CLCS 310 The Culture of Cities: Sustainability
The modern city is not only a material and social space, but also an object of cultural imagination. This course examines how cities are represented, interpreted, and reimagined through cultural texts such as literature, film, art, and media, and how these representations shape urban identities, practices, and transformations. With a central focus on social justice, the course explores how cultural narratives construct and contest questions of inclusion, exclusion, inequality, and belonging in urban contexts. Students analyze how representations of the city both reflect and influence social hierarchies, migration, displacement, and civic participation, and how cultural production can reinforce or challenge structures of power. Through engagement with cultural texts and using the city of Zurich itself as a classroom to study inclusion and exclusion and themes of social justice, students develop interdisciplinary approaches to understanding how urban imaginaries shape—and are shaped by—social and ethical dynamics.
Offered
Every Three Years (J-term or May Interim Session)