HIST46730: The City in History

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• To develop students interpretative skills and analytical abilities through use of a range of primary sources relating to the history of cities from the ancient to contemporary times and a variety of case studies across the globe
• To develop students understanding of, and critical engagement with, urban history as a historical sub-discipline, as well as approaches to the study of cities from archaeology, geography, art and architectural history, sociology, and anthropology
• To develop students critical engagement with the recent global turn in urban history

• Human history is a story of the growth of the city. Ancient, medieval, early modern, and modern empires and contemporary nation states all have attempted to shape their territories with the use of resources and power concentrated in their capital cities, and yet these large urban centres have always had a life of their own. Cities have also been centres of innovation and change in human society for thousands of years; and over time, more and more of us have come to live in cities. The urbanisation of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is only the last one among several that underscored the importance of cities for human societies. In the early twenty-first century, a milestone was passed now, more than half of the population of the world live in urban areas. The proportion continues to grow by the middle of the twenty-first century, it seems likely that two-thirds of humans will be city-dwellers. This is not just because there are more cities it is also because cities have become bigger. However, while urbanisation produced metropolises and large conurbations of today, some cities have also shrunk and lost importance due to a range of factors, from the loss of key functions to competition with other cities and the loss of their hinterlands significance in the age of global cities.
• This module explores the development of cities through history by looking at several key themes in urban history and a range of examples across time and space. European nineteenth- and twentieth-century urbanisation is critically re-examined in the broader comparative framework of earlier periods, other areas of the globe, and factors causing decline. To what extent colonial histories as well as processes of and approaches to decolonisation can be applied to cities is also explored. Urban segregation has been analysed in scholarship with respect to class, gender, and race, whereas scholars have also explored the multitude of connections between cities and the environment, from human-induced changing climate to catastrophic events such as urban floods and fires to the spread of diseases and epidemics. Understanding how cities function within specific and historically changing constraints of empire, nation state and global capital is helpful for devising strategies to tackle urban problems. Finally, moving away from exploring cities function within empires and modern states, recent scholarship has explored the global city with its new geographies of centrality and marginality, as well as other ways urban and global history intersect methodologically.

Subject-specific Knowledge:

• Advanced knowledge and understanding of aspects of the global history of cities
• A knowledge and understanding of aspects of the advanced historiography of cities, and of relevant interdisciplinary literature

Subject-specific Skills:

• To recognise and historicise the different kinds of cities and urbanisation across different historical periods
• To synthesize theoretical literature in urban history with historical research on specific cities
• To recognise the implications of the 'global turn' in urban history and how it contributes to the rethinking of the role of urbanisation comparatively and in a global context

Key Skills:

• To acquire confidence to undertake research into the history of cities
• To develop appropriate skills of analysis and interpretation with the use of diverse primary sources and interdisciplinary methodology
• To interrogate the link between the history of cities and contemporary urban problems

• Seminars and group discussion require students to reflect on and discuss: their prior knowledge and experience; set reading of secondary and, where appropriate, primary readings; information provided during the session. They provide a forum in which to assess and comment critically on the findings of others, defend their conclusions in a reasoned setting, and advance their knowledge and understanding of the place of cities in global history.
• Structured reading requires students to focus on set materials integral to the knowledge and understanding of the module. It specifically enables the acquisition of detailed knowledge and skills which will be discussed in other areas of the teaching and learning experience.
• Assessment is by means of a 5,000-word essay which requires the acquisition and application of advanced knowledge and understanding of aspects of history and historiography, and of relevant theoretical and comparative approaches from other disciplines. Essays require a sustained and coherent argument in defence of a hypothesis and must be presented in a clearly written and structured form, and with appropriate apparatus.

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