Cities have existed all over the world for millennia, and their inhabitants have used these urban conglomerations to connect themselves, their ideas, and their goods to a much wider audience - often well beyond their geographic and political boundaries. Cities have also been sites of dramatic demographic changes throughout human history, leading to productive contact as well as structural inequalities between diverse peoples. In this course, students will explore how cities all over the world and through time have grappled with the potentials and problems of a growing, diversifying, and increasingly interconnected world. We will pay particular attention to the cities’ heterogeneous inhabitants, their built and natural environments, their interconnectivity, and their different and changing identities as “world cities.” Designed around guest lectures by faculty from the Department of History of Art and Architecture, this course will introduce students to a wide array of world cities. Weekly lectures will explore examples of cities across time and space, including Timbuktu, Mexico City, Beijing, Chicago, Istanbul, Cairo, Paris, and other sites; and through a variety of visual media, including architecture, public sculpture, photography, and film. Class sessions will be specifically devoted to comparing the ideas that formed these cities and how their identities and built environments have changed over time.
