| title | date | instructor | office |
|---|---|---|---|
The City & the Archive |
Spring 2024 |
Manan Ahmed |
Fayerweather Hall 502 |
How to write the city? What is an archive for writing the city? What liminal and marginal perspectives are available for thinking about writing the city? What is the place of the city in the global south in our historical imagination? Our attempt in this seminar is to look at the global south city from the historical and analytical perspectives of those dispossessed and marginal. Instead of ‘grand’ summations about “the Islamic City” or “Global City,” we will work meticulously to observe annotations on power that constructs cities, archives and their afterlives. The emphasis is on the city in South Asia as a particular referent though we will learn to see Cairo, New York, and Istanbul. We will also ‘write’ the city, with particular attention to the archives of Sister Aisha al-Adawiya < https://crcc.usc.edu/aisha-al-adawiya-making-space-for-women-in-mosques/> available at Union Theological Seminary and of Muslim Sufi and Jazz musician Ibrahim González < https://current.org/2013/06/ibrahim-gonzalez-wbai-personality-and-producer-dies-at-57/> at Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños (CUNY). These archives of individual lives and their relationship to New York City’s Black and Latinx populations will be the base from which we will attempt to parse out our individual relationship to writing New York.
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We want to build a community of readers and thinkers in this class - who are able to work collectively and collaboratively. I am setting my assessment goals on two paths: firstly, I want to make sure we are doing close-reading of the texts, and secondly, I want to ensure that we are critical and engaged thinkers. With those goals, I ask that you do two forms of regular production in the class - short form writing and research-oriented presentation.
- 10%: Attendance + Participation
- 20%: Archives Report from UTS (Columbia) or CPR (CUNY)
- 20%: Posting responses on CW Discussion (~1 per class)
- 20%: Presentation on Readings (partnered assignment)
- 30%: Final Paper “Writing my City”
- Walter Benjamin. Berlin Childhood around 1900. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006.
- Madhuri Desai. Banaras Reconstructed: Architecture and Sacred Space in a Hindu Holy City. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2017.
- Jean-Pierre Filiu. Gaza: A History. London: Hurst & Co, 2014.
- Orhan Pamuk. Istanbul: Memories and the City. New York: Vintage International, 2006.
- Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts. Harlem is nowhere: A journey to the Mecca of Black America. (New York, Little, Brown, 2011.
- Aman Sethi. A Free Man. New Delhi: Random House India, 2011.
- Samira Shackle. Karachi Vice: Life and Death in a Divided City. New York: Melville House, 2021.
- Howard Spodek. Ahmedabad: Shock City of Twentieth-Century India. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 2011)
- Sara Suleri. Meatless Days. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.
- Ranajit Guha, “The Small Voice of History” in Guha, The Small Voice of History, Delhi: Permanent Black, 2009, Chapter 14, pp. 304-317.
- Arlette Farge, The Allure of the Archives (Yale Univ Press, New Haven 2013) Foreword by Natalie Zemon Davis, pp. ix-xvi, 1-17, 23-46, 53-72, 73-113.
- Natalie Zemon Davis, ‘Coping with Failure in the Archives’ (transcript)
- E.B. DuBois, Philadelphia Negro, 1-9, 46-65
- Walter Benjamin. Berlin Childhood around 1900, 37-124.
- Lewis Mumford. The City in History, 300-371.
- Nezar AlSayyad, Cairo: Histories of a City, 39-149.
- anet L. Abu Lughod, “The Islamic City—Historic Myth, Islamic Essence, and Contemporary Relevance,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 19, 2 (May, 1987), 155-176.
- Albert H. Hourani and S. M. Stern (eds.). The Islamic City (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1970), 1-45.
- Orhan Pamuk. Istanbul: Memories and the City (New York: Vintage International, 2006), chps 2, 4, 6, 11, 12, 18, 22-27, 34.
- Jean-Pierre Filiu. Gaza: A History. (selection TBD)
- Laurent Gayer. Karachi: Ordered Disorder and the Struggle for the City (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2016), 1-76, 239-285
- Samira Shackle. Karachi Vice: Life and Death in a Divided City (New York: Melville House, 2021), 13-76.
- Madhuri Desai. Banaras Reconstructed: Architecture and Sacred Space in a Hindu Holy City. (selection TBD)
- Howard Spodek. Ahmedabad: Shock City of Twentieth-Century India. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 2011): 19-141, 197-297.
- Moyukh Chatterjee. Composing Violence: The Limits of Exposure and the Making of Minorities (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2022), 56-93.
- Juned Shaikh. Outcaste Bombay: City Making and the Politics of the Poor (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2021), 3-85, 136-179.
- Namdeo Dhasal. Poet of the Underground: Poems 1972-2006 (Selections TBD)
- Vivek Bald. Bengali Harlem and the Lost Histories of South Asian America. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015), 94-189
- Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts. Harlem is nowhere: A journey to the Mecca of Black America. (New York, Little, Brown, 2011), 3-140.
- Aman Sethi. A Free Man (Random House India, 2011).
####April 9 2024 Lahore: Disrupted City I
- Sara Suleri. Meatless Days (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991)
- Ayra Indrias Patras. Swept Aside: A Story of Christian Sweepers in Lahore. Lahore: Folio Books, 2023.
- Manan Ahmed Asif, Disrupted City (New Press, 2024)
April 23, 2024 Conclusions