Global Arc

This course considers theories and practices of reinterpreting landscape through the lenses of indigeneity, transnational feminism, and decoloniality. We will explore alternative ways of knowing and relating to places--thinking across space and time, built structures and material absences, borders and networks of relation--with a focus on the Americas. Discussions will engage spatial perspectives in geography, anthropology, and decolonial thought along with creative writing and multimedia work. Students will apply critical spatial practices by designing a digital project using textual, sonic, and visual modes to remap a selected site.

Introduces students to social scientific thinking on cities and urbanism and then builds on this base to consider and evaluate various approaches to urban policy.

This course will examine different crises confronting cities in the 21st century. Topics will range from immigration, to terrorism, shrinking population, traffic congestion, pollution, energy crisis, housing needs, water wars, race riots, extreme weather conditions, war and urban operations. The range of cities will include Los Angles, New Orleans, Paris, Logos, Caracas, Havana, New York, Hong Kong, and Baghdad among others.

This seminar uses film to explore the social and political issues facing the post-industrial American city and examines how films employ different documentary methodologies. Students will apply these techniques hands-on, collaborating on short explorations of housing issues in Trenton. They will learn how to establish a relationship with a subject, gather observational footage, conduct interviews, and weave narrative in a visual medium. The goal of the course is to give students not only a greater understanding of urban history and the challenges cities face today but also a foundation in the practical and theoretical issues of documentary.

This interdisciplinary seminar introduces research methods in urban studies. We will focus on some of the ways in which researchers make sense of cities, including various aspects of urban experience, culture, history, theory, form, and policy. Students will use the analytical frameworks covered in the course to develop their own research projects with the goal of developing more dynamic junior papers and senior theses.

This interdisciplinary course explores the history of city-nature relations, centering the intersection of industrialization, environmentalism and modernization known as urban greening. Particular emphasis is placed on urban greening outside Western traditions of capitalist urbanism. We will apply a framework of critical and comparative analysis to the question of how urbanists' visions for socialist urban landscapes have responded to community and environmental health hazards in the long 20th century. What lessons and warnings for present climate justice and mitigation efforts in urbanism can be taken from their attempts?

This interdisciplinary course will explore the history, politics, and social dynamics of urban migration on the Indian Subcontinent, home to and source of some of the largest migrations in human history. Through writing, discussion, and mapping, the class will also encounter broader concepts in the study of migration; its diversity, causes, challenges, as well as implications for social organization and city planning. Subtopics will include the history of Asia's great migrations, partition and refugee resettlement, internal migration, indentured and imported labor, gender politics, and the rural urban divide in the global South.

This seminar introduces the study of gentrification, with a focus on mapping projects using GIS (Geographic Information Systems) software. Readings, films, and site visits will situate the topic, as the course examines how racial landscapes of gentrification, culture and politics have been influenced by and helped drive urban change. Tutorials in ArcGIS will allow students to convert observations of urban life into fresh data and work with existing datasets. Learn to read maps critically, undertake multifaceted spatial analysis, and master new cartographic practices associated with emerging scholarship in the Digital and Urban Humanities.

This course examines how cities, and city-dwellers, across Africa have changed over the past 500 years. We consider how local, regional, and global forces have structured African cityscapes, jobs done by urban workers, and the relationship African urbanites had with changing environments. By doing so, students develop the tools to analyze urban spaces and explain the different ways cities have structured Africa's past, present and future. Students will examine how people experienced, built, and transformed urban landscapes across Africa and unpack the social, economic, political, and spatial structures that have structured African cities.