GRMT 167 SC: Metropolis: Imagining the City

Whether pictured as a labyrinth, stage set, utopian pleasure-dome or gigantic living room, the urban landscape has played a crucial role in the attempt of 20th-century writers and artists to come to terms with modernity. The course will move from the squares of 19th-century Berlin, the grid of Manhattan, to the malls and theme parks of Los Angeles, using fiction (Poe, Kafka, Wm. Gibson), film (Lang, Wenders, R. Scott), essays (Eco, Didion) and urban theory (Sennett, Choay) to investigate how changes in the perception of the city reflect the ways modernity sees itself. Course taught in English. Instructor: M. Katz [Elective]