Admission requirements
Required course(s):
- Social Theory in Everyday Life (for CHS students)
Recommended course(s):
- Infrastructure, Art & Culture
Description
Contradiction. That’s what comes to mind if you think about public spaces and walls. While the former evokes openness, participation, democracy, the latter evokes closure, discrimination and violence. And yet both, public spaces and walls, are windows to the interactions that shape social life, and give shape to the landscapes we inhabit, whether we see them or not. This course is an invitation to learn to read these windows and think critically about the importance of public spaces and walls in contemporary social life.
The course departs from a definition of public spaces and walls both as material and social forms. Material, because in their physicality they give concrete shape to any imagination of a city, a country, a territory (think about places like squares, malls, museums, libraries, markets, and walls that divide territories from the urban to the regional scales). Public spaces and walls are also symbolic artifacts in as much as they invoke (and invite) a specific representation of ‘belonging’ (as manifested in the figure of the citizen, the people, the demos, the migrant or the outsider) and the struggles to be part it. This course investigates various conceptual and empirical expressions of the public in space, and the spaces different publics take in the city. It also explores the role walls play in these definitions. While examining the literature on this field, taking ques from various disciplines in the social science and humanities, we will critically look at cities both in the global north and south as a laboratory to explore and understand the importance of public spaces and walls in the sociability of today’s societies.
Course Objectives
This course aims for students to develop an understanding about public space and walls in their core conceptual components (public & space & wall) from various disciplinary perspectives and looking at different types of evidence (scholarly debates, photography, activism, artistic interventions, planning, etc).
In terms of content, upon completing the course you will:
be familiarized with scholarly debates about public spaces and walls in disciplines such as anthropology, geography, philosophy and sociology;
identify key elements in the definition of public spaces and walls that are of contemporary importance in terms of urban development and the policy rhetoric of social inclusion and exclusion.
be able to critically think about public spaces and walls their practical and political implications, for the kinds of sociability we experience in contemporary societies.
In terms of skills, upon completing the course you will:
be able to elaborate and express a sound argumentative position regarding issues related to the course content;
learn to communicate this argumentative position in speaking, writing and visual forms;
develop skills to work with others (negotiation, adaptation, personal and collective response-ability) and present your findings of a group research in a compelling and persuasive manner.
Timetable
Timetables for courses offered at Leiden University College in 2024-2025 will be published on this page of the e-Prospectus.
Mode of instruction
This course will be taught as a seminar in person if the regulations allow it. As a 300 level course, the course is run as a seminar, highly dependent on students participation. This means your critical engagement with the readings and weekly material is essential part of the course and its developments. The sessions are fundamentally organized based on the student’s discussion of the scholarly work assigned for that session and their applicability to daily examples.
Assessment Method
In class presentations: 19%
Case-study research & presentations in groups: 22%
Case-study reflection individual: 19%
Final assignment: 40%
Reading list
Readings will be available via Brightspace to students enrolled at the beginning of the course.
Registration
Courses offered at Leiden University College (LUC) are usually only open to LUC students and LUC exchange students. Leiden University students who participate in one of the university’s Honours tracks or programmes may register for one LUC course, if availability permits. Registration is coordinated by the Education Coordinator, course.administration@luc.leidenuniv.nl.
Contact
Daniela Vicherat Mattar, d.a.vicherat.mattar@luc.leidenuniv.nl
Remarks
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