Urban Europe
Full course description
In this course we open the map of Europe to focus on cities as sites where various promises and challenges of contemporary Europe’s culture and society condensate.
Europe is inconceivable without its cities. Historically, cities have been critical sites where the continent’s major socio-economic, cultural and political developments took shape. Cities are closely associated with the idea of European modernity, and have acted as laboratories for political and cultural integration. Today, it is primarily in cities that we are confronted with (often global) challenges, such as issues of identity politics, cultural cleavages, forms of social segregation, poverty, pollution and climate change. At the same time, cities are breeding grounds for alternative futures and innovative ways of living and working.
This course, as a second elective in the Culture and diversity track of the BA European studies, offers you the opportunity to explore the urban dimensions of Europe’s culture and society. You will learn to explore urban Europe by analyzing its discourses and cultural imaginaries, its everyday practices and identities, as well as the material culture of its spatial design, technological (incl. digital) infrastructure, and its natural environment and ecologies. As part of the course, students will organize local urban excursions and an Urban Europe festival.
Course objectives
Cities offer ample opportunity to study European culture and diversity in the making. In Urban Europe you will learn to:
- identify various sociocultural characteristics of European cities and understand Europe through the lens of “the urban” (incl. the role of cities in European history, and as sites where various promises and challenges of contemporary Europe’s culture and society condensate);
- conceptualize the “urban” along five dimensions (i.e., urban formations, publics, fault lines, ecologies, and urban arts and creativity), and use these ideas to explain contemporary sociocultural dimensions of European cities;
- understand the role that discourses and imaginaries, social groupings, everyday practices, material culture, technological infrastructures, and natural elements play in shaping current conditions of urban Europe;
- communicate complex ideas and concepts from the course readings in verbal and written forms, and explore creative formats of presentation;
- generate and integrate your own, hands-on experiences with city life as a way to study European culture and diversity (people) and urban environments (places) in the making.
- doing a small empirical case study, incl. a qualitative analysis of different types of primary sources(e.g. film, policy discourse, street interviews), and present your work in the form of an academic essay.
Recommended reading
Scholarly articles from relevant academic journals, i.a.,
City, Urban Studies, Space and Culture, Journal of Poverty and Social Justice, Antipode, Surveillance & Society, Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space.
Selected book chapters from, i.a.,
Ernstson, H., & Sörlin, S. (Eds.)(2019). Grounding Urban Natures. Histories and futures of urban ecologies. Boston: MIT.
Haarstad, H. et al. (Eds.)(2023). Haste. The slow politics of climate change. London: UCL press.
Latham, A., McCormack, D., McNamara, K., McNeill, D. (2009). Key concepts in urban geography. Los Angeles etc.: Sage.
Lindner, C., & Meissner, M. (Eds.) (2019). The Routledge Companion to Urban Imaginaries. New York: Routledge.
Lyon, D. (2018). The culture of surveillance. Watching as a way of life. Cambridge: Polity press.
Wakeman, R. (2020). A Modern History of European Cities. 1815 to the present. London: Bloomsbury.
Wekker, G. (2016). White Innocence: Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race. Durham: Duke University Press.