American City from 1900 to the Present: An Interdisciplinary Approach

elective courses

Classroom

The course offers an overview of contemporary research on the 20th and 21st-century American city with a focus on such urban processes as suburbanization, im/migration, de/industrialization, urban sprawl and gentrification.

The course offers an overview of contemporary research on the 20th- and 21st-century American city with a focus on such processes as suburbanization, im/migration, de/industrialization, urban sprawl, and gentrification. We will try to situate these processes within a larger matrix of socio-economic and political forces, with attention to the federal government, municipal authorities, private enterprise, civil society, and grassroots activists as key urban players. We will primarily read the city as a text—“an inscription of man in space” (Barthes). The city is a site of culture production, of entertainment and consumption. But it is also a contested space, driven by conflict and tension, marked by policies of inclusion and exclusion along cross class, ethnic, and racial lines. The city embodies the tension between the pursuit of individual liberty on the one hand and social equality on the other. Bringing together scholarly insights from sociology, anthropology, history, urban geography, economy, and urban planning, we will address the complexity of urban processes and key influences shaping the American post/urban landscapes, as well as underlying norms, values, and concepts.

Baldwin, J. "Fifth Avenue, Uptown: A Letter from Harlem" in Collected Essays

de Cetreau, Michel. Excerpts from The Practice of Everyday Life. UC Press, 1984.

Drake, St. Claire & H. R. Clayton. excerpts from Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City. Chicago: Chicago UP, 1993 (1945).

Dreiser, T. excerpts from Sister Carrie (1900).

Duncan, J., N. Duncan, excerpt from Landscape and Race in the United States. Ed. R. H. Schein. Routledge, 2006.

Gandy, M. excerpts from Concrete and Clay: Reworking Nature in New York City. The MIT Press, 2003.

Halle, D. & K. Rafter. excerpts from New York and Los Angeles: Politics, Society, and Culture. A Comparative View. Chicago UP, 2003.

Harris, N. excerpts from Cultural Excursions: Marketing Appetites and Cultural Tastes in Modern America. Chicago UP, 1990.

Jacobs, Jane, The Death and Life of Great American Cities,Random House, 1961

Keil, R. excerpts from Los Angeles: Globalization, Urbanization and Social Struggles. John Wiley and Sons, 1998.

Kunstler, J. H. excerpts from The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape. Simon & Schuster, 1994.

Lees, Loretta, Tom Slater and Elvin Wyly, excerpts from Gentrification, Routledge, 2008.

Orum, A. excerpts from City-Building in America. Westview Press, 1995.

Phelps, Nicholas A. excerpts from Sequel to Suburbia: Glimpses of America's Post-Suburban Future, MIT, 2015.

Riismandel, Kyle. excerpts from Neighborhood of Fear: The Suburban Crisis in American Culture, 1975–2001. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020.

Rowan, Jamin Creed, excerpts from The Sociable City: An American Intellectual Tradition. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017.

Rothstein, Richard. excerpts from The Color of Law. A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. Liveright, 2017.

Sacks Brodkin, K. "How Did Jews Become White Folks?" in S.Gregory & R. Sanjek, Race. Rutgers 1994, pp. 78-102.

Schaffer, D. excerpts from Garden Cities for America: The Radburn Experience. Temple UP, 1982.

Sugrue, Thomas. The Origins of Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Post-war Detroit. Princeton University Press, 1996.

Schein, Richard H. ed. Landscape and Race in the United States. Routledge, 2006.

Stilgoe, J. R. excerpts from Borderland of the American Suburb, 1820-1939. Yale UP, 1988.

Teaford, Jon. “The North American City.” Companion to Urban and Regional Studies, eds. Anthony Orum, Javier Ruiz-Tagle, SErena Vicari Haddock. Wiley Blackwell, 2021.

Waldie, D.J. excerpts from Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir. ‎ W. W. Norton & Company

Ward, Stephen V. Selling Places:The Marketing and Promotion of Towns and Cities 1850–2000. Routledge, 1998.

New York: A Documentary Film, dir. Ric Burns, 1999

Las Vegas: An Unconventional Story, dir. Michelle Ferrari, 2005.

Requiem for Detroit, dir. Julien Temple, 2010.

Knowledge

Students will be able to:

K_W01 identify the place and specificity of approaches to the study of the American city within English Studies against the background of other academic disciplines within the humanities

K_W02 understand key terminology, well established culture studies methods and theories of the city within English studies

K_W03 describe methodology and recent developments in the approaches to study of the city within English Studies

K_W04 describe the relation between language, literature, and historical and cultural processes, with regard to the American city, on an advanced level

Skills

Students are able to

K_U01 employ the terminology and methodological tools relating the American city drawing on literary and cultural studies

K_U02 employ the methodology of literary and culture studies within English studies, respecting the ethical norms and copyright law

K_U04 implement knowledge of the American city to describe a problem and identify means to solve it, thereby completing a project in literary studies and in culture and religion studies relating to the American city and urban processes

K_U05 collect information from various sources, critically assess a source and usefulness of information; analyze and draw generalizations on the basis of information so obtained

Social Competencies

Students will be ready to

K_K02 undertake life-long learning and personal development, applying skills and competences to select subjects and projects optimally suiting one’s personal interests

K_K03 value responsibility for one’s own work and respect the work of others, adhering to the professional and ethical norms in various projects and other activities undertaken at work, voluntary services, etc.

Education at language level B2+

- attendance,

- preparation and participation in discussions

- mini-presentations, collaborative work

- short written assignments

Final test

Max. 3 absences allowed