URBS 177 - Special Topics

Semester Offered: Spring
1/2 unit(s)

(Same as AMST 177 and ENGL 177) Topic for 2014/15b: Imagining the City. This six-week course will survey various approaches to thinking and writing about the city. How do our surroundings change us? What power does an individual have to reshape or reimagine the vast urban landscape? We will consider a diverse array of depictions: the ethnic underground of Chang-rae Lee’s Queens; the forlorn Baltimore depicted in the television show The Wire; the midnight wanderings of Teju Cole and Junot Diaz; the global bustle of Jessica Hagedorn’s Manila; present-day graffiti artists and urban farmers reclaiming their “right to the city.” Mr. Hsu.