Urban Studies

This course discusses the various creative fields in which Barcelona has been a pioneer. Topics include: urban design, art, culture, design and fashion, theater, dance, music.

The course covers the main themes of London's contested geography and history: London as a trading city, as an Imperial center, and as the seat of both traditional authority and Parliament. Looking at the peopling of London, the course explores the transformation of British society through inward migration, and the way that the social contract was made and remade again with each generation that populated the city. Students examine the social changes and political debates that have shaped London, and the country's idea of "who we are." Lastly, the course explores London's social problems from slum clearance to gentrification and "social cleansing."

The 19th century saw the reinvention of the subterranean. From the sewers in Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables to the striking miners of Émile Zola’s Germinal, novelists began exploring the space beneath their feet. By the turn of the century, the opening of the Paris catacombs to the public and the construction of the metro system fueled the collective imagination, while the hidden strata of history and consciousness were being charted by the developing fields of archaeology and psychoanalysis. In the early to mid-20th century, the subterranean was as much a metaphor as it was a reality, with artists and philosophers drawing inspiration from newly discovered prehistoric cave paintings and the French Resistance returning once again to Hugo’s sewers. This class follows modernity as it goes underground. This course discusses topics including French and Parisian history and culture, urban text and its expressions in literature and film, and historical events and reinterpreting them in the context of their reliance on hidden historical and cultural undercurrents.

As the planet’s land use and human population become increasingly urban, environmental problems and politics of cities are evermore critical for improving socio-environmental relationships and outcomes. Thus, this course explores the urban political conflicts of environmental issues like climate change, air pollution, water quality/quantity, resource and energy use, waste disposal, and more. Using a range of case studies from around the world and beginning with some of the contested material flows of resources that both transform and comprise cities, the course then moves to address politicized ideas of nature, conservation, and habitats in the city while concluding with discussions of human agency and responses to the uneven social impacts of urban environmental problems.