The City as a Way of Life: Urban Modernity

Catalog description

Examining novels, films, essays, and television from 1940 to the present, we address a number of questions thrown up by urban life in the later twentieth century. How, for instance, did the bombed cityscape of World War II provide planners with the dream of a future city, and how did immigration from former colonies transform urban life? How did the reconstruction of the European city institute seductive new forms of commodity culture? In what ways does the city serve to delineate social class? How do new sexual identities bring forth new forms of urban life, and how are these threatened by the rationalizing impulses of city planning? How might we investigate the ways in which the city subjugates women?