HIST 1736 Urban Paradoxes: Histories of Cities, Power, and Environment in the Americas

This is an Enduring Question course and is open to FRESHMEN only. You must take both HIST1736 and UNAS1742. What makes urban life possible? We live in an urban world, yet a majority of humans lived outside of urban areas until 2007. To understand this massive transformation in human experience, these courses will examine the social and material processes that make urban life possible, investigating core contradictions of the city -- a site of economic growth and inequality, political freedom and oppression, environmental justice and disaster. Against interpreting urban growth, infrastructure, and markets as neutral, we will make visible the contingent power relations and systems that create, shape, and constrain human interactions and beliefs. These courses will combine sources from history and political theory, with emphasis on cities in the U.S. and Latin America in the 20th century. Students will engage in deep research of a particular city and think through solutions to ongoing problems of global cities.