Through extensive reading and writing, students will explore the promise and perils of the variegated city, focusing on topics that demand urgent attention: climate change, inequality, racial injustice, and public space. Students will work to create artful narratives by examining how various forms—essay, memoir, longform journalism, poetry, fiction, film, photography, and song—illuminate our understanding of cities. Special emphasis will be on the imagination as a rich reservoir for inhabiting and understanding cities, the writer as the reader's advocate, and on the indispensability of the writer-editor relationship, with the goal of better engaging with and understanding cities, not to mention writing with greater creativity and sophistication for specialized and general-interest audiences.
Admission is only by application. Prerequisite: Submit by Saturday, September 10, at 8:00 p.m. an application letter (no longer than 600 words, and as a Microsoft Word document with your full name in the top right margin) that explains your interest in the class, and discuss a work—novel, essay, film, painting, sculpture, song, play, building—that influences how you see a particular city.
Prerequisites
permission of instructor
Can Be Repeated for Credit
No