Syllabus 110
I. New York
1.
Representations, Myths, Mappings & Modernism(s)
New York of the Imaginary
Poetry: the Flaneur, the New York School, the Poet as Mapmaker
Monday, January 14th
Introductions
Wednesday, January 16th
Reading:
EB White: Here is New York (excerpt)
Alfred Kazin: A Walker in the City (excerpt: “From the Subway to the Synogogue”)
Edward Abbey: “Manhattan Twilight, Hoboken Night”
Joan Didion: “Goodbye to All That”
Schulman: “People and Their Streets, Places”
Jackson: “A Sense of Place, A Sense of Time,” “Beyond Wilderness”
deCerteau: “Spatial Practices: Walking in the City”
Lefebvre: “No Salvation away from the Centre?” “The Specificity of Cities,” “Seen From the Window”
Barthes: “The Eiffel Tower”
Writing:
Reading Response
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Monday, January 21st
NO CLASS
[Wednesday, January 23rd]
Reading:
Colson Whitehead: Colossus of New York
Film:
Miller – The Cruise
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Monday, January 28th
Reading:
Colson Whitehead: Colossus of New York
Writing:
Reading Response
[Wednesday, January 30th]
Other:
Research 1 visual artist whose work is affected by and/or raises ideas about the city & bring selected images; discuss his/her work & provide bio in 1 page
Guest Lecturer: Dominica Paige
[Riis, Stieglitz, Steichen, Jaffe, Evans (subway series), Hine, Parks, Vanderzee, Kline, Pollack, deKooning, Hopper, Weegee, Goldin, Basquiat, Arbus, the Ashcan School, etc.]
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Monday, February 4th
Reading:
selected poetry:
Ammons: “A Poem is a Walk”
Whitman: “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” / Lorca: “Ode to Whitman”
Poe: “The Man of the Crowd”
Hart Crane: “The Bridge”
Doty: “Broadway,” “Human Figures”
Smith: “Flowers of Manhattan,” “Summertime”
Bishop: “Letter to New York, “The Man-Moth,” “From the Country to the City”
Robert Lowell: “The Mouth of the Hudson”
Olds: “Summer Solstice, New York”
cummings: “the hours rise up”
O’Hara: “how to get there,” “meditations in an emergency,” lines for the fortune cookie”
(Baudelaire: “Crowds,” Solitude,” “Eyes of the Poor,” “Let’s Beat Up the Poor”))
(Hass: “Berkeley Eclogue,” Sandburg: “Chicago,” Matthews: “Seattle, February,” Davis: “Thirty Years Rising,” Olds: “San Francisco,” Paz: “Return (Vuelta)”)
Writing:
Reading Response
Wednesday, February 6th
Reading:
Continued
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Monday, February 11th
Film:
Midnight Cowboy
Wednesday, February 13th
Film:
Midnight Cowboy
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Monday, February 18th
Reading:
O’Hara: Lunch Poems
Writing:
Reading Response
Wednesday, February 20th
Reading:
O’Hara: Lunch Poems
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2.
Harlem Renaissance
Racialized Spaces
Dialectics of Inside/Outside
the Street as Site
Monday, February 25th
Reading:
Larsen: Quicksand/Passing
Brierre: “Harlem”
Langston Hughes: selected poems
McKay: “The Tropics of New York”
Wednesday, February 27th
Reading:
Larsen: Quicksand/Passing
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Monday, March 3rd
Reading:
Morrison: Jazz
Writing:
Reading Response
Wednesday, March 5th
Reading:
Morrison: Jazz
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Monday, March 10th
Film:
Lee: Do The Right Thing
Wednesday, March 12th
Film:
Lee: Do The Right Thing
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SPRING BREAK
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II. Beyond New York: Other Cities
1.
Literary Modernism & Urbanism
Ethnic Identities & Spaces
London, Dublin, Paris
Nationalism / Nationalist Identities
Crowds, Neighborhoods, & the Individual
Anonymity & Exchange
Urban Spectacle
Expat Identity
Bloomsbury
Women of the Left Bank
Monday, March 24th
Reading:
Woolf: Mrs. Dalloway
Blake: “London”
Wordsworth: “Composed Upon Westminster Bridge”
Woolf: “Street Haunting” (optional)
Benstock: “women of the left bank” (optional)
Writing:
Reading Response
Wednesday, March 26th
Reading:
Woolf: Mrs. Dalloway
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Monday, March 31st
Reading:
Joyce: selected Dubliners
Writing:
Reading Response
2. Venice
Gendered Spaces
Queerscapes
the City as Body & Mask
Choice & Chance
Wednesday, April 2nd
Reading:
Buzzatti: “The Falling Girl”
*
Grosz: “Bodies-Cities”
McDowell: “In and Out of Place: Bodies and Embodiment,” “In Public: The Street and Spaces of Pleasure”
Knopp: “Sexuality and Urban Space”
*
[Wolff: “The Invisible Flaneuse – Women & the Literature of Modernity” - optional]
[Polchin: “Having Something to Wear: The Landscape of Identity on Christopher Street” - optional]
[Betsky: “Some Queer Constructs” - optional]
[Munt: “The Lesbian Flaneur” - optional]
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Monday, April 7th
Reading:
Winterson: The Passion
Writing:
Reading Response
Wednesday, April 9th
Reading:
Winterson: The Passion
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3
Rio de Janiero
Gender, Ethnicity, Class
the Street as Site
the Making of the Author/Artist
Monday, April 14th
Reading:
Lispector: Hour of the Star
Barthes: “Death of the Author”
Foucault: “What is an Author”
Writing:
Reading Response
Wednesday, April 16th
Reading:
Lispector: Hour of the Star
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Monday, April 21st
Film:
Meirelles: City of God
Wednesday, April 23rd
Film:
Meirelles: City of God
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4. The Urban Imaginary
Monday, April 28th
Calvino: Invisible Cities
Wednesday, April 30th
Calvino: Invisible Cities
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Monday, May 5th
Final Exam
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SUMMER
