York authentication required)