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COURSES SPRING 2009

Histart 285

GRADUATE SEMINAR: BURNING ALL ILLUSIONS: RADICAL SPATIAL THEORY IN FRANCE 1955-1975 (4 units) Thursdays, 2-5 308B Doe, CCN: 05667 Tom McDonough

This seminar explores a moment when the domains of architecture and urbanism came under radical critique from a disparate range of intellectual positions and revolutionary actions located precisely outside the sanctioned realms of professional criticism.  At stake in these critiques was a new conception of space--and particularly the space of the city--as an active element in the constitution of new subjectivities and collectivities.  from the Situationist dérive of the 1950s, through the examination of the "new towns" of postwar development, to the response to urban revolt in the USA and later France itself, this was an incredibly fertile period whose implications for societal and spatial theory are only now being fully acknowledged.  Readings to include key work by de Certeau, Debord, Foucalt, and Lefebvre.  Reading knowledge of French strongly recommended.

 

 

 

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