..no man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
John Donne (1572-1631)
The Manhattan Skyline with the World Board of Trade Buildings, destroyed in a terrorist attack on September 11, 2001
Assignments for Friday, September 7 to Friday, September 14
Because of the assault on New York City Tuesday, September 11, 2001
Assignments have been altered to reflect our mutual preoccupation
This syllabus reflects those alterations.
For Friday, September 14
We will observe a moment of silence in response to the President's
call for a day of reflection
Read, in Girouard, Chapter 4. "The Texture of Life," 67-84
Texture is a metaphor. Think about cloth, how it is made, and you'll get some sense of what Girouard is trying to convey. We'll look at the interweaving of groups into the city fabric (another metaphor), and also at patterns imposed on the city (streets, blocks, etc.), to accommodate that interweaving.
For Monday, September 17
Read, in Girouard, Chapter 5, "Bruges and Venice," 85 - 112
This chapter concludes section one of Girouard's study by presenting two examples of medieval and renaissance cities, Bruges in the north and Venice in the south. This is useful for us, because it allows us to see both general things (similarities which all cities possess) and specific things which are unique to individual places. We'll have similar problems and opportunities when we look at American cities.
For Wednesday, September 19
Read, in Girouard, Chapters 6 through 8, pp. 113 - 180
Don't let yourself get bogged down in too much detail, but do read these chapters with some care. Girouard entitles the second section of his study "The City Triumphant," and it won't take us long to determine why. For all the hustle and bustle in the medieval cities we've considered to date, there is a rather utilitarian look to them, with the exception of some of the private houses. We begin to see powerful institutions and patrons make conscious efforts to beautify and magnify public spaces through creation of public art: sculptures, fountains, etc., and through buildings which are themselves self-consciously "beautiful". We will also begin to notice the relationship between these spaces and the peoples who inhabit them. Buildings and spaces are "stages" on which we act our lives. We will be able to observe changes in the ways which city people adorn themselves in city spaces, which shows us that urbanism and civic pride are not merely matters of architecture, but matters of manners as well. Had we time, we could look at the ways artists of this era (literary artists, as well as visual artists) began to make distinctions between the sophisticated city folk and "rustics".
For Friday, September 21
Read, in Girouard, "Chapter 9 "New Uses of Leisure" pp. 181 - 210
We'll explore what the concept "leisure" means, and why this becomes particularly associated with urban life. We should quickly recognize that urban leisure is a very different thing than just absence of work, and also quite different from the kind of repose that rural people experience in their seasons of less hectic activity.
