Prof. Anne-Maria B. Makhulu
As the world increasingly urbanizes the kinds of urban centers we live in have changed dramatically too—in form and even in their very reason for being. People once moved to cities in search of work and other opportunities, but in the early 21st century urbanization is most often associated with informal occupations and precarious modes of life in, what Mike Davis has referred to as, “slums”…
Prof. Victoria Szabo
This interdisciplinary course combines theoretical and practical approaches to digital places and spaces as an emerging new media form, with a special focus on digital cities as sites of contemporary and historical representation and influence. It is a “hybrid” course in the sense that it combines a discussion seminar with lab-based exercises…
A City of Two Continents: Istanbul
Prof. Erdağ Göknar
Istanbul is the only city in the world located in Europe and Asia. In 1923, after sixteen centuries, it lost its status as an imperial capital city (of Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman empires) and fell into disregard in an era of secular nationalism. Nevertheless, from ancient to modern, Istanbul’s cultural legacies have allowed the city to be read as a “palimpsest”…
Profs. Gennifer Weisenfeld & Sumathi Ramaswamy
How has the art and technology of photography changed the very manner in which we study and understand past historical events? This is the principal question posed by this new seminar, co-taught by an art historian and a historian, with a focus on three important Asian contexts: China, India, and Japan…
Cities and Trees/People, Plants, and Pollution/Constructed Climates
Prof. Will Wilson
With most Americans living in cities or suburbia, an understanding of urban environments becomes more important for making good decisions concerning our future needs. My service on a few of Durham’s city and county commissions led to the realization that I needed more information to make a more compelling argument for greater public spending on trees and urban nature…
Prof. Beth Holmgren
Through history, fiction, memoir, film, videos, and photos, we’ll explore the fascinating multi-layered histories and identities of four important cities on the Eurasian continuum–Prague, Warsaw, Sarajevo, and Istanbul. We’ll consider how these urban spaces evolved through patterns of migration and trade routes, how they reflect and combine the physical, political, and socio-cultural imprints of overlapping occupiers and invaders, and how hometown writers and filmmakers represent their history, atmosphere, and inhabitants…
Visualizing Japan (1850s-1930s): Westernization, Protest, Modernity (MOOC)
This co-taught course looks at Japanese history and the skills and questions involved in reading history through images now accessible in digital formats. The course is based on the MIT “Visualizing Cultures” website devoted to image-driven research on Japan and China since the 19th century…
Visualizing Postwar Tokyo, Part 1 & Part 2 (MOOC)
Prof. Shunya Yoshimi
The history of postwar Tokyo reveals an essential feature of the modern city, i.e., the city as a place of visualities. In postwar Tokyo, countless gazes fell upon others; gazes from and upon Americans and the Emperor, gazes going up skyscrapers or rushing aggressively through the cityscape, and gazes twining and wriggling among classes, genders, and ethnic groups in downtown Tokyo…
Postwar Europe, 1945-1968: Politics, Society and Culture
Prof. Malachi Hacohen
The postwar years 1945-1968 constituted a distinct period in European history, a time when a divided Europe had lost its global hegemony and retreated from its colonial possessions, and two military alliances, controlled by the USA and Soviet Union, dominated much of its foreign politics. It was also, however, a period when unprecedented economic growth created, in Western Europe, an affluent consumer society…
Millennial Capitalisms: New Urban Forms: East Asia and Global Perspectives
Prof. Ralph Litzinger
This course is an introduction and overview of the cultural politics of urban transformation in the People’s Republic of China. China is today one of the economic powers in the world, an expanding presence in the East Asian context, and a major player in the investment and development scene in much of the former “Third World,” from Latin America, to Southeast Asia and Africa…
Instructors: Emily Feng & Yueran Zhang
Faculty Sponsor: Ralph Litzinger
Over the last two decades the People’s Republic of China has gone through what might be the most magnificent and dramatic urbanization process human history has ever witnessed. In 2012, 712 million, or 52.6% of China’s total population, resided in cities; in 1990, that number was a mere 26.4%. Urbanization of this scale and pace will define China’s future and have profound implications for the rest of the world, as another 200 million people are projected to move from China’s rural countryside into cities in the next fifteen years…
