SOCI291-13S2 (C) Semester Two 2013

Special Topic: Sociology of the City

15 points

Details:
Start Date: Monday, 8 July 2013
End Date: Sunday, 10 November 2013
Withdrawal Dates
Last Day to withdraw from this course:
  • Without financial penalty (full fee refund): Sunday, 21 July 2013
  • Without academic penalty (including no fee refund): Sunday, 6 October 2013

Description

This course is concerned with the city as it is experienced today: as shifting mixes of public and private spaces in which disruptions provoke different points of view, multiple memories and complex associations. Topics include the mobile city; mapping the ‘authentic’ city; the sentient city; the invisible city; the global city; cities as entertainment machines; nature and the city; deterritorialization and the futures of urban public space. Christchurch, as both colonial site of a neo-gothic garden city and re-imagined postcolonial site of disaster, risk and vitality, circulates throughout the course.

This course is an interdisciplinary option combining historical, literary and social science approaches to the city. The first section of the course will deal with the city as it was by looking at topics covering the creation and evolution of the modern city and the modern urban subject. These include: the flaneur and street life; architecture and urban modernity;  the notion and experience of the 'soft city' and urban identity. This section derives from a historical-literary approach and also includes insights and critiques from the history of sociology and urban studies.

The second section, and major part of the course, is concerned with the city as it is experienced today: as shifting mixes of public and private spaces in which disruptions provoke different points of view, multiple memories and complex associations. It focuses on cities as constantly changing networks and configurations of technospaces of visible and invisible technologies meshing with always provisional, embodied lives.

Learning Outcomes

Topics covered will be concerned with the multiplicity of processes assembling and reassembling the city in different ways. These include: the mobile city; mapping the ‘authentic’ city; the sentient city; the invisible city; the global city; cities as entertainment machines; nature and the city; deterritorialization and the futures of urban public space. Christchurch, as both colonial site of a neo-gothic garden city and re-imagined postcolonial site of disaster, risk and vitality, circulates throughout the course.

Prerequisites

15 points of 100 level SOCI with B grade or better; or 30 points of 100 level SOCI; alternatively students without 100 level SOCI but with a B average or better in 60 points in related subjects may be admitted to one 200 level SOCI course.

Restrictions

Lecturer

Michael Grimshaw

Assessment

Assessment Due Date Percentage  Description
Essay One 30% Essay on a topic from Section A
Essay Two 30% Essay on a topic from Section B
Reading Responses 10% From Section A (weeks 1-6) of readings
Reading Responses 10% From Section B (weeks 7-12) of readings
Critical Engagement Exercise 20% Applying a theorist/theory to a contemporary event/issue of the city

Indicative Fees

Domestic fee $644.00

International fee $2,800.00

* All fees are inclusive of NZ GST or any equivalent overseas tax, and do not include any programme level discount or additional course-related expenses.

For further information see Language, Social and Political Sciences .

All SOCI291 Occurrences

  • SOCI291-13S2 (C) Semester Two 2013