Sin Cities? Everyday Life in the Modern Metropolis

Overview

What, when and - perhaps most importantly - where was modernity? Were cities merely the inactive sites or containers of emerging economic, social and cultural processes, or was urbanity a fundamental part of what it meant to be living in a ‘modern age’? ‘Sin Cities’ explores these questions through the study of metropolitan centres in the Western world between c.1880-1939. You will be taken through urban life in places such as London, New York, Paris and Berlin – and the pleasures, anxieties and identities that they came to represent.

The course begins with the late-nineteenth century growth of both academic and popular belief in the idea that cities were now somehow different to what had come before – new, shocking, and possibly the end (or maybe the beginning?) of Western society. Following lectures and tutorials range widely across a diverse field of analytical approaches and topics, including: sexuality sub-cultures; shopping and entertainment; miscegenation and ‘slumming’; prostitution and ‘sexual danger’; and the rise of urban sociology. We will end the module by debating the importance of the ‘urban variable’, and its value as a distinct category of historical analysis.

Learning Objectives

i) Students will acquire knowledge and understanding of urban history as a specific discipline.
ii) Students will be able to critique the concept of ‘modernity’ in a Western framework.
ii) Students will hone their capability to understand different theoretical approaches (gender, class, sexuality) relevant to social history more broadly.
iv) Students will be able to understand the history of different countries in a comparative framework.

Skills

i) Students will enhance their ability to critically analyse different primary sources in connection with secondary literature.
ii) Students will increase their confidence and ability to orally present analysis and argument, working in groups.
iii) Students will increase their ability to organise and synthesise secondary literature in a coherent argument.

Assessment

None