TOPICS IN AMERICAN URBAN HISTORY: URBAN SPACE
History 336-01 -- Spring 2008 -- Peter C. Baldwin
Wednesdays, 2:00 to 5:00, Wood Hall 4A

"Space is social morphology: it is to lived experience what form itself is to the living organism." -- Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space

Classes before break:
Classes after break:

Office Hours and Contact Information:

I will hold office hours in Wood Hall 229 on Monday (1:30 to 3:30) and Tuesday (10 to 12; 1:30 to 3:30) and by appointment. My office phone is 860-486-3854, but other than during my office hours it is best to email me at pbaldwin@uconn.edu

 

Overview of the Course

This course will explore ways in which historians have interpreted the physical space of the urban United States. We will consider how urban space has been seen as an expression of – as well as an influence on – society, politics and culture.

Rather than conduct archival research, participants in this class will develop an understanding of recent urban historiography by reading, discussing and reviewing selected works. We will discuss research methodology and the use of theory primarily in relation to works published by professional historians. The major graded component of the class will be an historiographical essay on a topic developed in consultation with the instructor.
 

Preparing For Class

Class sessions will usually revolve around discussions of the reading and the issues raised in it. On a typical Tuesday evening, each student should post on HuskyCT a well-crafted paragraph of analytical comments about the reading. This posting should avoid summarizing the material. Some of the issues that these paragraphs might consider are:

  • the author's point of view or theoretical basis
  • the types of evidence marshaled in support of the book's argument
  • the methods used by the author
  • the book's contribution to an understanding of the week's theme
  • connections between this book and readings for other weeks
  • questions for discussion raised by the book

An ideal posting would make one main point persuasively rather than offer wider-ranging comments. Please resist the temptation to attack the substance or method of the reading. Focus instead on what it does, and what it does well. We will have ample opportunity in class to discuss its flaws and weaknesses. All students should read all postings. I reserve the right to deny credit for late postings.

Class Discussion

Students will have two types of responsibility for class discussion:

1. All students are expected to actively engage in a discussion of the main readings and their connection to broader scholarly issues. Students should be able to respond to ideas voiced by other class members, instead of simply delivering monologues on topics of their own choosing. Comments, disagreements and questions should be expressed in a tone of respect for all members of the class.

2. Each student who has read a supplemental article or book will be asked to give a brief presentation in the second half of class. In the presentation, the student should briefly describe the content of the reading, and provide some commentary connecting the reading to issues raised in the class discussion. The presentation may go as long as, but should under no circumstances exceed, ten minutes. Following each presentation, there will be time for questions and comments from other class members.

Assignments:

1. Show and Tell: On a typical week, one student will give a carefully-prepared oral presentation in which she or he will "read" an urban space historically. The presenter will show the class one or more images of a specific urban space that relates to the topic of that week's class session (e.g., a photograph, engraving or map not contained within the assigned readings). The presenter will then explain how that space can be interpreted to illustrate, complicate or challenge the main ideas in one or more of that week's assigned readings. The presentation itself should take no more than 10 minutes, and should serve as a bridge to class discussion.

2. Review of Reviews (due March 5): Each student will write an essay of roughly 2000 words (about 7 pages) assessing how historians and other scholars evaluated one of the following assigned books:

Locate as many significant scholarly reviews as you can, using America: History and Life and Jstor, and focus on what you consider to be the three most notable. These should preferably be reviews of substantial length in major historical journals, although you might also find interesting insights in regional journals or journals in other scholarly disciplines. Were the reviewers generally in agreement about the book? What criteria did each reader use to analyze the book's quality or importance? What other differences are apparent in the style, tone or content of each review? What surprises or disappoints you about the reviews? What would you have done differently?

3. Book Review (March 26):  Each student will write a review of a supplemental book. The review should be about 2,000 words (about 7 pages), and written in the style of a "featured review" in the American Historical Review or Reviews in American History. The main purpose of the review is to evaluate the work's contribution to historical literature. Any review of a book that appears on the syllabus after March 26 will be due on the appropriate day.

4. Term paper (April 30): Each student is expected to produce, by the end of the semester, an historiographical essay that explores how historians have handled a significant issue in American Urban History. You may choose one of two approaches to this essay:

a) Review of Recent Books

One approach would be to write a review essay examining a cluster of at least four relatively recent scholarly books published by major presses. First, find out what has been published in your general area of interest, then focus the topic to works that explore a meaningful, shared issue. Then, select the most important works on that topic. Don't start out with such a broad area of interest (such as "New York" or "Women") that you are overwhelmed by a diffuse body of literature.

The review essay should be in the style of a review essay in the Journal of Urban History, and should not exceed 4,000 words (about 12-14 pages). In addition to very briefly summarizing each work, a good essay would focus on examining how the authors handled the issue. Among the questions that you might consider are the following:

  • What are the main areas of agreement among the scholars? 
  • What are their main areas of difference? 
  • What types of sources have scholars used? 
  • What theoretical frameworks have they used?

b) Survey of the Literature

Another approach would be to cover a broader range of literature, including scholarly articles and books published before 2000, and to assess how the historiography has evolved over time. The review should not summarize individual works but should examine key themes in the body of literature you have chosen (see the questions above). Again, the essay should not exceed 4,000 words.

The topic should be broad enough to encompass a significant range of books and articles, but narrow enough that the literature may be mastered by the end of the semester. Among the many possibilities are the following:

  • Periodizing the history of urban space.
  • The New England village.
  • How was space organized in early seaports? How and why did that change?
  • Urban slave rebellions.
  • Antebellum urban blacks, North and South.
  • Social geography of the industrializing city, 1800-1860 (or periodization of your choice).
  • Why did some nineteenth-century cities grow more than others?
  • Relationship between "neighborhood" and "community," 1870-1945
  • Annexation of suburban territory.
  • Coping with natural disaster.
  • Emergence of Chinatowns.
  • The playground movement, 1890-1930.
  • Slum v. Ghetto: a useful distinction?.
  • White ethnic neighborhoods, 1870-1950.
  • Urban Renewal: Tragic mistake or necessary evil?
  • Urban highway construction, 1930-1980
  • Understanding "white flight," 1945-1980.
  • Suburbs and exclusion.
  • Women in the suburbs.
  • "Community" in the suburbs.
  • Cities and the "Military-Industrial Complex."

A two-page proposal for the term paper is due on Wednesday, Feb. 13. The first page should outline the central question or topic to be explored. The second page should be an annotated bibliography of possible works for consideration; it should describe each work in a short sentence or two.

Papers will be due in draft on Wednesday, April 30, when we will meet to hear presentations by each student. I will respond with comments on each paper by 4 p.m. on Friday. The final revised paper will be due on Wednesday, May 5 at 1:00 p.m.

Grades will be calculated as follows:

  Pre-class postings & Class Discussion 25%
  Show & Tell 10%
  Review of Reviews 15%
  Book Review 15%
  Historiographical Paper 35%
.. TOTAL 100%

Ground Rules:

  1. The syllabus sets outs the basic requirements and schedule for the course, but students are responsible for any changes announced in class and on HuskyCT.
  2. Attendance at every class is expected.
  3. If you have a legitimate documented reason for missing class, please see me immediately; do not wait until the end of the semester.
  4. All written work must be typed, double-spaced, and in a standard font size (usually 10 to 12). Endnotes do not count in suggested page limits.
  5. Edit all written work carefully for style, spelling, and grammar. Error-ridden writing will lower your grade.
  6. All written work must be fully footnoted; parenthetical references are not acceptable. The preferred form is Turabian/Chicago, and Babbidge Librarys Research Guide, "Turabian Citations," [ http://www.lib.uconn.edu/using/finding/guides/turabib.pdf ] should be adequate for the needs of this course.
  7. Deadlines are not flexible. The course requires a great deal of reading, writing, and thinking, and staying on track is essential to success.

Reading:

Assigned books are on sale at the Co-op; two of them are also available online in their entirety. Most articles and chapters are accessible online via hyperlinks from this syllabus or via HuskyCT. Be sure to get a UConn proxy account immediately.  

Schedule:

Please read all assigned readings in advance of the class session. Bear in mind that many of the assigned books and articles are relevant to more than one topic. As you collect your thoughts for each meeting, consider the relevance of previous readings to the current weeks topic.

 1/23: Experiencing Space

All read:

  • Lisa Tolbert, Constructing Townscapes: Space and Society in Antebellum Tennessee (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999).
  • Jane Jacobs, chapter 2 of The Death and Life of American Cities (1961)
  • M. Gottdiener, excerpt from The Social Production of Urban Space (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985)

1/30: Reading Urban Space

All read:

  • David M. Henkin, City Reading: Written Words and Public Spaces in Antebellum New York (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998).
  • Kevin Lynch, chapters 2 and 3 from The Image of the City (1960)

Supplemental Readings:

  • Elsa Barkley Brown and Gregg D. Kimball, "Mapping the Terrain of Black Richmond," Journal of Urban History 21 no. 3 (1995), 296-346.
  • Christopher Thale, "The Informal World of Police Patrol: New York City in the Early Twentieth Century," Journal of Urban History 33, no. 2 (Jan. 2007), 183-216.
  • Louis Wirth, "Urbanism as a Way of Life," American Journal of Sociology 44, no. 1 (July, 1938), 1-24.  

Book Review Suggestion:

  • Dolores Hayden, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995).

2/6 Urban Growth and Centrality

All read:

Supplemental Reading:

Book Review Suggestions:

  • Gray Brechin, Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999)
  • Eugene P. Moehring, Urbanism and Empire in the Far West, 1840-1890 (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1994)

2/13 Urban Identity

Paper proposal due.

All read:

  • Carl Abbott, Political Terrain: Washington D.C., from Tidewater Town to Global Metropolis (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999).
  • Doreen Massey, "Places and their Pasts," History Workshop, issue no. 39 (1995), 182-92.
  • Yi-Fu Tuan, "Introduction," and chapters 6 and 12 from Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (1977)

Supplemental Readings:

Book Review Suggestions:

  • Thomas S. Bremer, Blessed with Tourists: The Borderlands of Religion and Tourism in San Antonio (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004).
  • Gavin James Campbell, Music and the Making of a New South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004)
  • Hasia R. Diner, Lower East Side Memories: A Jewish Place in America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000)
  • J. Mark Souther, New Orleans on Parade: Tourism and the Transformation of the Crescent City (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006)

2/20 Public Space and Public Discourse

All read:

Supplemental Readings:

  • Wayne Ashley, "The Stations of the Cross: Christ, Politics and Processions on New York's Lower East Side," in Robert Orsi, ed., Gods of the City: Religion and the American Urban Landscape (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 341-366
  • Craig Calhoun, "Introduction: Habermas and the Public Sphere," in Calhoun, ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992), 1-48.
  • Philip J. Ethington, "Recasting Urban Political History: Gender, the Public, the Household, and Political Participation in Boston and San Francisco During the Progressive Era," Social Science History, 18 (Summer, 1992), 301-33.
  • Amy S. Greenberg, "Pirates, Patriots, and Public Meetings: Antebellum Expansion and Urban Culture," Journal of Urban History 31, no. 5 (July 2005), 634-650.
  • Lynn Hollen Lees, "Urban Public Space and Imagined Communities in the 1980s and 1990s," Journal of Urban History 20, no. 4 (August 1994).
  • Bradford Verter, "Interracial Festivity and Power in Antebellum New York: The Case of Pinkster," Journal of Urban History 28, no. 4 (May 2002), 398-428.
  • Diane Winston, "`The Cathedral of the Open Air': The Salvation Army's Sacralization of Secular Space, New York City, 1880-1910," in Robert Orsi, ed., Gods of the City: Religion and the American Urban Landscape (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 367-392.

Book Review Suggestions:

  • Robert Orsi, ed., Gods of the City: Religion and the American Urban Landscape (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999).

2/27 Space and Power

All read:

  • Mike Davis, "Fortress L.A.," in City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (London: Verso, 1990).
  • Michel Foucault, excerpt from Discipline and Punish
  • Jeffrey Weeks, "Foucault for Historians," History Workshop 14 (Autumn 1982), 106-119. 
  • Examine the most recent issue of the Journal of Urban History, especially review essays. 
  • Class handouts

Supplemental Readings:

3/5 Quarantines and Health

Review of Reviews Due

All read:

  • Nayan Shah, Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco's Chinatown (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).

Supplemental Readings:

Book Review Suggestions:

  • Peter Baldwin [not me], Disease and Democracy: The Industrialized World Faces AIDS (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005).
  • Susan Craddock, City of Plagues: Disease, Poverty, and Deviance in San Francisco (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000)
  • Natalia Molina, Fit to Be Citizens?: Public Health and Race in Los Angeles, 1879–1939 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006

3/12 Spring break  

Back to top 

3/19 The Urban Body

  • Jeff Wiltse, Contested Waters: A Social History of Swimming Pools in America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007).
  • Tera W. Hunter, "Dancing and Carousing the Night Away," in To `Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women's Lives and Labors after the Civil War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997).

Supplemental Reading:

  • Thelma Willis Foote, "`We Shall Never be Quite Safe': Policing the Fugitive Body of Colonial New York's Servile Population," in Black and White Manhattan: The History of Racial Formation in Colonial New York City (New York; Oxford University Press, 2004).
  • Edward Steven Slavishak, "Artificial Limbs and Industrial Workers' Bodies in Turn-of-the-Century Pittsburgh," Journal of Social History 37, no 2 (Winter 2003), 365-388.
  • Robert J. Swan, "Prelude and Aftermath of the Doctors' Riot of 1788: A Religious Interpretation of White and Black Reactions to Grave Robbing," New York History 81, no. 4 (2000), 417-456.

Book Review Suggestion:

  • William J. Mitchell, Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003)

3/26: Space and Sexuality

Book Review Due

All read:

  • Alecia P. Long, The Great Southern Babylon: Sex, Race, and Respectability in New Orleans, 1865-1920 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2004)  

Supplemental Readings:

  • Christopher Agee, "Gayola: Police Professionalization and the Politics of San Francisco's Gay Bars, 1950-1968," Journal of the History of Sexuality 15, no. 3 (July 2006), 462-489.
  • Josh Sides, "Examining the Postwar Sex District in San Francisco," Journal of Urban History 32, no. 3 (March 2006), 355-379.
  • Bryant Simon, "New York Avenue: The Life and Death of Gay Spaces in Atlantic City, New Jersey, 1920-1990," Journal of Urban History 28, no. 3 (March 2002), 300-327.

Book Review Suggestions:

  • George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 (New York: Basic Books, 1994)
  • Elizabeth Alice Clement, Love for Sale: Courting, Treating, and Prostitution in New York City, 1900-1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006)
  • Chad Heap, Slumming: Sexual and Racial Encounters in American Nightlife, 1885-1940 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008)
  • Mary Ting Yi Lui, The Chinatown Trunk Mystery: Murder, Miscegenation, and Other Dangerous Encounters in Turn-of-the-Century New York City (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005)

4/2 Spaces of Consumption

All read:

Supplemental Readings:

Book Review Suggestions:

  • Robin F. Bachin, Building the South Side: Urban Space and Civic Culture in Chicago, 1890-1919 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004)
  • Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York: Knopf, 2003)
  • Nicholas Dagen Bloom, Merchant of Illusion: James Rouse, America's Salesman of the Businessman's Utopia (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2004)
  • Sharon Zukin, Point of Purchase: How Shopping Changed American Culture (New York: Routledge, 2003)

4/9 Geographies of Race

All read:

Supplemental Readings:

  • Clare Corbould, "Streets, Sounds and Identity in Interwar Harlem," Journal of Social History 40, no. 4 (Summer 2007), 859-894.
  • Joseph Heathcott, "Black Archipelago: Politics and Civic Life in the Jim Crow City," Journal of Social History 38, no. 3 (Spring 2005), 423-453.
  • Andrew Hurley, "Rats, Roaches, and Smoke: African American Environmentalism," in Environmental Inequalities: Class, Race, and Industrial Pollution in Gary, Indiana, 1945-1960 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995)
  • Kevin M. Kruse, "The Politics of Race and Public Space: Desegregation, Privatization, and the Tax Revolt in Atlanta," Journal of Urban History 31, no. 5 (July 2005), 610-633.
  • Todd M. Michney, "Race, Violence, and Urban Territoriality: Cleveland's Little Italy and the 1966 Hough Uprising," Journal of Urban History 32, no. 3 (March 2006), 404-428.
  • Carl Husemoller Nightingale, "The Transnational Contexts of Early Twentieth-Century American Urban Segregation," Journal of Social History 39, no. 3 (Spring 2006), 667-702.
  • Robert Orsi, "The Religious Boundaries of an In-Between People: Street Festes and the Problem of the Dark-Skinned Other in Italian Harlem, 1920-1990," in Robert Orsi, ed., Gods of the City: Religion and the American Urban Landscape (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 257-288.
  • Robert Zecker, "Where Everyone Goes to Meet Everyone Else": The Translocal Creation of a Slovak Immigrant Community," Journal of Social History 38, no. 2 (Winter 2004), 423-453.

Book Review Suggestions:

  • Kenneth D. Durr, Behind the Backlash: White Working-Class Politics in Baltimore, 1940-1980 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007)
  • Jill Lepore, New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005)
  • Robert O. Self, American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland (Princeton:  Princeton University Press, 2003).

  4/16 Research week: no class meeting  

  4/23 Suburbs

  • Dolores Hayden, Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-2000 ( New York: Pantheon, 2003)
  • Robert Bruegmann, Sprawl: A Compact History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005)

Supplemental Readings:

Book Review Suggestions:

  • Rosalyn Baxandall and Elizabeth Ewen, Picture Windows: How the Suburbs Happened (New York: Basic Books, 2000)
  • Robert M. Fogelson, Bourgeois Nightmares: Suburbs, 1870-1930 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005).

4/30 Presentation and Discussion of Paper Drafts
5/7 Revised research papers due, with copies of drafts, 1:00 p.m.