Chicago As an Urban History Lab

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

As a global pandemic drives ever more business interactions into the virtual realm and companies forgo office space in favor of dispersed work-from-home operations, American capitalism seems to be assuming a new sense of placelessness. Yet capitalist development has historically relied on its rootedness in space and place - from the mills of New England, to the plantations of the South, to the factories of the Rust Belt. Perhaps no spaces or places have been more formative to the culture, contours, and trajectory of American capitalism than American cities. Home to the first marketplaces, the largest labor pools, the newest technologies, the most influential exchanges, and the greatest accumulations of wealth, cities have played an indispensable role in upholding and, at times, constraining capitalist development. In this course, we will probe the historical relationship between capitalism and urban centers in the United States, reaching from the Early Republic through the late twentieth century. We will consider how cities promoted the growth and evolution of American capitalism, as well as how capitalism promoted the growth and distinctive identities of different American cities. We will examine cities as sites of contestation over various forms of capitalism. Likewise, we will explore how these capitalisms shaped urban society, culture, politics, and the built environment. Throughout the course, we will pay particular attention to urban inequality, notably the ways that capitalism created or advanced divisions of class, race, gender, and sexuality.