...As the
moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually
I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’
eyes-- a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees
that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the
last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man
must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into
an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face
for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for
wonder.
-
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Is
New York an exemplar of or exception to the “American Dream”? Is it at the
edge or center of American culture and politics? These courses attempt to
answer this question by exploring New York City’s cultural history, grounded
in an understanding of New York's literature, architecture, and politics. Stretching from the arrival of Dutch settlers
to the present, the course pursues New York’s version of the American Dream
through six interrelated themes:
Identity the
nature of the individual, self-reliance, liberty, the city as threat to/theater
for difference
The Frontier ‘manmade’ v. ‘natural’ landscape, urban ‘frontiers, ’ American anti-urbanism
Mobility material
success/failure, social and spatial movement, status, class consciousness and conflict
Modernization industrial growth, wage labor, bureaucracy, consumer culture, large-scale
institutions
Democracy the city and metropolis as agents or enemies of democracy, equality
vs. liberty
Inclusion/Exclusion race, ethnicity, gender, class, religion, the
process of assimilation, nativism
These themes are interwoven in the tour units we shall study
(The order and arrangement may
change. For this year's order and course expectations, please go to course
requirements page):
I Lower Manhattan
Origins: Native Americans, Knickerbockers and the New Republic, 1609-1825
II The Lower East Side
City of Immigrants: From the “Five Points” to the Present
III Brooklyn Bridge and Brooklyn
Heights
The New Metropolis in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, 1825-1914
IV Skyscrapers and Greenwich
Village
The “Roaring Twenties,” Radicalism and Bohemia, 1919-29
V Harlem
Black Metropolis: From the Harlem Renaissance to the Present
VI Central Park
Whose Park Is It Anyway?