Professor: John Leisure

4 credits

This course examines the history of urbanization in East Asia in the 20th century. The first half of the course explores urban development in the context of Japanese colonialism, looking at the metropole (Tokyo) in contradistinction to cities in Taiwan, Korea, and Manchuria. The second half of the course investigates postwar development, analyzing how cities like Tokyo, Seoul, and Taipei overcame wartime and colonial legacies to re-emerge as high-rise metropolises of concrete, glass, and steel. Rather than thinking about the city as a passive space in which events happen, we will interrogate how the urban built environment has been created, discussed, and at times destroyed by human actors. Engaging with knowledge from multiple disciplines, including architecture, urban planning, economics, literature, and cinema, this course critically examines the modern urban condition at the intersection of technocratic planning, lived experience, and imagined futures. What does it mean to experience the changing city? Who has authority to build? How is urban space designed and contested? Topics include: colonization, technological modernization, developmentalism, modern domesticity, skyscrapers and subterranean spaces.

Graduation Requirement: This class will fulfill a Social Science Colloquium and the Global Perspectives (GP) cultural literacy requirement.  If the student has already taken a Social Science Colloquium, this class will fulfill both of the following requirements:  an Elective Colloquium and Global Perspective cultural literacy.