Cities and Cultures: Urban Experience in Comparative Perspective (Level 5)

This Cities and Cultures short course introduces you to relations between culture and the city from a comparative perspective. We will explore how cultural practices, from the everyday to institutional politics, and cultural forms such as painting, architecture, writing (from graffiti to literature), film, photography, cartography, linguistic landscape contribute to the social production of urban space and its representation.

We will study cities from different periods, from the eighteenth century to the present, encompassing the intersection of the urban with questions of modernity, gender, revolution, colonialism, nationalism, multilingualism, aesthetic form and memory.

We will also cover a series of case studies from cities around the world including Barcelona, Berlin, Hong Kong, London, Madrid, Paris, New York, Shanghai and Tokyo, while emphasising similarities and differences, and encouraging a comparative approach between them. Please note, topics and cities will vary year on year, depending on availability of the teaching team; below is a sample syllabus:

• The spatial turn: how cultures produce, reproduce and represent the city
• Observing Paris in the 1780s: writing the revolution to come
• Considering the 'Barcelona model' and selling the Mediterranean way of life
• Urban design as place: the Tokyo Toilet Project
• Gendering the city in Berlin
• Modernity and the city: Baudelaire’s Paris
• Walking in the city: practices of everyday life in Paris and New York
• Linguistic landscapes in Shanghai, Hong Kong and London

Assessment is via a 2000-word essay (40%) and two-hour in-class test (60%).

As a student on this course, you will study alongside Birkbeck students enrolled on one of our undergraduate or postgraduate courses, giving you the opportunity to network with a range of Birkbeck current students whilst you learn.

• Culture and Language (French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Spanish) (Certificate of Higher Education)