ENGH312

Speaking of the rapid urbanization of our world over the last forty-fifty years, Mike Davis points out that cities are growing by 60 million people per year. What is urbanization and how might people understand the growing cities of their time? Students will have the opportunity to contextualize contemporary urbanization by looking at how twentieth- and twenty-first-century texts represent urban centers from London to Lagos. Writers may include Jacob Riis, Virginia Woolf, Rohinton Mistry, Frantz Fanon, Mike Davis, and David Harvey. Students may consider how their writing is in conversation with films theorizing modernization and urbanization—from Modern Times to District 9.