Urban Imaginaries: Reading Cities from across the Globe

The course fee for 1-week online courses - that includes tuition fee and course materials – is 280  EUR. All applicants are required to pay 80 EUR (out of this 280) as registration fee at registration. You can also pay the whole amount at once. The registration fee (80 EUR) is non-refundable.

Credits: 3 EC

Our course offers ECTS points, which may be accepted for credit transfer by the participants' home universities. Those who wish to obtain these credits should inquire about the possible transfer at their home institution prior to their enrolment. The International Strategy Office will send a transcript to those who have fulfilled all the necessary course requirements and request one.

APPLICATION:

Please pay the registration fee and fill out this form: https://www.elte.hu/en/urban-bsu2024

COURSE DESCRIPTION

The course offers an introduction to literary urban studies through a discussion of key texts as well as a look at cultural representations of cities from the Western world, the Global South and East-Central Europe. The majority of the course focuses on literary and visual (film, photography, etc.) engagements with three global cities, each of which is representative of its respective location: London, Johannesburg and Budapest. Before getting acquainted with representations of the cities, students will also have the chance to familiarize themselves with fundamental topics in urban studies, such as the difference between planning a city space and actually living in it or the various manifestations of spatial injustice within cities. Through the readings and films, students will gain insight into how cities retain their turbulent histories and bear traces of their often violent pasts and presents. Students will also be able to grasp the interrelatedness of cultural memory manifested in urban spaces and the textual representation of certain sites of memory. 

The course is open to all who are currently studying or graduated in the humanities or social sciences, and also to anyone interested in urban studies and literature.

Course Leaders:

Dr. Ágnes Györke, associate professor, Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church
Dr. Kata Gyuris, lecturer, Eötvös Loránd University
Dr. Ágnes Harasztos, senior lecturer, Kodolányi János University

COURSE SCHEDULE:

Day 1

Class 1: Understanding the city 1: basic concepts in urban studies

Class 2: Literary urban studies

Class 3: Understanding the city 2: London, Johannesburg and Budapest

Day 2

Class 1: London, the literary city

• The London underworld - Charles Dickens: Oliver Twist (1838)
• Gothic London - Robert Louis Stevenson: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886)
• The city as a sensual experience - Virginia Woolf: Mrs. Dalloway (1925)

Class 2: The immigrant experience - Stephen Frears (dir.): Dirty Pretty Things (2002)

Class 3: Multicultural London

• Monica Ali: Brick Lane (2003)
• Benjamin Zephaniah: “City River Blues” (1996)

Day 3

Class 1: Johannesburg, the postcolonial megacity

• Understanding the postcolonial city - OluTimehin Adegbeye: “Who belongs in a city?” (2017)
• The many faces of the City of Gold - Heidi Holland, Adam Robert (eds): From Jo’burg to Jozi: Stories about Africa’s Infamous City (2011)

Class 2: Growing up in the apartheid city - Trevor Noah: Born a Crime (2016)

Class 3: The apartheid city on screen - Gavin Hood (dir.): Tsotsi (2005)

Day 4

Class 1: Budapest in historical context

• Monarchical Budapest - Gyula Krúdy: The Adventures of Sindbad (1912)
• The 1920s flâneur - Dezső Kosztolányi: The Adventures of Kornél Esti (1933)

Class 2: Understanding the legacy of communism

• Self-colonization -  Malcolm Bradbury: Doctor Criminale (1992)
• The cultural memory of 1956 - Tibor Fischer: Under the Frog (1992)

Class 3: Underground Budapest - Antal Nimród (dir.): Control (2003)

Day 5

Class 1: Contemporary Hungarian authors on the city

• Noémi Szécsi: The Finno-Ugrian Vampire (2002)
• Krisztina Tóth: Barcode (2006)
• Edina Szvoren: On Intimate Terms (2010)

Class 2: Cultural memory in urban public spaces: Creating and contesting sites of memory

Class 3: Memorial sites in Budapest

• Lost, newly erected, consensual, and ideological urban spaces of remembering in Budapest

COURSE REQUIREMENTS AND EVALUATION:

• Reading the set materials (shorter excerpts from the works discussed in class, provided prior to the start of the course)
• Watching the three films prior to class (links to the films will be provided)
• In-class participation
• As part of the course requirements, we will ask you to embark on a small-scale project work where you will be able to apply the ideas and concepts you learnt about during the course. We will share more details about this task during the first day.