When the mode of music changes,
the walls of the city shake...
-- Plato
| How is the urban experience represented aesthetically? How do cities sustain artistic milieus and cultural production? What is genuinely ‘local’ about local culture? This seminar takes these questions up through the case of twentieth century popular music and related cultural expressions and media. We inquire into the complex and dynamic relationships between (cultural) urbanism and (spatial, economic, demographic) urbanization by examining the urban dimensions of popular music; its inspiration, production, transmission, consumption, and appreciation, as documented by social research, literary fiction, film, and sound recordings. Additionally, we investigate the complementarities and tensions of empirical, literary, and critical methods to knowing and representing the city. | |||
Our objectives for this course are:
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