Cities of the Global South

With the most significant wave of population growth and urbanization sweeping across Asia, Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, the ‘Global South’ is taking center stage in academic discourses. This course examines numerous cities across these regions, along multiple thematic axes, to provide an understanding of the social, political, cultural, economic forces shaping its dwellers’ fates – from a historical perspective: whose history is being recorded, and by whom? what do historians mean by “history of the city”? just what is the ‘Southern’ city? how do we bring alive the heterogeneity of these cities embedded in different historical trajectories? how can we convey these cities as places of both challenge and great promise? Utilizing a diverse archive of academic texts, fiction, documentaries, and maps this course explores cities as varied as Lahore, Delhi, Tehran, Cairo, Mexico City, Havana, Bogota, Kinshasa, and Nairobi.