City as Nexus

GLOBAL URBAN HUMANITIES INTERDISCIPLINARY COLLOQUIUM

Fall 2017 (1 Unit)
Rhetoric 198-3 (Class Nbr: 21377) and CYPLAN 198-2 (Class Nbr: 12006)
Rhetoric 244A (Class Nbr: 46989) and CYPLAN 298-2 (Class Nbr: 47047)

Instructor: Kevin Block
Instructor of record: Susan Moffat

Wednesdays, 12-1:30PM
Location: Cal Design Lab, Room 494 SE Wurster Hall 

The city is a social nexus. It binds people, things, forces, ideas together as a crossroads, grid, and network. But exactly how? And to what end? In this wide-ranging colloquium, speakers from a variety of disciplines will present research on the relational dynamic of cities. Speakers will include faculty and graduate students from departments including Architecture, Art History, Rhetoric, Classics, Italian Studies, English, History, City and Regional Planning, Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning, and more.

The colloquium is part of the Global Urban Humanities Initiative, a joint project of the Arts & Humanities Division and the College of Environmental Design. Our aim with this speaker series is to provide a gathering place where people from different disciplines can learn about each other’s work on global cities.

Requirements for S/U credit: Attend at least 10 of 13 lectures including the November 29 wrap-up session and write two brief posts for the Global Urban Humanities blog. There are no required readings. However, relevant readings, videos, etc. will be posted to a course website in advance of each lecture. All lectures are open to the campus community, and visitors are encouraged to attend.

August 23
Course Introduction
Kevin Block
Rhetoric, UC Berkeley

August 30
Humanizing Urbanism
Margaret Crawford
Architecture, UC Berkeley

September 6, 5-6:30PM, Wurster Gallery
Designing San Francisco
Alison Isenberg
History, Princeton University

September 13
The Scale of Global Modernisms
Harsha Ram
Comparative Literature & Slavic, UC Berkeley

September 20
Borderwall Urbanism
Ronald Rael & Stephanie Syjuco
Architecture & Art Practice, UC Berkeley

September 27
The Making of a Roman Town
Lisa Pieraccini
Italian & Classics, UC Berkeley

October 4
Art and the City
Jason Luger
City & Regional Planning, UC Berkeley

October 11
Indigenous Urbanisation and the Politics of Care
Daniel Fisher
Anthropology, UC Berkeley

October 18
Dissertation Talks!
William Gow & Aku Ammah-Tagoe
Ethnic Studies, UC Berkeley & English, Stanford

October 25
Approaches to Egyptian Urbanism”  
Carol Redmount
Near Eastern Studies, UC Berkeley

November 1
Sounds of the City
Nicholas Mathew
Music, UC Berkeley

November 8
Learning from Shenzhen
Winnie Wong
Rhetoric & History of Art, UC Berkeley

November 15
Using Bodies to Measure Urban Public Space
Erika Chong Shuch & Ghigo DiTommaso
Choreographer & LAEP, UC Berkeley