Transfer Student Research Seminar: New York City's Public Spheres

Catalog description

Where, in the city, are demands for justice made? This course surveys a history of public spheres in New York City—of contested spaces where critical matters are discussed and addressed. Sometimes these spaces are parks, as with the history of Labor protests in Union Square; other times these spaces are virtual, as with the recent “Sh*tty Men in Media” list that helped launch the #MeToo movement. In all cases, from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe to the community centers that hosted the first hip-hop concerts, the demand for recognition or justice—and the debates surrounding these demands—require claiming, reclaiming, or inventing sites where debates can take place and demands can be made. Focusing on the 20th and 21st century, we will consider the history of constant struggle for control by commercial, political, governmental, and activist forces that define the city’s public spheres, and we will consider the aesthetic works produced in and around these sites, from the literary experiments of the Harlem Renaissance to the Rimbaud photographs of David Wojnarowicz. These works will be read as extensions or elaborations of the public sphere—calls for justice and recognition through inventive approaches to fiction, film, music, art, and architecture. The course will consider the evolving meaning of the public sphere as we survey an intellectual and cultural history of spaces and works where claims for justice or recognition have been—or are being—made.