Urban Studies

The course provides the latest methodological and theoretical tools for understanding the politics of urbanization and urbanism. The course takes the politics of urbanism as a transdisciplinary arena. It encourages thinking across disciplinary boundaries to address the environmental and social challenges of the present. The question of how cities act politically on the global scale is widely discussed and receives diverse answers from researchers. The course suggests that the study of the political agency shall be grounded in urban studies and empirically tested on different layers of policymaking, allowing for hybrid combinations. An urban studies approach addresses the spatial and temporal specificity of urban processes, in contrast with the "methodological nationalism" of large parts of the social sciences. It focuses critically on spatialized social processes and socio-material assemblages, combinations of objects and agencies that affect how cities are organized and, to some extent, governed.

This course focuses on sociological concepts and methods through the lens of the city. It applies sociological concepts to the city that can be seen while walking around, such as the city of buildings and people; and those less noticeable, such as the city of sentiments, conflict, traffic flows, bike messengers, sewage networks, asset prices and municipal taxation, and animals and nature. This course uses key sociological readings, case studies, and topics in the news to study the city as a complex space where buildings, people, animals, laws, policies, and international financial flows intersect to produce our lived experience. It focuses on close reading of texts, understanding the key argument of each text, and applying concepts to the real world; and covers the key strategies and skills of academic writing as students produce a research paper based on a city of their choice. The first part of the course explores foundational texts, while the rest of the course addresses specific questions related to housing markets, social policy, violence, drugs, environmental change, segregation, urban infrastructure, and urban regulations.
 

Paris has long been recognized as a center for both revolutionary activism and innovative artistic production. This course explores the coming together of these two domains through diverse visual manifestations of social justice and advocacy produced and/or displayed in Paris from the Revolution to the present, including painting, sculpture, architecture, performance, installations, photography, video, posters, graffiti, and street art. Students explore the ways in which the urban landscape bears the scars of revolutionary destruction and serves as a showcase for politically engaged production, housed in its museums or visible to all on the streets. The instructional format consists of both lectures and group site visits throughout the city, to venues including public and private museums, which are studied both for their content, architecture, and their politics of display; galleries, artist collectives, and Parisian neighborhoods with outdoor art displays.