Imagined Cities

(4 Credits)

This course examines the ways in which artists, filmmakers, and/or writers have responded to the social complexity of urban life and the difficult task of finding points of connection within the diversity of the city. How is the order and the disorder of urban space represented in their work? What intellectual frameworks do they call upon to find meaning in unfamiliar settings? How do these assumptions shape what is seen and unseen within the city? And most importantly, what do these city texts reveal about the potential for building new forms of belonging and community within the urban environment?