Invisible Cities

 Your blog comments will be due on Wednesday, August 21st at 10:00 am.  You may draw from these questions for your posts, or develop your own response to the readings.

1)  Trace some of the ways in which Calvino constructs the city.  What are some of the themes he explores?  What issues does he examine?  In what ways do the constructions of these various cities reflect the imagination of the narrator? Of how we imagine the city?

2)  All of the cities are named after women.  Draw connections between this novel and The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr. Hoffman and explore the ways in which architecture and urban planning can be gendered and informed by the complex nature of desire.

3)  The title of this text is Invisible Cities. In what ways are cities “invisible”?  Use this text to draw connections from texts we have previously explored in this class. 

Harlem is Nowhere and Seeking Spatial Justice

 Your blog comments will be due on Wednesday, August 14th at 10:00 am.  You may draw from these questions for your posts, or develop your own response to the readings.

1)  How do both Ellison and Soja suggest the ways in which we internalize spatial identity?  Use examples from both texts to support your answer.

2)  In Soja’s prologue, he suggests that the BRU victory could have had the potential of forcing any public work having to pass a “justice test.”  What does he mean by this “justice test”? Do you think public works should abide by such standards?  Consider your own work as an architect. Would your work pass a “justice test”?  Should it?  Use examples from the text to support or defend your answer.

3)  What does Soja mean by the term “spatial justice”?  We began this session reading the works of two architects—FLLW and Le Corbusier—who, in their own ways, sought to remedy the social ills of their time through space and the built environment.  How would Soja critique their efforts?  What does spatial justice mean for the 21^st century?  Use examples for the text(s) to support your answer. 

Occasional Work and Seven Walks from the Office of Soft Architecture

 Your blog comments will be due on Wednesday, August 7th at 10:00 am.  You may draw from these questions for your posts, or develop your own response to the readings.

1) Even though Robertson presents her readers with a “manifesto” on Soft Architecture, the exact definition of this term remains elusive, perhaps intentionally so.  Trace Robertson’s references to “Soft Architecture” in this book and define in your own words how you perceive the concept.  Make sure to quote from the text to support your analysis of this term.

2) Robertson’s prose engages a great deal in the idea of the city, specifically her native city Vancouver.  What are some of the ways in which she engages in issues dealing with the city in her prose?  Consider the ways in which Robertson explores ideas of memory, nostalgia, surfaces, globalization, urban decay, and renewal.  Make sure to quote from the text support your analysis.

3)Robertson explores several themes that echo many texts we have read in this course:  utopias, memory, the suburbs, the city, ideology, capitalism, imagination—just to name a few themes.  Find a quote from Robertson’s text and draw relationships between her ideas and that of an author we have previously read in this course.  Make sure to quote both authors directly in your analysis. 

The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr. Hoffman (continued)

Your blog comments will be due on Wednesday, June 17th by 10 am.  You may draw from these questions for your posts, or develop your own response to the readings. 

1) One of Carter’s projects in this novel is to reveal the ways in which desire can very much be a social construction.  From Desiderio’s ever-shifting subject position, we see him perpetrate a rape that runs him afoul of the law in one instance, but then becomes an initiation of sorts later in the novel.  It is the tale of Sleeping Beauty we tell our children, but a horrible act of violence in another context.  Pedophilia is socially acceptable in one particular social schema, but taboo in others, and so on, as Carter switches from exploiter to exploited, subject and object, and back again.  What do you think of Carter’s game?  To what extent is desire socially informed?  And if desire is truly the root of imagination as was discussed in our earlier class session, what does that mean for the work of the architect? 

2)  Both feminist non-feminist critics have criticized Carter’s novels as “pornographic,” but Carter articulates how she sees herself as bearing the legacy of the Marquis de Sade whom she calls “a moral pornographer” who “might use pornography as a critique of current relations between the sexes…Such a pornographer would not be the enemy of women, perhaps because he might begin to penetrate to the heart of the contempt for women that distorts our culture even as he entered the realms of true obscenity as he describes it” (from Sadeian Woman 20).  Mandy Koolen argues that Carter’s The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman “demonstrate[s] the pervasiveness and insidiousness of patriarchy, the ways that women internalize sexist and misogynist beliefs and, in turn, how women’s sexual desires are shaped by living in patriarchal environments” (400). Do you agree with Koolen?  How can certain environments be “patriarchal” and in what ways do we internalize such systems of oppression?

3)  In the House of Anonymity, Albertina (in disguise) states, “My house is a refuge for those who can find no equilibrium between inside and outside, between mind and body or body and soul, vice versa, etcetera, etcetera” (131-2).  In a previous class session, Connor brought up the pervasiveness of “in-between” spaces in the novel.  What other instances of “in-between-ness” do we see in this novel in terms of space, bodies, and desire? 

The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman

Your blog comments will be due on Thursday, June 11th by 10 am.  You may draw from these questions for your posts, or develop your own response to the readings.  

1)  In many ways, The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman is a meditation on the city.  What are some of the ways Carter describes the city and the effect Dr. Hoffman’s machinations have on this space and the experience of this space?  What sort of connections can you draw between this anonymous city and other “fictional” cities we have read about in other texts in this class?  Make sure to use examples from the texts to support your answer.  

2) In what ways does this novel explore the nature of the imagination?  How does Dr. Hoffman via his ambassador describe it?  How does the Minister see it?  How does Desiderio?  Given these different perspectives on the nature of the imagination, how do you see and experience it?  Make sure to use examples to support your answer.   

3) In what ways is this novel a “postmodern” novel?  Draw connections between previous texts we have read and this novel to explore the ways in which this novel explores postmodern themes.  Make sure to use examples to support your answer.  

Essay I (part two)

For this assignment, students are to revise their essays based on the comments they received from their conference.  For this revision, students are to pay careful attention the kinds of arguments they are putting forth and how they are supporting those arguments with support from the various texts we have read this session.  Students will also want to ensure that they are providing adequate analysis of difficult passages, key terms, and ideas from the essays we have read thus far in the course. 

This assignment must be typed, double-spaced, stapled and in accordance with a standard documentation style such as MLA or Chicago style. 

Your revised essay is due at the beginning of class on July 12th (please note the schedule change). 

Essay I

Essay 1

Over the past few weeks, we have discussed several themes surrounding ideas of modernism, postmodernism, ideology, imagination, space, and utopias.  For this first major assignment, students will compose an essay in which they explore some of the ideas we have been discussing in class, respond to them, and explain why they respond to them as they do.

To begin this essay, students will go back to their blog comments, the blog comments of their peers, and their class notes and explore some of the major issues that have arisen from our discussions, both online and face-to-face.  You will want to explore your own comments and trace the themes, questions, ideas, and issues that interest you the most.  Take notes in a way that seems useful to you, making sure to underline and keep track of important ideas from your own writing, your peers’ writing, and the published writers we have read and discussed in class.  Use past writing as a way to begin this essay and expand upon ideas you have explored in previous blogs.

In developing a focus for your essay, you may want to draw upon my questions on the blog as a starting point for writing, but remember that this essay assignment is ultimately about pursuing your own critical questions and engaging your own interests and ideas.  Regardless of the scope of your essay, you must bring the writers we have been exploring in this course into some sort of “conversation,” meaning that I expect you to draw from several authors in order to bring complexity, nuance, and support to your own ideas. 

To help you develop your essay, students will post a rough draft of their essay to the course blog by Tuesday at 5:00 pm.  Before class on Friday, students will read through all of their peers’ essays and write a 100-250 word response and assessment for revision to each of their peers’ papers.  Do not write this assessment on the blog, but bring your assessment to class for discussion.  Also, bring copies of your peers' essays by either printing them out or having access to them on a laptop or tablet.