What do you experience when you walk through a city? This everyday practice may seem ordinary, but it also has a symbolic function. By strolling through the urban landscape, city dwellers create networks and associations, mapping their subjectivity onto spaces designed for an anonymous inhabitant. Some urbanites get lost in their peregrinations, resigning themselves to feelings of alienation and despair. Others, however, carve their identities from the paths they trace through the city.

In this course, we’ll look at how writers grapple with the thrills, disappointments, and contradictions of urban life. We’ll ask questions like: How does the practice of walking help us make sense of ourselves and the space around us? How can physical experiences make and produce places? How does the urban stroll form a subjective experience of the metropolis? Are the acts of seeing and being seen constitutive of city life?

We’ll read different accounts of walking in the urban environment to understand how the pedestrian gives and finds meaning in the city.

Texts 

Anna Maria Ortese, Neapolitan Chronicles, [ISBN: 1939931517]

Italo Calvino, Marcovaldo, [ISBN: 0156572044]

Giorgio Bassani, The Novel of Ferrara, [ISBN: 0393080153]

Elena Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend, [ISBN: 9781609450786]

Teju Cole, Open City, [ISBN: 0812980093]

Vittorio de Sica, Bicycle Thieves (film)

Paolo Sorrentino, La Grande Bellezza (film)

Due to the high demand for R&C courses we monitor attendance very carefully. Attendance is mandatory the first two weeks of classes, this includes all enrolled and wait listed students. If you do not attend all classes the first two weeks you may be dropped. If you are attempting to add into this class during weeks 1 and 2 and did not attend the first day, you will be expected to attend all class meetings thereafter and, if space permits, you may be enrolled from the wait list.