Module Directory

Since at least the end of the nineteenth century, cities have been the dominant sites of political, intellectual, and artistic activity. These emphatically polyglot spaces, with the preponderance of mass media and incessant technological innovation, shape and reshape the lives of city dwellers, and provide the setting for both social action and cultural friction. Cities have given rise to social phenomena such as ethnic and cultural hybridity, migration, and a sense of alienation. The push and pull of the city generates ambivalent feelings, producing the characteristic mixture of fascination and repulsion which still permeates our thoughts on urbanity. To all these phenomena and moods, modern writers and filmmakers have responded by producing works which not only describe the cities in which they are set, but also inform how these urban spaces are experienced, navigated, and lived.

Module content note:

Topics may include sexual assault, suicide, violence, torture (physical and mental), pornographic content, death or dying, miscarriages/abortion, racism and racial slurs, sexism and misogyny, classism, hateful language (e.g., Islamophobia, antisemitism), transphobia and trans misogyny, and homophobia and heterosexism. Please contact the module supervisor if you have any questions.

The aims of this module are:

• To foster students’ critical thinking and cultural awareness by inviting them to explore the modern cultural history of the city.


• To analyse a range of texts from the perspective of the cities in which they were created in order to examine how major twentieth- and twenty-first-century writers and filmmakers were both shaped by major metropolitan cities and, in turn, helped to shape these cities in the imaginations and lives of their readers and audiences.


• To acquire or deepen their knowledge of a range of city-based texts, from established classics such as Charles Baudelaire’s ‘The Painter of Modern Life’ (1863) and James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) to portrayals of cities in twenty-first-century literature and film.

By the end of this module, students will be expected to be able to:

1. Display detailed knowledge and critical understanding of the categories of modernism and postmodernism, as well as a range of theories of the modern/postmodern city.


2. Demonstrate the knowledge and skills required to engage in intellectual debates around issues raised by modernism and postmodernism in a selection of urban spaces


3. Plan, research, and write a critical essay.

The texts covered in this module may include poetry of Charles Budelaire, Guillaume Apollinaire, Paul Éluard, and T. S. Eliot, fiction by John Dos Passos, Victor Pelevin, and Thomas Bernhard, plays/performances by Anton Chekhov, Bertolt Brecht, Robert Wilson, Peter Brook, and Caryl Churchill, films by Anthony Asquith, Luis Malle, and Dziga Vertov, and other artefacts.

This module will be delivered via:

• 2-hour weekly seminars