Syllabus

MLS 404 The City
Monday 5:45-8:45 PM Robert Rotenberg
Office Hours: SAC 563 341-6743
Monday 5:00-5:30 PM Introduction

  • The City is the fourth course in DePaul University's Master of Arts in Liberal Studies Program. It is designed to be a graduate-level seminar contributing to the student's sense of place. As the final course in the core sequence, the seminar affords the student the opportunity to develop graduate-level library research skills and paper writing techniques.TextbooksThe following texts are available for purchase in the Lincoln Park Bookstore:N. Fustel de Coulanges The Ancient City. Garden CIty:Doubleday. 1961C. Schorske Fin de Siècle Vienna. New York:Vantage 1982J. Jacobs Death and Life of the Great American Cities. New York:Vintage 1961R. Fishman Urban Utopias of the 20th Century. Cambridge: MIT Press. 1982R. Venturi et al Learning from Las Vegas. Cambridge: MIT Press 1972In addition, there will be a $5.00 fee for those who wish to have photocopies of assigned articles and selections from longer works. These will also be available free at the reserve desk of the LPC library.Vitruvius On Architecture. (Putnam trans.) New York: Putnam. 1931Ibn Khaldûn Mugaddimah. (Rosenthal trans.) Bollingen Series. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press. 1967 Augustine of Hippo City of God. (Greene trans.) New York: Everyman. 1960J.J. Rousseau Politics and the Arts (Letter to M. d'Alembert on the Theater). Glencoe:Free Press. 1960G. Simmel The Metropolis and Mental Life. (Gerth and Mills trans.) In K. Wolff, ed., The Sociology of George Simmel. Glencoe: The Free Press. 1951E. Yeo and E.P. Thompson The Unknown Mayhew (The Morning Chronicle Letters). New York: Pantheon. 1971COURSE DESCRIPTION Cities may be the inevitable consequence of increasing social complexity in agricultural societies, but there is nothing inevitable about the idea of the Urban as a distinct human experience. It is a cultural category that over time has been subject to quite different understandings. This course is concerned with the development of this idea in Western cultural traditions. These traditions are demonstrably distinct, yet each shares with the others a Greco-Roman urban heritage, a Judeo-Christian-Muslim literary tradition, and joint participation in the five hundred year old capitalist world system. Because of this shared tradition, the idea of the Urban in Europe and the Americas can be followed through the literatures of many academic disciplines. This course strives for just such an interdisciplinary integration.While many different themes have captured the attentions of philosophers, social scientists, architects and planners, we will focus on three themes that reoccur often and seem to resist easy interpretation. The first, which we will refer to as the anti-city trope, poses the question of how the quality of urban life compares to rural life. It is anti-urban because, as will soon become clear, these authors stack the evidence against the city.The second theme, which we will call the utopian trope, proposes a very different perspective. Without really commenting directly on contemporary urban life, writers of the utopian trope suggest that the Urban holds the key to a future society free from conflict and injustice. The implication is that these qualities can be present in nascent form in contemporary cities, but are masked by the moral degradation which the utopian writers want to uproot. Finally there is the theme of modernism. This trope is associated with the urban literature of the last hundred years, or so, but it echos the two older themes. It suggests that utopian visions are actually possible through rational planning and attention to form. The advent of industrial materials and a managerial elite makes all this possible. The modern city becomes the vanguard of civilization and the beacon of progress in a wilderness of social conservatism (anti-modernism) and provincial fear. The city remains potentially a moral cesspool, but this tendency is held in check by collective self-denial and rational management.Although each theme has generated a literature that is quite distinct in form, the subject is always the same--the boundaries of the moral community and it potential in an urban setting. In our discussion of the assigned readings and your research report, we will discuss this complex tradition of urban thought and how it leads us to judgement through a sense of place.COURSE OBJECTIVES 1) To examine how urban life has been evaluated at different times in the development of Western civilization.

    2) To explore corrective visions of urban life in utopian and dystopian literature.

    3) To define the nature of urban modernity

    4) To develop graduate level research and writing skills.
    COURSE EVALUATION Students will be evaluated on the basis of their participation in the discussions of the seminar and on their research assignments. The details of the term paper are discussed in a section following the seminar schedule. Class discussions include: being prepared for the discussion by having read the assigned readings and having written down a set of points, reactions, or questions you wish to contribute to the discussion; offering your points, reactions or questions to the group; and showing a willingness to share ideas on issues raised by other people. Seminar participation also includes regular attendance. When determining your final grade, I will use the following guidelines:Annotated Research Bibliography 20%
    Description of Rhetorical Strategy 20%
    Research Paper 20%
    Seminar Participation/Discussion 40%
    Seminar ScheduleThere will be ten meetings of this seminar. The schedule below lists the topics for discussion at each meeting, the assigned readings, and the deadlines for the three research assignments.January 5 In our introductory meeting, the organization of the seminar will be discussed. A short overview of the evolution of urban society will be presented. But the majority of the time will be spent discussing the research assignments.January 12 This meeting begins a two week discussion of the anti-city theme. This week we will discuss the mythic and sacred qualities present at the foundation of the urban experience.
    Please read: Vitruvius (selections) and the following sections of Fustel de Coulanges: Book 1 (all), book 3 (sections 1,4, 7, 12, 13), book 4 (sections 1-2, 4, 6 to page 261, and 7 to p. 278). Of course, you should read the entire the book.January 19 This week we will explore what went wrong with the sacred conception of the urban experience.
    Please read: Fustel de Coulanges book 4 (sections 9,10,12) and book 5 (sections 1,2,3), Augustine of Hippo (selections), and Ibn Khaldûn (selections)January 26 Efforts to realize Augustine's City of God persisted through the Middle Ages and formed the basis of utopian trope in urban writings. Mumford provides an overview of these efforts, while J.J. Rousseau gives us a contemporary perspective on the emergence of an Enlightenment version of the city.
    Please read: J.J. Rousseau (selections) The Annotated Bibliography is due in class today.February 2 On the other side of this growth in the cultural importance of the urban was decay brought on by the Industrial Revolution. Mayhew, a journalist, gives us the contemporary perspective.
    Please read: Mayhew (selections)February 9 Among the earliest expressions of the emergence of the modern city was the razing of the old city walls. Carl Schorske introduces us to arguments among the planners and architects about the practical, symbolic, and social implications of how the newly wall-less cities should grow. Ebeneza Howard takes quite a different view.
    Please read: Schorske (chapter 2), and Fishman (Part 1, chapters 1-8). The Description of Rhetorical Strategy is due today.February 16 Fishman introduces us to two of this century's most influential architects, Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier. Yet the ideas of the urban that inspired them go all the way back to Vitruvius and the ancient city.
    Please read: Fishman (Parts 2 and 3, all chapters)February 23 The Modern city is a psychological as well as an architectonic construction, as Simmel brings out quite explicitly. To illustrate the image of the urban that inspired Simmel's essay, we will view the 1922 silent film about Berlin, Symphony of a City.
    Please read: Simmel If you would like me to read a first draft of your research paper, you must give it to me today.March 2 The Modern city is created by forces both internal and external. Jane Jacobs is one of the most read, and most loved, of the pro-city urban modernists. In this book, she not only gives us a short history of the U.S. cities in the 20th century, but an insight into how modern cities succeed and fail.
    Please read: Jacobs (all)March 9 The Modern city is a symbolic statement as well as a functional one. Robert Venturi is an architect with an uncanny eye for the semi-conscious messages our buildings and streets send us. After this book, you may never look at a city the same way again.
    Please read: Venturi et al. (all) Final drafts of research papers are due today. 
    • Research Assignments
  • There are three separate research assignments in this seminar. They are intended to refresh your research and writing skills, and to prepare you for your culminating project. The topic must be related in some fashion to the topic area of the course; the urban experience. Within that framework, you can research anything that interests you. I suggest you discuss your topic with me in advance to help you delimit it to a length that can be reasonably researched within a five week time frame. The assignments must be typed on white paper, double spaced with 1 ½ inch margins on the top and left, and one inch margins on the right and bottom. Pages will be numbered and your name must appear on every page (top right-hand corner). Cover sheets, fancy paper or plastic covers, and other add-ons are unnecessary. Please don't use them. Just staple the pages together.
  • The first assignment is an annotated bibliography. For this assignment, you must first identify a topic area you wish to research. The description of this topic area is the first paragraph of the bibliography. Then, using library search skills we will review in class, you collect and read a number of books, journal articles and other appropriate media. While reading you write summaries of the ideas and argument which are important to your topic. These summaries form the basis of the "annotations" that you write for each book or article you read. The purpose of the annotations is to tell me how each book or article fits into you topic. Each annotation should include: the scope of the piece (i.e. what it includes), the point of view of the piece, and any specific information (data, charts, figures, maps, review of the literature, bibliography, etc.) which makes the piece particularly useful. The finished annotated bibliography includes all the reference information (author(s), title, (journal title, volume and page numbers, if appropriate), place of publication, publisher, and date of publication) and the annotations for each entry. The annotations can be as short as a few sentences or as long as a few paragraphs depending on the relation of the entry to the topic. You will continue to read and summarize more books and articles after you turn in the annotated bibliography, but you should not change topics. The annotated bibliography is due on January 26.
  • The second assignment is the description of rhetorical strategy. It is sometimes called a thesis statement. After having surveyed the literature and discovered the different points of view on a topic, you are now in a position to develop an argument for one specific point of view which you feel you can confidently endorse. This point of view on the topic is called the thesis. The assignment is to write a short, one to two page statement in which you describe the topic (again), put forward your point of view, discuss briefly how this point of view does or does not coincide with the literature you have read, and finally, describe how you intend to go about supporting your point of view with evidence. It is not necessary to actually prove your point now; all that is necessary is that you explain how you intend to prove it. That means, describing what evidence or arguments you have discovered, other sources of information you intend to explore, and rhetorical tropes (we will discuss what this is) you intend to use. The description of rhetorical strategy is due two weeks after the annotated bibliography on February 9th. After I have read and commented on your description, you may want to do some more research.
  • The research paper is the third assignment. Quite simply, in this assignment, you do what you say you are going to do in the description of rhetorical strategy (taking my suggestions into account). As you write, you should pay attention to the overall organization and parallelism of the argument, the reference style, paragraph structure, issues of cause and effect (both immediate and latent), appropriate word choice, distinctions between major and minor points, and tone. The paper should reflect a substantial five week research effort. Its length should be in the 8 to 12 page range. It is to your advantage to give me a draft of your paper to read by February 23. The final drafts of the research papers themselves are due on the last class, March 9th.