This course will explore urban life and culture from the 1840s to the mid-20th century - the people who shaped it, the conflicts and cooperation that emerged from it, and the way its attractions lure both pleasure seekers and reformers alike. We will move from early nineteenth century industrializing England to the Paris of the later part of the century, and then to New York in the early years of the twentieth century. We focus on the emergence of the modern city and the ways in which the city has been an incubator for modern forms of perception, social organization, and social-political conflict. We will ask questions about the relationship of multiple and over-lapping identities - race, class, gender, ethnicity, and sexuality - to the urban experience both lived and imagined. What makes a city a city? How do the physical environments of cities shape the lives and cultures of those who live in them? At the same time, how have city dwellers created their own environments through the use of public and private space? What methods and perspectives have scholars, reformers, and other observers used to see and describe cities and the people who live in them? The principal aim will be to develop an understanding of how the urban experience has been a powerful force in shaping the evolution of modern social, political, and cultural forms.

Requirements:
1) All reading assignments must be done before each class.
2) Weekly 2 page writing assignment on each week's assigned reading due on Thursday. I will not accept late papers. These response papers will be grade 1,2,3.
Class preparation, participation, and weekly writing assignments: 40 % of your grade.
Metropolitan Museum Assignment: 30% Tenement Museum Project: 30%

Late papers will be penalized at the rate of a full grade per day. You may miss up to three classes without penalty. More than three absences will adversely affect your class participation grade, and more than seven absences will mean automatic failure of the course.

Texts:
Berman, Marshall, All that is Solid Melts into Air
Cahan, Abe, Yekl
Kasson, John F., Amusing the Millions: Coney Island at the Turn of the Century
Zola, Emile, The Ladies' Paradise
Xerox Packet: many of the assigned readings for this course are excerpted from larger works or are in article form. The Xerox packets are available for purchase at Sir Speedy. One copy of the packet will be on reserve at the Hofstra library.
Films:
Coney Island
The City

Wed 9/4: Introduction: Screening of The City (Williard Van Dyke and Paul Strand)
Fri 9/6: The City as Historical Problem - George Simmel, "The Metropolis and Mental Life"

The Industrial City: Manchester and London
Manchester: Urban Industrial Transformation -
Mon 9/9 The Industrial Revolution - Friedrich Engels, Introduction,The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844.
Wed 9/11 Friedrich Engles, The Great Towns
Fri 9/13 The Factory and the City - Asa Briggs, "Manchester: Symbol of a New Age," from Victorian Cities.

Mon 9/16 Classes not in Session
Wed 9/18 Chadwick Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population, 1842; selections from Dickens, Hard Times
Fri 9/20 Urban Middle Class Culture, Public and Private - J.W. Kirton, Happy Homes and How to Make Them.
Mon 9/23 Alan J. Kidd, Introduction and Michael Rose, Culture, Philanthropy and the Manchester Middle Classes, in Alan Kidd and K.W. Roberts (eds), City, Class and Culture.
Wed 9/25 Working Women in the City - Sally Alexander, Women's Work in Nineteenth-Century London, A Study of the Years 1820-60s in Becoming a Woman and Other Essays in 19th and 20th Century Feminist History
Fri 9/27 Ellen Ross, Labour and Love: Rediscovering London's Working Class Mothers, 1870-1918 in Labour & Love. Women's Experience of Home and Family 1850-1940.
Mon 9/30 Sexuality, Class and the City - Judith Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society, Women, Class, and the State, Chapters 1, 10.

Paris: The Planned City of Spectacle
Wed 10/2 Old Paris and Haussmanization - David Pinkney, Napoleon III and the Rebuilding of Paris.
Fri 10/4 The Paris Commune: Urban Civil War Stewart Edwards, Introduction to the Communards of Paris, 1871.
Mon 10/7 Robert Herbert, Paris Transformed in Impressionism
Wed 10/9 Middle Class Culture and the Commodity: The Crystal Palace - Emile Zola, The Ladies' Paradise (first half)
Fri 10/11 Fantasy, Spectacle, Desire and Consumer Culture - (second third)
Mon 10/14 Finish Zola
Wed 10/16 Bohemian Counterculture and the Bourgeoisie - Jerrold Seigel, The Boundaries of Bohemia and Publicity and Fantasy: The World of Cabarets in Bohemian Paris[Give out Metropolitan Museum Assignment]
Immigrants in the City of Light -
Fri 10/18 Walking the Modernist City - Baudelaire (selections from Paris Spleen: To Arsene Houssaye, Loss of a Halo, Crowds, The Stranger); Marshall Berman, Baudelaire: Modernism in the Streets
Mon 10/21 Mass Culture - Vanessa Schwartz, Public Visits to the Morgue: Flanerie in the Service of the State in Spectacular Realities
Wed 10/23 he Painting of Modern Life - Robert Herbert, Naturalism and Impressionism in Impressionism
Fri 10/25 Catch up day

New York: The Modern Metropolis
Mon 10/28 Progressive Era in New York (Introduction)- Met Assignment Due
Ewen, 9 and 10.
Wed 10/30 Elizabeth Ewen, Immigrant Women in the Land of Dollars, chapters: 1 and 2.
Fri 11/1 Immigration and the City during the Progressive Era: A New Culture - Abe Cahan, Yekl and Ewen, ch. 3 and 4
Mon 11/4 Finish Yekl
Wed 11/6 Urban Reform: Jacob Riis - Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives: selections
Fri 11/8 Ewen, Ch. 5 and 8.
Mon 11/11 Urban Pleasures, Urban Dangers - George Chauncey, The Bowery as Haven and Spectacle, in Gay New York. Ewen, Ch. 6 and 7.
Wed 11/13 Leisure - John F. Kasson, Amusing the Millions: Coney Island at the Turn of the Century:
Fri 11/15 Kasson Continued
Mon 11/18 Coney Island Continued. Kathy Peiss, The Coney Island Excursion in Cheap Amusements.
Wed 11/20 Screening: Coney Island. Ewen, 9 & 10.
Fri 11/22 Ewen, 13 and 14.
Mon 11/25 Race, Identity, and the City: The Harlem Renaissance - Rudolphe Fisher, The Caucasian Storms Harlem (1927) in Voices from the Harlem Renaissance.
Wed 11/27-Fri 11/29 CLASSES NOT IN SESSION
Mon 12/2Langston Hughes - "Slave on the Block"
Wed 12/4 Robert Moses: Urban Renewal or Devastation - Marshall Berman, Robert Moses: The Expressway World, All That is Solid … Essays due
Fri 12/6 Screening of The City (Willard Van Dyke and Paul Strand)
Mon 12/9 Catch up day
Wed 12/11 Conclusions