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(Re)mapping the City in Modern Literature and Visual Cultures

Vak
2016-2017

Admission requirements

A relevant BA degree. If in doubt, please consult the Coordinator of Studies: Jurjen Donkers.
Students from all tracks of Literary Studies, including the ReMA, or other relevant MA’s are welcome to enroll.

Description

This course focuses on the modern city as a physical, spatial phenomenon but also as a cultural, mental artifact, shaped by imagination. Ever since the 19th century, when European cities began to grow, artistic representation has helped shape the images of cities we hold in our minds. The course follows the evolution of the metropolis from the 19th and early 20th century centralized capitals of increasing high density, complex social make-up, congestion and pulsating cultural hubs – London, Paris or Berlin – towards the contemporary megalopolis: huge, sprawling cities developing mainly in the global South. Mobility will be a keyword in this course: how do we – as city users and strollers – bodily experience and map urban space? How do we move and invent our daily urban life within it? Can we see contemporary cities as mobile spaces, constantly growing, shifting and expanding through migration?
These and other issues will be at the heart of this course, in which we will study a variety of literary texts, films and street art taken from European – mainly French – culture on the one hand and from Latin American culture on the other, as we explore the city as a site of cultural production, contestation and regeneration in intercultural, transatlantic, perspective. Thus, for example, reflections on the urban self might take us from Baudelaire’s flaneur and Poe’s ‘man of the crowd’ to contemporary figurations of this urban wanderer in Brazilian cinema, or renditions of the kaleidoscopic megalopolis in South American cinema and 21st century French novel.

Course objectives

  • Knowledge and insight into keyworks of modern and contemporary urban literature and –cinema in their historical and cultural context;

  • Knowledge of current theoretical texts and debates about the metropolis and of some important critical texts about urban literature and cinema;

  • Ability to analyze a relevant subject of one’s choice and to present one’s findings in an oral presentation and a final paper;
    -* Ability to share analytical and theoretical views during class discussion.

Timetable

Timetable

Mode of instruction

Seminar

Course Load

10 EC = 280 hours:

  • weekly two-hour seminar (2×13 hours): 26 hours

  • weekly reading assignments (8×13 hours) and oral presentation: 104 hours

  • mid-term assignment and preparation: 50 hours

  • final paper: 100 hours.

Assessment method

  • midterm assignment (approx. 2000 words): 30% of final mark

  • oral presentation: 20 %

  • final paper (approx. 5000 words): 50%

The average of the three components should be sufficient.

Resit: only for the final paper.

Blackboard

Blackboard Will be used for practical information and the providing of documents.

Reading list

  • Azouz Begag, Le gône du Chaaba, Points Seuil, 2005 (or the English translation) Shantytown Kid, University of Nebraska Press, 2007

  • Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (University of Minnesota Press, 1998)

  • Tim Cresswell, Place: a Short Introduction (Wiley, 2014)

  • GUST N.V., The Urban Condition: Space, Community and the Self in the Contemporary Metropolis (Rotterdam, Uitgeverij 010, 1999, freely available through the internet)

  • Georges Perec, Species of Spaces and Other Pieces (Penguin Classics, 2008)

  • Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Running Away (Champaign, Dalkey Archive Press, 2009)

  • More literature will be provided by July 1st.

Registration

Students need to register in uSis for classes, exams and final papers.

Registration Studeren à la carte and Contractonderwijs

Registration Studeren à la carte
Registration Contractonderwijs

Contact

For questions about the content of the course, you can contact the coordinator: dr. A. Schulte Nordholt

Administrations Office: Van Wijkplaats: e-mail.
Coordinator of Studies: Jurjen Donkers

Remarks

N.A.