CAPITALS: How Cities Shape Cultures, States, and People

Catalog description

This course takes students on a trip to major capital cities at different moments in time, including Renaissance Florence, Golden Age Madrid, colonial Mexico City, imperial Beijing, Enlightenment and romantic Paris, existential and revolutionary St. Petersburg, roaring Berlin, modernist Vienna, and transnational Dakar. While exploring each place in a particular historical moment, we will also consider the relations between culture, power, and social life. How does the cultural life of a country intersect with the political activity of a capital? How do large cities shape our everyday experience, our aesthetic preferences, and our sense of history? Why do some cities become cultural capitals? Primary materials for this course will consist of literary, visual, sociological, and historical documents (in translation). No prerequisites. Attendance to lecture required.