Urban Literature & Urban Action

May fulfill English, History or Social Science requirement (ENG, HIS, SOCSCI)
The class surveys urban literature across time and space, with a focus on the voices of marginalized communities in the United States. Authors guide us to discover the joys of urban community and the challenges of structural inequity. Students use these texts as inspiration to script their own urban narratives. We then build from these readings and writings other ways of studying and rethinking cities, including field studies, census data analysis, and opportunity maps. Students then fuse creative writing, research, and design to create strategies for addressing locally some of today’s urban challenges, particularly those associated with income inequality, social inequity, and structural racism.