Department of Spanish and Portuguese

Prerequisite:  HISP-S 324 or HISP-S 328 or Consent of Department.
Course Title: High-Rises, Slums, Historic Centers, Colonial Plans: City Forms in the Hispanic World

The course explores the spatial forms of the city in the Hispanic world through the analysis of urban cultural products and experiences. Our approach to the city will involve two levels of analysis. First, we will examine the structures of urban space to identify the fundamental forms that compose Hispanic cities. Even if modern and global cities have emerged as vast and often unstructured units of homogeneous space, the course will aim to discover the underlying order, or disorder, organizing the maps of the cities. Second, we will study how local, regional and national cultures have shaped the development of urban forms throughout the history of the Hispanic world. By examining literary, visual and architectural materials, we will explore the materialization of culture in urban space in various cities of Latin America and Spain.
   
To carry out this double task, the course will include two kinds of materials. First, we will examine urban theories on the nature and history of city forms, which we will divide into seven types: the Greek polis, the Roman urbs, the Italian city-state, the colonial city, the modern metropolis, the global megacity, the informal city or slum. Second, we will study cultural materials (novels, architecture, films and other visual products) linked to specific Hispanic cities. The course will include several study cases that can serve as both exemplary and singular models of the Hispanic city. Some of the cities may be Barcelona, Buenos Aires, Havana, Lima, Madrid, and Mexico City.

This course seeks to compare urban typologies to understand the abstract and concrete ways in which space determines the social and cultural life of human communities in the Hispanic world. The ultimate goal of the course is to awaken what we may call our “spatial consciousness.” The fact that Hispanic cities are significantly different from North American cities, but also the fact that, in globalization, cities are part of a sort of urban world order, should contribute in a positive way to the awakening of this consciousness.

HISP-S 424     #23386     (3)     9:35A-10:50A      TR     BH 313     Prof. Edgar Illas

• A&H
• What are CASE requirements?