Schedule of Readings

For full details of the texts listed below, see the Bibliography page.

WeekLY TOPICS Readings
1. Introductions, Logistics, and First Impressions; Guy Debord and the Situationists: Ludo-Political Psychogeography

  • Chtcheglov, “Formulary for a New Urbanism”
  • Debord, “Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography”
  • Debord, “Theory of the Dérive
  • Lettrist International, “Proposals for Rationally Improving the City of Paris”
  • Constant, “Another City for Another Life”
  • Wark, The Beach Beneath the Street, chapters 2 (“No More Temples of the Sun”) and 5 (“A Provisional Micro-Society”)
  • Coverley, Psychogeography, chapter 3 (“Guy Debord and the Situationist International”)
  • Self, Psychogeography, “Introduction: Walking to New York”
2. Some Urban Planning Roots: Socio-Spatial Psychogeography

  • Park and Burgess, The City, chapter 1 (“The City”)
  • Jacobs, “Looking at Cities”
  • Lynch, The Image of the City, chapters 1 (“The
    Image of the Environment” and 2 (“Three Cities”)
  • Clay, Close-Up (selections)
  • Wood, “Lynch Debord”
3. 18th- and 19th-Century London and Paris: Literary Ur-Psychogeography

  • Defoe, Journal of the Plague Year
  • Blake, “London_”_
  • Poe, “The Man of the Crowd”
  • Baudelaire, “The Parisian Prowler”
4. Weimar Wandering in Berlin and Paris, 1920–1940: Philosopho-Critical Psychogeography [Special Guest: Howard Eiland]

  • Hessel, Walking in Berlin, “The Suspect,” “I Learn a Thing or Two,” “A Bit of Work,” and “A Tour”
  • Benjamin, The Arcades Project, “Paris, the Capital of the Nineteenth Century” and “Convolutes M: The Flâneur”
  • Eiland, “Reality as Palimpsest”
  • Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, chapter VII, “Walking in the City”
  • Ruttmann, Berlin [film]

Optional:

  • Benjamin, One-Way Street
  • Woolf, Street Haunting
5. Smells, Sounds, Sickness, and Sensing the City: Hidden Patterns of Data-Driven Psychogeography

  • Tufte, Visual Explanations, chapter 2 (“The Cholera Epidemic in London, 1854”)
  • McHarg, Design with Nature (selections)
  • Wurman, Making the City Observable
  • Whyte, City (selections)
  • Westerkamp, “Soundwalking”
  • Ruttmann, Weekend (Wochenende) [film]
6. Flights of Fancy: Journeys in Imaginato-Occult Psychogeography

  • Coleridge, “Kubla Khan”
  • Shelley, “Ozymandias”
  • Sinclair, Lud Heat
  • Calvino, Invisible Cities
  • Sís, The Three Golden Keys
7. Madness and Altered States: Insanito-Psychedelic Psychogeography

  • Ginsberg, Howl and Other Poems
  • Ferlinghetti, “Bickford’s Buddha”
  • Wallace, Infinite Jest, pp. 128–135.

One of the following:

  • De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater
  • Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
8. Language, Ethnicity, and Race: Subaltern Psychogeographies

  • Du Bois, The Philadelphia Negro (selections)
  • García Lorca, Poet in New York
  • Cadogan, “Walking while Black”

Optional:

  • Sayles, The Brother from Another Planet [film]
9. Gender: Feminist Psychogeography

  • Solnit, Wanderlust, chapter 14 (“Walking after Midnight: Women, Sex, and Public Space”)
  • Elkin, Flâneuse, pp. 3–93.
  • Varda, Cléo de 5 à 7 (Cléo from 5 to 7) [film]
10. Undergrounds and Underworlds: Cops and Robbers; Detectives and Voyeurs; Explorers and Stalkers; Pushers and Pickpockets; Hackneys, Hobos, Hustlers, and Hookers; Perversive-Subversive Psychogeography

  • Park and Burgess, The City, chapter 9 (“The Mind of the Hobo”)
  • Delany, Times Square Red, Times Square Blue
  • Manaugh, A Burglar’s Guide to the City,
    chapter 3 (“Your Building Is the Target”)

Skim/Browse:

  • Weegee, Naked City
  • David Macaulay, Underground
11. Jaywalking, Détournement, Hacking, Squatting, Occupying: Trespassive Psychogeography

  • Debord and Wolman, “A User’s Guide to Détournement
  • Wark, “Zuccotti Park”
  • Garrett, Explore Everything

Skim/Browse:

  • Piranesi, The Prisons / Le Carceri
  • Banksy, Wall and Piece

Optional:

  • Banksy, Exit through the Gift Shop [film]
12. Branches, Twigs, Sprouts, Leaves, Debris: 1975–present

  • Perec, An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris
  • Sebald, Rings of Saturn, chapters V and
    VII
  • Sinclair, Lights Out for the Territory, chapter 1
    (“Skating on Thin Eyes: The First Walk”)
  • Wenders, Wings of Desire (Der Himmel über Berlin) [film]
  • Keiller, London [film]

Optional:

  • Williams, Paterson
13. New Directions: Student Projects

[No readings assigned]

14. Last Class, Wrap-Up, Next Steps

[No readings assigned]

Course Info

Instructor
As Taught In
Fall 2020
Level
Learning Resource Types
Written Assignments with Examples
Projects with Examples
Instructor Insights