WHAT WE WILL DO
Modern consumer culture originated in cities – just as urban spaces developed in close relation to consumer habits. Beginning in the Early Modern metropolis, but especially over the course of the 19th and early-twentieth centuries, three revolutions of consumer culture have taken place that had a profound impact on the making of urban spaces and on our understanding of modern civilized life: a revolution in the provisioning of collective goods, a revolution in shopping and a revolution in public entertainment. These dimensions and their spatial manifestations provide the central objects of examination in the seminar. Readings and discussions will focus on a number of archetypal spaces: the coffee house, the slaughterhouse and the sewage system, the department store and the shopping mall, the theatre and the cinema. Crucial aspects of modernity such as individual freedom of choice and social rights, rationality and the dreamworlds of consumption, the private and the public, have been negotiated within and through these places. Our understanding of urban life hinges on these legacies of consumer culture.
HOW WE WILL DO IT
Desperate times call for desperate measures.
This seminar will not be a regular one, with meetings and communication. I will not try to recreate digitally what cannot be recreated. As long as we cannot meet in the flesh and exchange our ideas, we should make use of the chances that our solitary confinement at home provides.
The home is the right place to engage with stimulating topics you have never had the chance to look into, reflect on them and develop your own voice by writing short essays on them. In other words: this is the time to read and write.
The good news is that you will not be alone in your intellectual endeavors. The Moodle course provides you with carefully chosen reading material, links to images and film, and questions to guide your writing efforts. But most importantly, I will advise you individually on how to improve your writing skills by correcting your essays and providing detailed commentary. This will be done mostly via email.
Please note that you will have to attend an introductory online meeting on Tuesday, 5 May, 16.00-17.00, in which I will explain the contents and the procedures. You will receive an invitation to this meeting by email.
The individual reading and writing will then continue until 4 August. After that there will be no more assignments.
Please register for the Moodle course as soon as possible! The password is: consumer |
