| Weeks/Topics/Epigraphs | Guests | Readings/Viewings/LINKS | Due DATES |
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Week 1: On Possibilities (In which we reflect on how writing presents us with myriad possibilities for understanding, exploring, and engaging the world, and, as such, is a powerful way to see cities in fresh ways) “You have brains in your head / You have feet in your shoes / You can steer yourself / Any direction you choose.” —Dr. Seuss, “Oh, the Places You’ll Go” |
Dr. Seuss, “Oh, The Places You’ll Go” Robert Macfarlane, “The Gifts of Reading” George Saunders, “On Story” (YouTube) Excerpt from Before Sunrise, “Bring Me the Horns of Wilmington’s Cow” (YouTube) |
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Week 2: On Blind Spots (In which we look at how we overlook, ignore, exclude things in our field of vision because we are inadvertently or willfully blind to them) |
George Saunders, “In Defense of Darkness” (YouTube) Annie Dillard, Excerpts from Teju Cole’s “Blind Spot” W. H. Auden, “As I Walked Out One Evening” A Tribe Called Quest, “We the People” (YouTube) Ruddy Roye’s Instagram page Recommended: Vijay Iyer, Holding It Down |
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Week 3: On Structure |
George Saunders on not panicking: "On the Tricks of the Writing Process" (YouTube) John McPhee, “Structure” (also in Draft No. 4) David Ulin on John McPhee: “Draft No. 4: The Legendary John McPhee’s “master class in the writer’s craft” |
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Week 4: On Movement (In which we consider the relationship between movement and writing) “To escape is the greatest of pleasures.” —Virginia Woolf, “Street Haunting: A London Adventure” |
Virginia Woolf, “Street Haunting” Antonia Malachik, “The End of Walking” Lauren Goff, “Ghosts and Empties” John Edgar Wideman, “Williamsburg Bridge” Walt Whitman, “Song of the Open Road” Lana Del Ray, “Fordham Road” (YouTube) Recommended: Rachel Wetzsteon, “Thoughts While Walking” Robert Frost, “The Fear” Robert Creeley, “Walking” |
Essay #1 due |
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Week 5: On Conversation |
Tracy Kidder and Richard Todd, Good Prose |
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Week 6: On Reporting |
John McPhee, Draft No. 4 |
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Week 7: On Intimacy: The power of the personal voice |
Vivian Gornick, The Situation and the Story (Over spring break, begin reading Mehta’s Maximum City, since it’s not a tiny book!) |
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Week 8: On Memory |
William Dalrymple, "A Love Letter to Kolkata" (review of Epic City) Suketu Mehta, Maximum City Suketu Mehta, "This Land Is Their Land" |
Essay #2 due |
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Week 9: On Meaning “It is a terrible, an inexorable, law that one cannot deny the humanity of another without diminishing one’s own. In the face of one’s victim, one sees oneself. Walk through the streets of Harlem and see what we, this nation, have become.” —James Baldwin, “Fifth Avenue, Uptown” |
“The Meaning of Cities”—Hedgehog Review, Summer 2017 issue Richard Wilbur, “To The Student Protesters” James Baldwin, “Fifth Avenue, Uptown” Dave Chappelle, from “Killing Them Softly” (YouTube) (watch 2:27 to 4:12, especially 3:08 to 4:12) |
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Week 10: On Loss |
David Ulin, Sidewalking Layli Long Soldier, Whereas |
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Week 11: On Justice |
Claudia Rankine, An American Lyric John Freeman, ed. Tales of Two Americas |
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Week 12: On Vulnerability |
Edward P. Jones, Lost in the City Lauren Elkin, “Radical Flaneuserie” Masha Gessen, “Why We Must Protest” Lauren Elkin, “Donald Trump: Anti-Flaneur” Patsy Cline, “Walkin’ After Midnight” (YouTube) (lyrics here) Ava DuVernay, dir. (2014). Selma. Paramount Pictures. |
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Week 13: On Hope |
Mohsin Hamid, Exit West Rebecca Solnit and Joshua Jelly-Schapiro, eds. Nonstop Metropolis (the essays by the instructor can be safely ignored; there won’t be the immodest or uncomfortable situation of being asked about the instructor’s contribution in the collection) |
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Week 14: On Truth, Facts, Fiction, and Fakery |
Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities |
Final essay due |
