AFR 344
The City and the Globe Fall 2016
Division II Exploring Diversity Initiative
Cross-listed ENGL 344 / COMP 342
This is not the current course catalog

This course will inquire into the ways literary and filmic representation can tell us about the new and shifting forms of human life that arise in the fluctuating cityscapes of the contemporary world. Working with short stories, novels, and film, this course journeys through depictions of urban life in developing cities across the globe. Our itinerary takes us to literary and cinematic versions of the Caribbean, Asian, South American, and African city. We will read texts by such authors as Italo Calvino, Chimamanda Adichie, Vikram Chandra, Teju Cole, Earl Lovelace, and Roberto Bolaño, and view films such as Chungking Express and City of God. Our secondary and theoretical texts will include writing by Walter Benjamin, Mike Davis, Saskia Sassen, and Achille Mbembe. The course will contribute to the College’s Exploring Diversity Initiative by comparing cultural and societal urban contexts from a global perspective.