Seminar in Historical Analysis (405-0-26)

Topic

Mapping the Discipline

Instructors

Sarah C Maza
847/491-3460
Harris Hall Room 304

Meeting Info

Harris Hall room 101: Tues 9:30AM - 12:20PM

Overview of class

This class engages the "spatial turn" in the humanities and social sciences by examining influential arguments about cities as fundamental to the modernist progress or retrogression of society in the 19th, 20th, and early 21st centuries. According to many influential social science and literary manifestoes, urban development provides the quintessence of national and greater civilizational progress - or regress. We will start by considering how the theoretical literature on "urban space" can complement and transform "urban history" and examine paradigmatic Euro-American conceptions of "the modern city." We will then explore how notions of modern urbanism have had a very different effect and reception in Asia, Africa, and the Americas.

We will gain a nuanced appreciation for key theoretical approaches of "spatial-turn"-inflected scholarship on modern urbanism. We will also critically evaluate the varying ways that "urban modernity" has been appropriated and transformed in cities around the world during the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.

Learning Objectives

1) Students will gain nuanced appreciation for key theoretical approaches of "spatial turn"-inflected scholarship on modern urbanism.

2) we will evaluate the ways that "urban modernity" has been appropriated and transformed in cities around the world during the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.

Evaluation Method

2 short papers (5 pages, 25%);
Class participation (seminar presentation, discussion, 25%);
final paper (50%)

Class Attributes

Graduate Students Only