URBS 344 - Living for the City: Race, Space, and Place in Urban American

Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)

(Same as AFRS 344 and HIST 344) This seminar explores the development and transformation of Black urban life in America from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century. Organized chronologically and regionally, it examines how Black Americans shaped cities across the North, South, and West–from colonial cities to modern. metropolises. Topics include urban slavery and labor, nineteenth-century migration and urbanization, the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Gilded Age and industrialization, and Jim Crow-era segregation. In addition to tracing key themes in Black urban history, the assigned course materials analyze the economic, social, and political transformations of Black urban communities. We consider the methods and strategies that Black urban communities used to challenge racial, gender, and class inequalities in the long nineteenth-century United States. Whitney Fields.

One 2-hour period.

Course Format: CLS