City Streets/Paris/New York: Reading, Walking Seeing, Writing

Catalog description

Scholars across disciplines are deeply engaged in the study of everyday culture and experience; similarly, literary, performance, and visual artists are investigating everyday life as sources for their work, challenging the terms through which we understand both art forms and everyday life itself. In this course, students will explore a particular aspect of the everyday: the experience of space and place, centered on the vibrant street life of two cities fabled for the continuing allure of their walkers, especially Paris’s poetic roving flâneur—“stroller” doesn’t do the term justice—celebrated since the 19th century. While we can’t go to Paris together, we can walk (literally and figuratively) through the streets of New York, guided by the writing and ideas of others who have looked carefully at the streets themselves, at the movement of people animating them, and at their own experiences as participant/observers. Readings may include works by Walter Benjamin, Rebecca Solnit, Michel de Certeau, Yi-Fu Tuan, Georges Perec, Raymond Queneau, Patrick Modiano, Lauren Elkin, Henry James, and Teju Cole. These scholars and walkers representing multiple disciplines (e.g., philosophy, cultural theory, humanist geography, photography, experimental literature), styles, and practices address urban ambulation through description, reflection, and a range of sociopolitical perspectives on race, class, gender (including the relative dearth of women identified with city walking), and walking itself.