The City in History: The Nineteenth-Century European City
History 301 (Undergraduate Course)

Greg Shaya
gshaya@wooster.edu
The College of Wooster, Department of History
Wooster, OH
Fall 2006

SYLLABUS

Description | Goals | Requirements | Class Schedule | Grading | Participation
A City Tour : Multimedia Assignment (PDF of assignment)

COURSE DESCRIPTION
A fourteen-week excursion through the industrial cities, the burgeoning capitals and the sprawling metropoles of Europe in the age of urbanization, from the late eighteenth century to the early twentieth century. We will take extended stays in London, Paris, and Vienna, with visits to Manchester, Berlin, Rome, Barcelona, Prague, and points elsewhere. On our journey we will ask a series of questions: How did these cities manage the ecological challenges of dense human settlement? What different forms did they take? How did these cities change? What kinds of struggles (political, social, and cultural) were played out in cities? How were these urban spaces experienced? What were their dangers? What fears did they awaken in city dwellers, government officials, writers and artists? And what was their promise? What new pleasures did they allow?

The course is an advanced history seminar. Most of class time will be devoted to class discussion based on the common readings, with occasional presentations. The course will require a significant time investment in reading to be prepared for discussion. Other requirements include: assembling a multimedia dossier of one European city at one moment in its history, a short book review, preparation of weekly discussion questions, and a final examination.

No prerequisites. Some familiarity with the study of history and with Europe (which might include a course in European history, a foreign language, foreign travel) would be helpful, but is not required.

GOALS OF THE COURSE
At the end of this course, students should:

• Have a basic knowledge of European urbanization in the nineteenth century;
• Understand the history of a few cities and a few aspects of the urban experience in significant depth;
• Understand the ways in which historians have written about the history of European cities in the nineteenth century (their sources, their methods, their arguments);
• Be able to think, talk, and write like a budding urban historian of nineteenth-century Europe.

REQUIRED TEXTS
The following books are required:

Additional required readings will be available through Woodle. All readings must be completed by the class session for which they are assigned.

For those of you who want an introduction to how to write papers for history courses I recommend: Mary Lynn Rampolla, A Pocket Guide to Writing in History (4th or 5th ed., Bedford/St. Martin’s).

CLASS COMMUNICATION
We will be using the web-based class software Woodle (at http://woodle.wooster.edu) to distribute readings and handouts and to share questions for discussion.

• Attendance and active participation
• Careful reading of all assigned readings (about one hundred pages a week)
• Preparation of a weekly discussion question
• A presentation on an outside reading
• A book review
• A multimedia presentation and explanatory paper
• A final examination
  
  

CLASS SCHEDULE

WEEK 1
Tues 8/29 Introduction to the Course, to European Cities, and to Urban History

IN CLASS: Selections from Honoré de Balzac, The History of the Thirteen (1833-5) and Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (1924).

Thurs 8/31 The Transformation of Vienna and Paris: An Introduction to Doing Urban History
“Vienna and Paris, 1850-1930: The Development of the Modern City,” in Merry E. Wiesner, ed., Discovering the Past.

WEEK 2
Tues 9/5 Orientation to European Urbanization
Andrew Lees and Lynn Hollen Lees, eds., The Urbanization of European Society in the Nineteenth Century (1976).

Adna Ferrin Weber, “Urban Growth in England and Wales in the Nineteenth Century” (1899), in Lees and Lees, eds., The Urbanization of European Society in the Nineteenth Century (1976).

Pierre Sorlin, “French Society, 1840-1914: The Big Cities” (1969), in Lees and Lees, eds., The Urbanization of European Society in the Nineteenth Century (1976).

Wolfgang Köllmann, “The Process of Urbanization in Germany at the Height of the Industrialization Period” (1976), in Lees and Lees, eds., The Urbanization of European Society in the Nineteenth Century (1976).

Thurs 9/7 The Environmental Challenge of Cities
John Reader, Cities (2004). Selections: “First Impressions,” pp. 1-9; “By What Complicated Wheels” [food], pp. 127-143; “The City Found Wanting” [hunger], pp. 144-159; “Eternal Problems” [waste].

WEEK 3
Tues 9/12 Ideas About Cities / Urban Planning
Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl, “The City as a Source of Corruption” (1854), in Lees and Lees, eds., The Urbanization of European Society in the Nineteenth Century (1976).

Robert Vaughan, “The Age of Great Cities” (1843), in Lees and Lees, eds., The Urbanization of European Society in the Nineteenth Century (1976).

Adolf Weber, “The Cultural and Social Significance of the Big City” (1908), in Lees and Lees, eds., The Urbanization of European Society in the Nineteenth Century (1976).

DISCUSS "A CITY TOUR" MULTIMEDIA ASSIGNMENT
Thurs 9/14
Anthony Sutcliffe, “Environmental Control and Planning in European Capitals, 1850-1914: London, Paris and Berlin,” in Ingrid Hammarström and Thomas Hall, eds., Growth and Transformation of the Modern City (1978), 71-88.

Michael Wagenaar, “Conquest of the Center or Flight to the Suburbs? Divergent Metropolitan Strategies in Europe, 1850-1914,” Journal of Urban History 19 (November 1992): 60-83.

WEEK 4
Tues 9/19 London and its Mysteries
“The Utilitarian City: London, 1825-1900,” in Peter Hall, Cities in Civilization (2001).

PRESENTATION: Richard J. Evans, Death in Hamburg: Society and Politics in the Cholera Years, 1830-1910 (1990).

Thurs 9/21
Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor (orig. 1851 and 1861) (selections).

PRESENTATION: Gareth Stedman Jones, Outcast London: A Study of the Relationship Between Classes in Victorian Society (1971).

WEEK 5
Tues 9/26 Manchester and the Working Class
Steven Marcus, Engels, Manchester, and the Working Class in England (1985), “ Historical Prologue” and “The Town,” pp. 3-66.

PRESENTATION: Ronald Aminzade, Class, Politics, and Early Industrial Capitalism: A Study of Mid-19th Century Toulouse (1981).

Thurs 9/28
Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England (Academy, 1984; orig. 1845) (selections on “Great Towns” and “The Results”).

PRESENTATION: Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (1973).

WEEK 6
Tues 10/3 Paris
David Harvey, Paris Capital of Modernity.

PRESENTATION: Marshall Berman, All that is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (1982).

Thurs 10/5
David Harvey, Paris Capital of Modernity.

PRESENTATION: Joachim Schlör, Nights in the Big City: Paris, Berlin, London, 1840-1930 (1998).

WEEK 7
Tues 10/10 Fin de Siècle
Carl Schorske, Fin de Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture.

PRESENTATION: Scott Spector, Prague Territories: National Conflict and Cultural Innovation in Franz Kafka's Fin de siècle (2000).

Thurs 10/12
Carl Schorske, Fin de Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture.

PRESENTATION: John Lukacs, Budapest 1900: A Historical Portrait of a City and Its Culture (1988, 1989, 1990).

FALL BREAK Oct. 13-17

WEEK 8
Thurs 10/19 Images and Documents of the City
Documents on the City:
- Poems and prose from Honoré de Balzac, Charles Baudelaire, Charles Dickens, Robert Musil
- Art of Gustave Doré, Edouard Manet, Gustave Caillebotte, Turner
- Photography of the city
- Reporting from the London Times
- Baedeker’s travel guides

PRESENTATION: T.J. Clark, The Painter of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and His Followers (1984).

WEEK 9
Tues 10/24 The Press and Sexual Dangers in the City
Judith Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight.

PRESENTATION: Seth Koven, Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London (2000).

Thurs 10/26
Judith Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight.

PRESENTATION: Deborah Nord, Walking the Victorian Streets: Women, Representation, and the City (1995).

WEEK 10
Tues 10/31 Disease / Prostitution
R.J. Morris, Cholera 1832: The Social Response to An Epidemic (1976) (selections).

PRESENTATION: Sharon Marcus, Apartment Stories: City and Home in Nineteenth-Century Paris and London (1999).

Thurs 11/2
Alain Corbin, Women for Hire: Prostitution and Sexuality in France after 1850 (orig. 1978) (selections).

PRESENTATION: Judith Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society (1982).

WEEK 11
Tues 11/7 Leisure and Pleasure
Robert Herbert, Impressionism: Art, Leisure and Parisian Society (1988) (selections).

PRESENTATION: W. Scott Haine, The World of the Paris Café: Sociability Among the French Working Class (1996).

Thurs 11/9
Erika Rappaport, Shopping for Pleasure: Women in the Making of London's West End (2001) (selections).

PRESENTATION: Charles Rearick, The Pleasures of the Belle Époque (1988).

WEEK 12
Tues 11/14 Crime and Policing
Louis Chevalier, “Crime and Social Pathology Among the Parisian Lower Classes” (1958), in Lees and Lees, eds., The Urbanization of European Society in the Nineteenth Century (1976), 21 pp.

PRESENTATION: Eric Johnson, Urbanization and Crime: Germany 1871-1914 (1995).

Thurs 11/16
David Jones, Crime, Protest, Community: Police in Nineteenth-Century London (1982) (selections).

PRESENTATION: Stephen Hughes, Crime, Disorder and the Risorgimento: The Politics of Policing in Bologna (1994).

WEEK 13
Tues 11/21 City Tour Workshop
No Reading.
Bring documents, images, and the script of your city tour.

THANKSGIVING RECESS Nov. 25-Dec. 1

WEEK 14 City Tours
Tues 11/28 Student Presentations

Thurs 11/30 Student Presentations

WEEK 15 City Tours
Tues 12/5 Student Presentations

Wed 12/6 (eve) Student Presentations

Thurs 12/7 Student Presentations

FINAL EXAMINATION

• 25% on participation
• 10% on weekly discussion questions
• 15% on the book review
• 25% on the multimedia presentation and explanatory paper
• 25% on the final examination

I follow the College of Wooster guidelines for grading. A grade in the “A” range indicates excellent work, the “B” range indicates good work, the “C” range indicates adequate work, the “D” range indicates a minimal performance. A grade of “F” indicates unsatisfactory work.

ACADEMIC INTEGRITY AND PLAGIARISM
A full statement of the Code of Academic Integrity is printed in the Scot’s Key (www.wooster.edu/policies/). You are responsible for reading and understanding it. It is available online at http://www.wooster.edu/policies/. I include the statement on plagiarism below. Any student caught plagiarizing or cheating will fail this course immediately and be referred to the Dean of the Faculty.

From The Code of Academic Integrity—Appendix II. Plagiarism
To use or imitate the language, ideas, or thoughts of another person and represent them as one's own is to commit an act of plagiarism. This is true whether:

• the material used is only a brief excerpt or an entire paper or articles;
• the original source is the work of another student or in a publication, including publications
  available electronically, either on the Internet or from such electronic media as CD-Rom;
• the product is a written paper, oral presentation, or an electronic publication such as a Web
  page.

It is not the use of others’ ideas that is unethical; writers expect and hope their work will be read and used. However, to use others’ ideas without acknowledgment is literary kidnapping. (In fact, the word “plagiarism” derives from the Latin word for kidnapper.) Merely to paraphrase (as opposed to quoting verbatim and at length) does not relieve one of the obligation to make clear the source of the ideas or to indicate specifically direct quotations. To have mastered material about which you write implies having read and digested it, so that it comes easily in your own words and you could talk with others about it intelligently. Your obligations—out of respect both to the writers you have read and to good craftsmanship—are to make the ideas you have absorbed a part of you and to acknowledge the sources you have used.

WHAT TO DO IF YOU ARE HAVING PROBLEMS

If you have questions about the class, or if you find yourself falling behind, contact me immediately.

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