This course will explore the imagined and conflicted experience of urban life in the United States through study of the country’s first metropolis: New York. Drawing on primary materials—maps, memoirs, film, poetry, fiction, census data, the natural and the built environment—and a selection of secondary sources, we will encounter moments in the life of the city from the 17th into the 21st century. This semester there will be special focus on the physical city: parks and amusement parks, cemeteries, bridges, housing, skyscrapers, and the public art of memorials.
Limited to 20 students. Spring semester. Professors Clark and Sánchez-Eppler.
If Overenrolled: Preference to American Studies majors; .sophomores; first-years