Required Texts
[A] Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozie. Americanah. Knopf, 2014. ISBN: 9780307455925.
[OC] Cole, Teju. Open City. Random House, 2012. ISBN: 9780812980097.
[10:04] Lerner, Ben. 10:04. Picador, 2015. ISBN: 9781250081339.
[S] McEwan, Ian. Saturday. Anchor, 2006. ISBN: 9780007218295.
[C] Chaudhuri, Amit. Calcutta. Knopf, 2013. ISBN: 9780307270245.
| Ses # | Readings |
|---|---|
| 1 | No assigned readings |
| 2 | Woolf, Virginia. “Street Haunting.” Chapter 5 in The Death of the Moth. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974. ISBN: 9780156252348. |
| 3 |
Baudelaire, Charles. The Painter of Modern Life. Penguin UK, 2010. ISBN:9780141192763. Elkin, Lauren. Flâneuse: Women Walk the City. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2017. ISBN: 9780374156046. Livingstone, Joseph and Lovia Gyarkye. “Death to the Flâneur.” The New Republic, March 27, 2017. Stephen, Bijan. “In Praise of the Flâneur.” The Paris Review, October 17, 2013. |
| 4 | [OC] pp. 1–76. |
| 5 |
[OC] pp. 76–177. de Certeau, Michel. “Walking in the City.” In The Practice of Everyday Life. University of California Press, 2011. ISBN: 9780520271456. |
| 6 |
[OC] pp. 178–260. Cadogan, Garnette. “Walking While Black.” Lithub, July 8, 2016. |
| 7 | [S] pp. 1–70. |
| 8 |
[S] pp. 70–178. James, Caryn. “The Intertwining Legacy of Terror Attacks and Fiction.” New York Times, August 3, 2005. |
| 9 | [S] pp. 178–242. |
| 10 | [S] pp. 242–289. |
| 11 | No assigned readings |
| 12 |
Thien, Madeline. “A Map of the City.” In Simple Recipes: Stories. Little, Brown, 2002. pp. 161–227. ISBN: 9780316833165. Hussey, Andrew. “The Map is Not the Territory.” In Urban Visions: Experiencing and Envisioning the City. Liverpool University Press, 2002. ISBN: 9780853236641. [Preview with Google Books] [Optional] Handal, Nathalie. “The City and the Writer: In Phnom Penh with Madeline Thein.” Words Without Borders, Nov 28, 2016. |
| 13 | No assigned readings, but you can get ahead on reading Americanah. |
| 14 | [A] pp. 1–195. |
| 15 |
Preview Senseable City Lab website and brainstorm questions and comments on how fiction writers tell stories about cities. Keep up with [A] for next class (suggested pacing: 195–316). |
| 16 | [A] pp. 482–588. |
| 17 |
[C] pp. 3–21. Rushdie, Salman. “Imaginary Homelands.” In Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticsm 1981–1991. Penguin Books, 1992. pp. 428–434. ISBN: 9780140140361. |
| 18 |
[C] pp. 3–21.
Choose one option:
|
| 19 | Listen to a short podcast episode from the list below for class discussion. |
| 20 |
[10:04] pp. 1–95. Homans, John. “The City and the Storm.” New York Magazine, November 4, 2012. |
| 21 |
[10:04] pp. 95–159. Dawson, Ashley. Extreme Cities. Verso, 2017. ISBN: 9781784780364. |
| 22 | [10:04] pp. 159–240. |
| 23 |
Price, Jenny. “Thirteen Ways of Seeing Nature in L.A.” Believer, no. 33 (2006). Spirn, Anne Whiston. “City and Nature.” In The Granite Garden: Urban Nature and Human Design. pp. 3–20. ISBN: 9780465027064. |
| 24 | No assigned readings. |
| 25 | Listen to a podcast episode from the list below for class discussion. |
Supplementary Articles & Readings
- AtlanticLIVE. “Identity and Belonging: The Souls of a City / CityLab Paris.” 26 October 2017. YouTube.
- Huizeruga, Kevin. “New York Stories.” New York Times.
- Allen, Paddy and Luke Hoyland. “The Best City Blogs Around the World.” The Guardian. 7 April 2014.
- Chaudhuri, Amit. “The Moment of the Houses.” The Paris Review. 23 January 2018.
- Dwyer, Dialynn. “Take a Tour of 18 Hidden Literary Landmarks in Cambridge.” Boston.com. 13 August 2017.
- Cook, Greg. “The 50 Best Works of Public Art in Greater Boston, Ranked.” wbur. 29 August 2016.
- Whitman, Walt. “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.” Poetry Foundation.
- Stevens, Wallace. “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.” Poetry Foundation.
- “New York City: City Stories.” The New Yorker.
- CityLab Homepage.
- “The Story of Cities.” The Guardian.
- Glissant, Edouard. “For Opacity.” In Poetics of Relation. University of Michigan Press, 1997. pp. 189–194. ISBN: 9780472066292.
- Williams, Raymond. The Country and the City. Oxford University Press, 1975. pp. 1–8. ISBN: 9780195198102.
Podcasts
- Turk, Andrew. “Sound and City.” The Urbanist. Podcast, 15 February 2018.
- “Urban Planning Conversation with Brent Toderian.” ITE Talks Transportation. Podcast, 27 September 2016.
- Vedantam, Shankar, Kara McGuirk-Alison, et al. “Traffic.” The Hidden Brain. Podcast, 3 May 2016.
- Turk, Andrew. “Tall Stories 81: San Francisco’s Fog.” The Urbanist. Podcast, 6 November 2017.
- Greenspan, Sam. “The Arsenal of Exclusion.” 99% Invisible. Podcast, 4 April 2012.
- Kohlstedt, Kurt. “Unpleasant Design in Disguise: Bike Racks & Boulders as Defensive Urbanism.” 99% Invisible. Podcast, 5 February 2018.
- 99% Invisible Homepage.
- The Urbanist Homepage.
