CITYPHILIA Syllabus Spring 2008

For a PDF version of the syllabus, click here. Please note, however, that the syllabus no doubt will change as the semester progresses to accommodate your interests and the needs of the conference. Please keep an eye on the online syllabus.

Jan 28 - (M): Introduction: The Production of Space

Henri Lefebvre, "The Specificity of the City" (1968), in Visual Culture: Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies, eds. Joanne Morra and Marquand Smith (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), 3: 102-105. (PDF)

Michel de Certeau, "Railway Navigation and Incarceration" (1980), in Visual Culture: Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies, eds. Joanne Morra and Marquand Smith (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), 3: 114-116. (PDF)

Jean Baudrillard, "The Ecstacy of Communication" (1968), in Visual Culture: Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies, eds. Joanne Morra and Marquand Smith (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), 3: 227-234. (PDF)

Feb 4 - (M):   The Cartographic City

Lucia Nuti, "Mapping Places: Chorography and Vision in the Renaissance," in Mappings, ed. Denis Cosgrove (London: Reaktion Books, 1999), 90-108.

Bronwen Wilson, "From Myth to Metropole: Sixteenth-Century Printed Maps of Venice," The World in Venice: Print, the City, and Early Modern Identity (Toronto: University of Toronto, 2005), 23-69.

For terms for week 2, click here

For link to Jacopo de' Barbari map, click here

Feb 5 - (Tu): Lucy Orta, Vollum, 7 pm **

Feb 11 - (M):   The City as Urban Theatre

Sharon T. Strocchia, "Theaters of Everyday Life," in Renaissance Florence: A Social History, ed. Roger J. Crum and John T. Paoletti (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 55-80.

Marvin Trachtenberg, Dominion of the Eye (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), ix-xviii, 27-41, 245-262.

Images of Florence and Venice (PDF uploaded 02.12)

Feb 15 - (F): Nick Cave, Vollum 6:30 pm. **

Feb 16 - (Sa): Nick Cave, workshop/talk for Reed students, faculty and local educators **
Saturday, February 16, 11 a.m.
location TBA (probably in the Gerding Theater, downtown, near Powell's)

Feb 18 - (M):  Streetscapes

Rose Marie San Juan, Rome: A City Out of Print (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), 23-55, 187-217.

Streetscapes images (PDF)

Feb 22 - (F): Io Palmer, Eliot 314 6:30 pm **

Feb 24 - (Sun): Faith Ringgold, Kaul Auditorium 3 pm.**
Followed by a private reception including art department faculty and students and Black History Month distinguished guests in the Gray College Center

Feb 25- (M):     The City and Surveillance

Foucault, Michel.   Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Random House, 1977), 195-228.

Dana Katz, "The Ghetto and the Gaze in Early Modern Venice," forthcoming essay with the University of Pennsylvania Press.

Images of the ghetto (PDF)

Feb 27 - (W): Kianga Ford, 6:30 p.m. Eliot 314
Followed by a walk-though and reception for public school educators at the Cooley**

Feb 29 (F): mid-term project due at 5 pm; one hard copy to Dana's office and email PDF version to both professors (click here)

Mar 3 - (M): The City's Alterity

Stefanie B. Siegmund, The Medici State and the Ghetto of Florence: The Construction of an Early Modern Jewish Community (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006), 1-39, 201-222.

alterity images (PDF)

SATURDAY, MARCH 8: Professor Martin Powers, Professor of Chinese Art and Visual Culture, The University of Michigan
4:00 pm, Psychology 105 Auditorium**
"China, Roger Fry, and the Cultural Politics of the Brushstroke"

Mar 10 - (M):   The Hybridized City

Angel Rama, "The Ordered City," in The Lettered City, trans. John Charles Chasteen (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996), 1-15.

Thomas Cummins, "A Tale of Two Cities," in Converging Cultures: Art and Identity in Spanish America (New York: The Brooklyn Museum and Harry N. Abrams, 1996), 157-170.

Dana Leibsohn, "Colony and Cartography: Shifting Signs on Indigenous Maps of New Spain," in Reframing the Renaissance: Visual Culture in Europe and Latin America, 1450-1650, ed. Claire Farago (New Haven: Yale, 1995), 265-281.

Hybridized city images (PDF)

March 15-23 Spring Break


Mar 24 - (M): The Glocal City: Guangzhou
"Glocal" is a neologism popularized in the China field by Hou Hanru. In this conference we will consider how artists (Cao Fei in particular) and museum curators (Hou Hanru) are grappling with the problem of urban identity, looking at the southern Pearl River Delta commerical entrepot of Guangzhou (just north of Hong Kong) as a case study. We will continue the discussion of the hybridity of the city from the week before spring break, but consider it within a transnational and global context by thinking about the city as defined by Baudrillard.

Thomas J. Berghuis, "Considering Huanjing: Positioning Experimental Art in China," positions : east asia cultures critique 12, no. 3 (2004): 711-731.   (Project Muse)

Hou Hanru, "Beyond:   An Extraordinary Space of Experimentation for Modernization," in The Second Guangzhou Triennial, Beyond:   An Extraordinary Space of Experimentation for Modernization (Guangzhou:   Lingnan meishu chubanshe, 2005), 24-37 (e-reserve and main reserve)

"Realities and Other Absurdities:   A Conversation with Cao Fei," interview by Joni Low with translation assistance by Stephen Tong, Yishu (December 2006):   73-81.   (e-reserve)

Maya Kovskaya, "Heroes of the Mundane:   The Syncretic Imagination of Cao Fei," Yishu (December 2006):   82-85. (e-reserves)

Objects/images to study:

Cao Fei's website http://www.caofei.com see HIP HOP GUANGZHOU video (and for comparative purposes, the other Hip Hop videos)

See Cao Fei's and Ou Ning's collaborative project SAN YUAN LI video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7zf9uLKGNA

The Second Guangzhou Triennial, Beyond:   An Extraordinary Space of Experimentation for Modernization (Guangzhou:   Lingnan meishu chubanshe, 2005).

For comparative purposes, see

Sunday, March 30 Screening of SUZHOU RIVER 7 pm ETC 208 potluck?

Mar 31 - (M): The City In (And Out of) Focus: Shanghai 
Shanghai is a megalopolis on the central eastern coast of China, midway between Beijing in the north and Guangzhou in the south. How can we visually apprehend the hyperreal space of the city of Shanghai? Do the processes of flané and dérive help us make visual sense of Shanghai? More specifically, does the way that Lou Ye, the director of the movie "Suzhou River" (2001) encourage us to see the city in the movie speak to either of those modes of looking? And does it differ significantly from the ways that the painter of the twelfth-century handscroll "Spring Festival on the River" tries to get us to see the city of Kaifeng along the Bian river (the city represented in the painting)?

Guy Debord, "Theory of the Dérive," in Visual Culture: Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies, eds. Joanne Morra and Marquard Smith (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), 3: 77-81. (e-reserve)

Walter Benjamin, "Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century," excerpted in Rethinking Architecture: A Reader in Cultural History , ed. Neil Leach (London: Routledge, 1997), 33-40. ( PDF)

Zhang Zhen, "Urban Dreamscape, Phantom Sisters, and the Identity of an Emergent Art Cinema," in The Urban Generation:   Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century ed. Zhang Zhen (Durham:   Duke University Press, 2007), 344-387.  (e-reserve)

Objects/images to study:

"Suzhou River" (IMS reserve)

For comparative purposes, see the Song-dynasty handscroll Qingming shanghe tu (Spring Festival on the River) available online through the Chinese Humanities web portal

To view the scroll, please do the following:

1. Use Firefox.

2. Make the following changes in Firefox preferences
Under "Content," uncheck "Block pop-up windows."
Under "Tabs," choose the "New pages should be opened in a new
window."

Try scrolling to and from left right and left.
Try to click any part of the scroll to get a separate window with a
larger image of the same part of the scroll. You may have to click a
part of the new window to get the closest image.
Try to do the scrolling in the new windows that pop up along the way.

3. email Lisa if you forget the user name and password

Apr 3 - (Th): Bryan Wolf, Professor of American Art History, Stanford University, public lecture in Bio 19, 5:30 pm
"Teapots and Air Pumps: Science, Sentiment and Painting in the 18th Century." **

weekend: SCREENING OF "MORNING SUN" documentary on the Cultural Revolution by Carma Hinton, Sunday 7-9 in Bio 19 (this documentary is being screened for the Art 201 and Iconoclasm conferences as well)**

Apr 7 - (M): The City as Political Space: Beijing 
Beijing is the capital of China, located in the north. The imperially-constructed Forbidden City is its physical and symbolic center. Tiananmen Square, in front of the Forbidden City (to the south of Tiananmen Gate), was constructed and developed in the Maoist era (1949-1976) and is still changing today, though it, too, continues to be the embodiment of a particular state ideology. It might even be argued that the portrait of Mao hanging at the Gate of Heavenly Peace (Tiananmen) surveys all below through a panoptic gaze. Is there room for other visions of the city? How do artists represent, shape and interact with this space? In your preparation for conference, please chose one artist's work that you would like to discuss; email Lisa with one or two images in particular before Monday at 4:00.

Wu Hung, Remaking Beijing: Tiananmen Square and the Creation of a Political Space (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), chapter 5 "Art of the Square: From Subject to Site." (e-reserve)

Francesca Dal Lago, "Space and Public: Site Specificity in Beijing," Art Journal 59, no. 1 (Spring 2000): 74-87 (JSTOR) optional

Apr 14 - (M): The City in Ruins: Beijing
Beijing is undergoing a transformation. The hutong alley-ways of the imperial era and the twentieth-century are rapidly being destroyed and neighborhoods are being replaced with strip malls and apartment buildings. The city environment is both in a state of ruin and expansion. The natural environment, too, is undergoing rapid change as the sprawl of the city extends and smog and pollution settles over the surrounding northern plains. In this conference we will focus specifically on the issue of ruin and decay, destruction and loss, as interpreted in the realm of visual art. Keep in mind Baudrillard's discussion of these issues. Please select the work of an artist active in Beijing (from the readings or from any of the artist and gallery websites linked here) to discuss in conference; email Lisa with one or two images in particular you'd like to discuss before 4:00 on Monday.

Wu Hung, "Ruins," in Transience:   Chinese Experimental Art at the End of the Twenieth Century (Chicago:   University of Chicago Press,   1999), 80-126. (4 copies main reserve)

Objects/images to study:

Continua-Beijing/Changqing hualan (Beijing:   Galleria Continua, 2004). (main reserve)

Neil Leach and Xu Wei-guo, eds, Fast Forward, Hot Spot, Brain Cells:   Architecture Biennial Beijing 2004 (Hong Kong:   Map Book Publishers, 2004). (main reserve)

Huang Rui, ed., Beijing 798:   Reflections on Art, Architecture, and Society in China (Hong Kong:   timezone 8 + Thinking Hands, 2004). (main reserve)

Zhang Huan performance works (IMS reserve).   See also his website, http://www.zhanghuan.com

April 18 - (F): final project due by 5 pm; bring hard copies to Dana's and Lisa's offices and email PDF file to both professors (click here)

Apr 21 - (M):  The City as History: Hong Kong 
Until July 7, 1997, Hong Kong was a British colony, complete with portraits of Queen Elizabeth smiling dimly from the interior walls of government buildings. In this conference we will address the problem of how "colonial space" was constructed (what does that term mean?) and how it is now being reconstructed by the PRC state through public sculpture and architecture. At the end of the session we will consider some personal responses of artists to official production of the city.

Ackbar Abbas, "Building on Disappearance:   Hong Kong architecture and colonial space," in The Cultural Studies Reader , 2d ed., ed. Simon During (New York:   Routledge, 1993), 146-166. (e-reserve)

David Clarke, Hong Kong Art (Durham:   Duke University Press, 2002), excerpts "Public Sculpture and Chinese National Identity," 132-150; "The Visual Production of a Transition," 150-167. (e-reserve)

Apr 28- (M): The City as Urban Theater: Hong Kong
In this conference we will consider the notion of architecture from the point of view of the city as it is represented and understood in local artist's work. Please read the Clarke excerpt from Hong Kong art. I will screen part of the documentary during conference. We'll devote the rest of the session to discussing the papers (marked in blue on the map). Stephanie Snyder will attend the conference.

David Clarke, "Graffiti," in Hong Kong Art (Durham:   Duke University Press, 2002), 175-184. (e-reserve)

"The King of Kowloon" (1998, 29 minutes). (IMS reserve) Video to be screened during conference

David Clarke, "The Culture of a Border Within:   Hong Kong Art and China," Art Journal 59, no. 2 (Summer 2000):   80-101. (JSTOR) OPTIONAL

Roland Barthes, "Non Multa Sed Multum," in Cy Twombly : fifty years of works on paper, curated by Julie Sylvester with essays by Simon Schama and Roland Barthes ( Munich: Schirmer/Mosel, 2004), 23-40. (e-reserve)

**Artist's talks and talks by art historians are listed on this page as a service to you; attendance is recommended, of course, but optional.