AM ST 402W: 001 Themes and Ideas: “Spectacle in the City”

Spring 2004

TR 1:00 p.m.- 2:15 p.m.

308 Boucke

Dr. Jonathan P. Eburne Office Hours:

Dept. of English and American Studies Tues. 11:30-12:30 at MacKinnon’s

Email: jpe11@psu.edu Wed. 10:00-12:00 at Saint’s café

and by appointment

Course Home Page: available through ANGEL http://cms.psu.edu/

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“Spectacle in the City”

This course will study writers, filmmakers, and urbanists of the 19^th and 20th centuries who focus on the city as a way of coming to grips with the basic problems of life in the modern world. From the early 19th century onwards, the metropolitan centers of Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles have served as both laboratories and metaphors for the study of basic questions about human relationships and differences. The high density and heavy traffic of modern cities have afforded the means to explore new living arrangements, new freedoms, and even new identities. At the same time, however, the same forces of urbanization have also produced new forms of crime, new heights of poverty and discontent, and have exacerbated the pressures of consumer capitalism. This course will study the role of urban spectacle and urban space in the development of 19^th- and 20th-century forms of consciousness and expression, from modernism to “post-modernism.” In particular, we will focus on city’s role in the production and consumption of images and fantasies, and their ability to articulate changing ideas about gender, race, and social organization in the last century.

Required Texts:

1. George Lippard, The Quaker City

2. Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives

3. Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

4. Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York

5. Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull House

6. Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

7. Weegee, The Naked City

8. Horatio Alger, Ragged Dick

A coursepack will be available at Big Blue (University Bookstore, Campus Drive).

Coursepack Readings are also on Online Reserve, accessible from the library home page: www.lias.psu.edu

Syllabus and Additional course materials are accessible through ANGEL http://cms.psu.edu/