Grinnell College Department of History Spring 2008 History 295: European Urban History Rob Lewis Phone: X3482 Mears 212 E-mail: [email protected] Course meetings: T-TH 12:45-2:05, Science 3821 Office Hours: Monday 10:15-12 p.m., Thursday 2:30-3:30 p.m., or by appointment While the existence of cities stretches back to antiquity, the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are fundamentally associated with urban life. This course analyzes the transformation of the European urban landscape and European urban life from the nineteenth-century explosion of urbanization and industrialization to the present day. We will concentrate on London, Paris, Vienna, and Berlin, although the course is not a comprehensive history of any of these cities. Particular attention will be devoted to several key themes: the emergence of urban planning, from Baron Haussmann’s work in mid-19th-century Paris to the “New Towns” of post-World War II England and France; the aesthetics of urban life, from the historicism of the Ringstrasse in Vienna to the twentieth-century triumph of the “International Style” and the particular aesthetics of Fascism; the advent of urban “modernity” (and “modernism”) as expressed in politics, art, and a nascent mass consumer and leisure culture; the personal experience of war, poverty, and immigration in the city; and the connection between the urban landscape, political legitimacy, and memory. Course Requirements 1. Discussion (20%) All students are expected to do all of the course readings at the time they are indicated on the syllabus, and to actively participate in class. Our class meetings are mandatory. While you may miss two meetings for any reason, any further failure to attend will have a negative impact on your participation grade unless this absence occurs due to a medical condition or a family emergency. In addition, I reserve the right to not issue a passing grade to any student who misses more than six class sessions (again barring medical or family emergencies). As part of your participation grade, you will – in groups of three – be responsible for one 15-minute oral presentation over the course of the semester, on dates indicated on the syllabus. Your group will do outside research on the assigned topic (see “Presentation Schedule”), and will then present your findings at the beginning of class. (You can be as creative as you would like with the form of the presentation, as long as you all speak and address the topic at hand).2. Papers (60%: 15% for the two 5-page papers, and 30% for the 8-10 page paper) You will submit three essays over the course of the semester. The first two will be 5-page papers, in response to one of several designated questions distributed several weeks in advance. The second is an 8-to-10-page paper, due near the end of the semester, intended to give you the opportunity to write about a particular topic or question encountered during the course that you found most particularly engaging. This is not a primary-source paper, but you must base it on secondary sources outside of the syllabus to supplement our class readings. You will also note that you must submit an (ungraded yet mandatory) paper proposal three weeks ahead of the final paper due-date; this consists of a two-paragraph statement of what you intend to write about and the sources you plan on using for the project. 3. Final Exam (20%) You will have a take-home final examination dealing synthetically with the overall themes from the course. Texts and Readings The following books are available for purchase at the Grinnell College Bookstore. While I will attempt to place a copy of each on reserve at Burling Library, I would strongly recommend that you purchase them for your own convenience and to look incredibly well-read when you carry them around campus or display them prominently on your bookshelf. Roger V. Gould, Insurgent Identities: Class, Community, and Protest in Paris from 1848 to the Commune (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995) Emile Zola, The Ladies’ Paradise (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) [Au Bonheur des Dames] Carl E. Schorske, Fin-de-siècle Vienna. Politics and Culture (New York: Vintage Books, 1980) Mehdi Charef, Tea in the Harem (London: Serpent’s Tail, 1989) Karen Till, The New Berlin: Memory, Politics, Place (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005) The following readings are required and available on PioneerWeb: Michel De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1984), 90-110 Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England (London: Penguin Books, 1987, orig. 1845), 68-109 Asa Briggs, Victorian Cities (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1993, orig. 1963), 59-138 Lewis Mumford, The City in History (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1961), 446-474 Judith Walkowitz, “Jack the Ripper and the Myth of Male Violence,” Feminist Studies 8 (3): 1982, 542-574 Sally Ledger and Roger Luckhurst, eds., The Fin de Siècle: A Reader in Cultural History c.1880-1900 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 27-38 Ebenezer Howard, Garden Cities of To-Morrow (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1965, orig. 1902), 29-57 T.C. Horsfall, The Improvement of the Dwellings and Surroundings of the People: The Example of Germany (Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 1901), 1-34 Walter Gropius, The New Architecture and the Bauhaus (Boston; Charles T. Branford Company, 1955), 19-66 Maureen Healy, Vienna and the Fall of the Habsburg Empire: Total War and Everyday Life in World War I (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 31-121 Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Gris (Le Corbusier), The Radiant City (London: Faber and Faber, 1964, orig. 1933), 90-142 Janet Abu-Lughod, Rabat, Urban Apartheid in Morocco (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), 131-173 Zeynep Celik, “Le Corbusier, Orientalism, Colonialism,” Assemblage No. 17 (April 1992), 58-77 Erik Jensen, “Crowd Control: Boxing Spectatorship and Social Order in Weimar Germany,” in Histories of Leisure, ed. Rudy Koshar (Oxford: Berg, 2002), 79-101 Siegfried Kracauer, The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995, orig. 1963), 74-86 Michael Minden and Holger Bachmann, eds., Fritz Lang’s Metropolis: Cinematic Visions of Technology and Fear (Rochester, N.Y.: Camden House, 2000), 1-45