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Urban spaces are multilayered phenomena. Where does a city begin, where does it end? How can we make sense of urban space, that conglomeration of so many diverse elements: material (buildings, etc.), social (power, relationships), and symbolic (meaning); that site of heterogeneity, where individuals and crowds, classes, races, and genders collide and are separated from each other? “Cities promise plenitude, but deliver inaccessibility,” writes Hana Wirth-Nesher, drawing attention to the “partial visibilities” that the city produces, since we can never see its whole. This seminar is dedicated to various accesses that writers and film-makers have created to the cities of New York and Los Angeles. One such access that we will focus on are attempts to read the city, through the eyes of protagonists, narrators, or that of the camera. Another (smaller) focus will be on urban practices such as tourism and street art. Authors under consideration are Edgar Alan Poe (“The Man of the Crowd”), William Dean Howells (A Hazard of New Fortunes), John Dos Passos (Manhattan Transfer), Paul Auster (City of Glass), Toni Morrison (Jazz), Karen Tei Yamashita (Tropics of Orange); films under consideration are Chinatown (Polanski), Taxi Driver (Scorsese), Do the Right Thing (Lee), Mulholland Drive (Lynch). Some texts will be read by all, while others will be subjects for students’ projects. Project presentations will pay particular attention to teaching methods. The complete syllabus will be presented in the first session. Registration via e-mail: Dorothea.Lobbermann@cms.hu-berlin.de |
