The City and the Writer: New York City and Abu Dhabi

Catalog description

New York City and Abu Dhabi is a laboratory for studying NYC and AD, works written about them, as well as creating new works inspired by them. New works - poems, short stories, short plays, visual essays, or films - that will serve as a map for possible journeys as they reinvent and talk back to debates on immigration and space, culture and literature. A cross-disciplinary and cross-border conversation that examines how urban life and the cityscape create imaginative spaces, and the way words create cities. NYC & AD as global spaces will be explored in the works of writers with backgrounds from Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, and the Caribbean. How does the city shape the form of writing and language? How has literature challenged certain theories on space, and narratives constructed around urban identities? Students get the unique opportunity to meet numerous residents, from theater makers, designers, architects, artists, filmmakers, feminists, actors, comedians, chefs and bodega owners as well as be part of a podcast series and/or publish in one of the most important international literary magazines, Words Without Borders.