First-Year Research Seminar: Bohemian New York: Aesthetic Practice & Urban Communities,…

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Bohemianism as a concept had its origins in early-nineteenth century Paris as an identifiable urban space with yet invisible boundaries: a way of life conducive to aesthetic experimentation and a critique of capitalist modernity that, in theory, lies outside the parameters of class and social convention. In more lyrical terms, Djuna Barnes, a pioneering feminist author, described her bohemian community in Greenwich Village as men and women with a new light flickering in their eyes, on their foreheads the radiance of some unseen splendor. Barnes evoked, in spiritual terms, the aesthetic vocation that drew her and her compatriots to the Village then and that has continued to draw young people to bohemian enclaves in New York ever since, whether aspiring to creative pursuits, experimental lives, or refuge from repressive environments at home. Taking the torch from Paris, New York became the leading bohemian metropolis of the twentieth century, and this way of life has defined creative possibilities and countercultures here down to the present day. This course will explore the history of bohemian life in New York, whether in the Village, Harlem, the Lower East Side, or Brooklyn. Grounding our inquiry in the role that aesthetics plays in modernity via the writings of Kant, Schiller, Baudelaire, and Nietzsche, the class will reconstruct some of the most fruitful bohemian scenes of the last century, analyzing creative production in the context of intentional communities. Course texts will draw on cultural history, memoir, fiction, and poetry as well as film, visual art, and music by: Barnes, Langston Hughes, Joseph Mitchell, Frank O?Hara, James Baldwin, the Velvet Underground, Audré Lorde, the Nuyorican Poets, Patti Smith, David Wojnarowicz, MF Doom, and others. Students will also conduct original research and fieldwork in local archives and neighborhoods seeking to…