Spring 2008										     Sara Lipton
State University of New York at Stony Brook	          Social and Behavioral Sciences N-301
Tu 4:30 - 7:30										        632-7501
SBS N-318					         Office hours: TuTh 11:20 - 12:40 and by appt.

HIS 532
“On the Margins of the City: 
Women, Minorities, and Sub-Groups in Pre-Modern and Modern Urban Communities”

     In the modern west, the nation state was considered the paradigmatic political entity.  But in the post-modern world, the importance of the nation state has declined, and we must get used to thinking about other forms of political and communal organization.  This course focuses on the society and culture of one such non-state entity: the city.  We shall explore a range of tools, concepts, and methodologies used by historians of cities from high medieval Marseilles through early modern Venice, modern Europe, and the contemporary U.S.  Topics will include the spaces and roles occupied by women, the “theology” and “ideology” of neighborhood, the politics of streets, the construction of ethnic and racial identity, the origins of the ghetto, and more.  Requirements include one oral presentation, one 5-6 page review essay, and one 4-5 page response paper.

	Books to Purchase:

Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England (Penguin Classics, 1987). ($10.20 on Amazon; used available)

Kenneth Stow, Theater of Acculturation: The Roman Ghetto in the Sixteenth Century (University of Washington Press, 2001). ($25.00 on Amazon; used available)

Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton University Press, rev. ed., 2005). ($24.95 on Amazon; used available)

George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 (Basic Books, 1995). ($14.96 on Amazon; used available)

George J. Sanchez, Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945 (Oxford University Press, 1995). ($19.90 on Amazon; used available)

Judith R. Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London (University of Chicago Press, 1992). ($12.92 on Amazon; used available)

Jan. 29 (Tu)			Introduction and Introductions

I. Neighborhoods, Mapping, and the Spatial Turn	

Feb. 5 (Tu)			Neighborhoods, Space, and Society: Theory and Historiography
(1) Anthony Vidler, “The Scenes of the Street: Transformations in Ideal and Reality (1750-1871),” in On Streets, ed. Stanford Anderson (MIT Press, 1986), pp. 28-111. [xerox]
(2) David Garrioch and Mark Peel, “Introduction: The Social History of Urban Neighborhoods,” Journal of Urban History 32:5 (2006): 663-676. [e-journal]
Assignment: Bring in a list of questions that have/can/should be asked about the history of humans in cities.

Feb. 12 (Tu)			Neighborhoods, Space, and Identity: Sociological Approaches
(1) Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England (Penguin Classics, 1987), “The Great Towns.” [purchase]
(2) Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City (Technology Press, 1960), pp. 1-90 . [xerox]
How has the physical form of cities shaped urban life?  How has social history shaped the form of cities?  Which, if any, is the more dominant process?

Feb. 19 (Tu)			Neighborhoods, Space, and Identity: Historical Approaches
(1) Daniel Lord Smail, Imaginary Cartographies: Possession and Identity in Late Medieval Marseille (Cornell University Press, 1999), pp. 1-109, 188-221. [xerox]
(2) James S. Amelang, “People of the Ribers: Popular Politics and Neighborhood Identity in Early Modern Barcelona,” in Culture and Identity in Early Modern Europe (1500-1800): Essays in Honor of Natalie Zemon Davis, ed. Barbara Diefendorf and Carla Hesse (University of Michigan Press, 1993), pp. 119-37. [xerox]
What questions did these historians ask of their sources?  What sources did they use, and how did they extract answers from them?

Feb. 26 (Tu)			Neighborhoods, Space, and Segregation: Ghettoes Old and New I
(1) Richard Sennett, Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City in Western Civilization (W.W. Norton and Co., 1994), Chapter 7: “The Fear of Touching: The Jewish Ghetto in Renaissance Florence,” pp. 212-251. [xerox]
(2) Kenneth Stow, Theater of Acculturation: The Roman Ghetto in the Sixteenth Century (University of Washington Press, 2001). [purchase]
Mar. 4 (Tu)			Neighborhoods, Space, and Segregation: Ghettoes Old and New II
Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton University Press, rev. ed., 2005). [purchase]
How does the modern American “ghetto” differ from the early modern ghetto?  What factors other than walls create separation? 

II. The People in the City

Mar. 11 (Tu)			Beyond the Ghetto: Inter-ethnic Relations in the City I
(1) Natan M. Meir, “Jews, Ukrainians, and Russians in Kiev: Intergroup Relations in Late Imperial Associational Life,” Slavic Review 65:3 (2006): 475-501. [e-journal]
(2) Mark Wild, Street Meeting: Multiethnic Neighborhoods in Early Twentieth-Century Los Angeles (University of California Press, 2005), selections. [xerox]
What factors determine the nature of inter-communal relations?
Paper One assigned

Mar. 18 (Tu)			No Class: Spring Break

Mar. 25 (Tu)			Beyond the Ghetto: Inter-ethnic Relations in the City II
(1) Stanley J. Tambiah, “Reflections on Communal Violence in South Asia,” Journal of Asian Studies (1990):741-760. [e-journal]
(2) Suranjan Das, “Communal Violence in Twentieth-Century Colonial Bengal: An Analytical Framework,” Social Scientist  (1990):21-37. [e-journal]
(3) Daniel Bertrand Monk, An Aesthetic Occupation: The Immediacy of Architecture and the Palestine Conflict (Duke University Press, 2002), “Cataclysm and Pogrom: An Exergue on the Naming of Violence,” pp. 73-80. [xerox]
How do historians dissect, analyze, represent inter-communal violence?
Paper One due

Apr. 1 (Tu)			The Majority on the Margins: Women in the City
(1) Sharon Farmer, “Down and Out and Female in Thirteenth-Century Paris,” American Historical Review 103:2 (1998): 345-372. [e-journal].
(2) Monica Chojnacka, Working Women of Early Modern Venice (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), selections. [xerox]
What questions did these historians ask of their sources?  What sources did they use, and how did they extract answers from them?

Apr. 8 (Tu)			Identity Formation: The Marginal Becomes Majority I
				George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 (Basic Books, 1995). [purchase]
Think about: the interactions between and mutual constructions of margin and center.

Apr. 15 (Tu)			No Class: CUNY Conference on the Three Religions in Medieval Spain

Apr. 22 (Tu)			Identity Formation: The Marginal Becomes Majority II
George J. Sanchez, Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945 (Oxford University Press, 1995). [purchase]
Think about: the interactions between and mutual constructions of minority and majority cultures.

III. The City as Image and Spectacle

Apr. 29 (Tu)			The Orientalist Gaze, at Home and Abroad
Timothy Mitchell, Colonizing Egypt (University of California Press, 1991), pp. 1-62. [xerox]
David Gilbert and Claire Hancock, “New York City and the Transatlantic Imagination: French and English Tourism and the Spectacle of the Modern Metropolis, 1893-1939,” Journal of Urban History 33:1 (2006): 77-107. [e-journal]
How do culture and politics affect perception?  How does perception affect politics and culture?

May 6 (Tu)			The City as Nightmare
Judith R. Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London (University of Chicago Press, 1992). [purchase]
Think about: the mutual interaction of ideas of masculinity and femininity; of gender, culture, and policy.
				Paper Two due