Historical Urban Studies

Course content

The course focuses on the cities in the Ottoman Empire, Europe and North America from late 19th to late 20th century. It connects urban change with political history of those areas as well as global history. The course is also designed to familiarize students with entanglements involving political scientific approaches and urban theory. Among the topics to be discussed during the semester are: methods and problematiques of urban history; the study of structures of feeling in urban context; fin de siècle period in European, North American and Ottoman cities; the concept of cosmopolitanism; post-imperial (Habsburg and Ottoman) capital cities; urban history of Ankara and Istanbul; deindustrialisation and its consequences in late 20th century; social exclusion and urban marginality in Europe and North America; representations of urban implosion