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This seminar will engage with key theoretical issues as well as with a broad range of representations of the city. The first part of the course will deal with key theoretical issues in the study of urban representations (functions of urban imaginaries, the role of imaginaries in the perception of cities, approaches in urban literary and cultural studies, problems of representation, questions of mediality). In the second part of the semester, we will discuss both literary representations and representations in other media; depending on the interests of participants, texts might include poetry and prose by Swift, Gay and Pope in the 18th century, Wordsworth, Hazlitt, Shelley and other Romantics, Matthew Arnold, Charles Dickens and other Victorian writers, classic 20th-century texts such as Joyce’s Uysses, Eliot’s Waste Land, Dos Passos’ Manhattan Transfer as well as recent experimental fiction, but also other media and genres (graphic novels, film, multimedia, computer games, image films, planning documents, maps etc. ...). The selection of texts can be agreed upon in the course. A reader with a first selection of texts will be available in the copyshop in Reckhammerweg from early February onwards. Participants are to read all texts marked (x) in the reader for the first session. |
