European Cultural History

Description

This course offers an introduction to the broad phenomenon of European culture
by focusing on its most complex artefact: the city. Through some of its most
illustrative examples, the successful model of "the European City" will be
discussed and its characteristics and role in the evolution of European culture
highlighted.
Correspondingly, the principal guideline will be cultural complexity. Here, the
city will not be reduced to one of its major facets – f.e. technical product,
administrative unit, work of art, symbol of its time, expression of anonymous
history, mirror of abstract ideas – but regarded as a synthesis: a human artefact
able to blend the most diverse interests into a perceptible form.
The course will be taught in the form of a dynamic lecture. The basic inputs will
be brought in by the coordinator. The students are encouraged to intervene and
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put questions across at any time during the lecture. A lot of free room will be
offered to the students for discussions and contributions.

 

Compétences visées

The participants shall be strengthened in their abilities to:
- distinguish the criteria and characteristics of «the European city»
- discern the most significant stages and milestones of its development in
relation to political and social changes
- understand the complexity of urban spaces and locate the interfaces of privacy
and publicness
- contour actual developments on the basis of historical experience
- participate in class discussions
- choose an individual research topic and handle it scientifically in a term paper

Modalités d'organisation et de suivi

The students’ success in the course will be evaluated mainly on the basis of a
scientific term paper of approximately ten pages. Active participation in class
will be taken into account with 25%.

Discipline(s)

• Études anglophones

Informations complémentaires

Dr Ulrich Maximilian Schumann

schumann@triglyph.de

Bibliographie

- introductory reader
Benevolo, Leonardo, The European City, Oxford and Cambridge/Mass.
(Blackwell) 1993.
Curl, James Stevens, European Cities and Society: Influence of Political Climate on
Town Design, London (Leonard Hill) 1970.
De Vries, Jan, European urbanisation, 1500-1800, London (Methuen) and
Cambridge/Mass. (Harvard University Press) 1984
Hall, Peter, Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and
Design Since 1880, Oxford (Blackwell) 1988.
Hinse, Ton, The Morphology of the Times: European Cities and their Historical
Growth, Berlin (Dom Publishers) 2014.
Laitinen, Riitta and Cohen, Thomas (eds.) Cultural history of early modern
European streets, Leiden (Brill) 2009.
Macionis, John J. and Parrillo, Vincent N., Cities and Urban Life, Upper Saddle
River (Pearson) 2010.
Meller, Hellen, European Cities, 1890-1930s: History, Culture and the Built
Environment, John Wiley & Sons; Auflage: 1 (April 2001).
Mumford, Lewis, The City in History, New York (Harcourt, Brace & World) 1961.
Ward, Stephen V., Planning the Twentieth-Century City: The Advanced Capitalist
World, Chichester (Wiley) 2002