Culture: Cities, Makers of Modernity
In the eighteenth and increasingly in the nineteenth century, a curious thing happened: an age-old balance between large agrarian populations and small urban centers began to shift dramatically in favor of urban centers. Cities grew rapidly; this growth transformed the cul-tures of the cities—places like Paris, London, and Vienna—but it also helped create modernity. In this course, using the methods of cultural and social history, we examine the complex cultures of these modern cities. We look at the hopes that cities engendered in their populations – and examine the deep fears that the growth of cities provoked. What new pleasures did they provide? What new dangers did they create? And, throughout the course, we seek to understand how the city helped make modernity.
While we seek to understand the phenomenon of urban growth and the creation of modernity on a European scale, we will focus our attention on the city that Walter Benjamin called “the capital of the nineteenth century”: Paris. (The historian Patrice Higonnet went even further, calling it the “capital of the world”—but that is a story for another time.)
Department: Division of Arts and Humanities
University: Quest University Canada
Years offered: 2014-2021
- HUM2201 – 2016-17-01-B2 Culture-Cities, Makers of Modernity syllabus – Lambelet
- HUM2201 – 2014-15-02-B1 Cities Capitals of Modernity syllabus – Lambelet
- HUM2201 – 2016-17-01-B3 Culture-Cities, Makers of Modernity syllabus – Lambelet
- HUM2201 – 2017-18-02-B3 Culture Cities, Makers of Modernity syllabus – Lambelet
- HUM2201 – 2017-18-02-B2 Culture Cities Makers of Modernity syllabus – Lambelet
- HUM2201 – 2018-19-01-B3 Culture Cities, Makers of Modernity syllabus – Lambelet