2025 Summer Session D
6 weeks, July 7 - August 15
ENGLISH 166AC 001 - LEC 001
Special Topics in American Cultures
Race & the City: American Urbanism & Racial Formation
Balthazar I Beckett
Class #:13760
Units: 4
Instruction Mode:
In-Person Instruction
Offered through
English
Current Enrollment
Total Open Seats:
15
Enrolled: 15
Waitlisted: 0
Capacity: 30
Waitlist Max: 20
No Reserved Seats
Hours & Workload
5 to 7.5 hours of instructor presentation of course materials per week, 22.5 hours of outside work hours per week, and 2.5 to 0 hours of the exchange of opinions or questions on course material per week.
Course Catalog Description
In this course, students investigate the way literature and other art forms have both represented the diversity of the United States and shaped conceptions of diversity. English 166AC provides students with an opportunity to deepen and complicate their appreciation of the way fictions make meaning, shape our understanding and experience of the world, and transform society. Topics vary from term to term and might focus on a form (e.g. "Race and Ethnicity in American Cinema"), a literary historical period (e.g. "Race and Revision in Early America"), or a concept (e.g. nationhood in "Literatures of the Asian Diaspora in America").
Class Description
The American city is a complex and dynamic organism—and the subject of a great body of literature (both fiction and non-fiction) and film. Focusing on New York City, Los Angeles, and the Bay Area, this course will trace and critically engage how American urban development has been depicted on the page and on screen from the early twentieth century to today. By studying how writers and filmmakers have addressed the dramatic changes that impact American urban spaces, this course asks students to write critically about race and urban development from 1930s redlining and white flight to the battles over “urban renewal” and the anti-eviction campaigns of the Civil Rights era, the impact of 1970s neoliberal policies, the “war on drugs” and militarized “broken windows” policing of the 1980s, the urban uprisings of the early 1990s, and today’s hyper-gentrification. Paying special attention to how different racial groups – European-American, African-American, Asian-American, Native-American, and Latinx – have engaged, avoided, or confronted each other within these urban spaces, we will study how these changing cityscapes have on the one hand reflected and on the other hand actively influenced seismic changes in racial formation in the United States.
Over the course of this summer session, students will submit three shorter written reflections on the readings we will cover.
This class satisfies the Literatures in English Major Requirement.
https://english.berkeley.edu/major-requirements
Class Notes
Book list:
● Marshall, Paule. Brown Girl, Brownstones. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2009 [1959].
ISBN-13: 978-0486468327.
● Yates, Richard. Revolutionary Road. New York: Vintage, 2000 [1961]. ·
ISBN-13: 978-0375708442.
● Revoyr, Nina. Southland. New York: A.. show more
● Marshall, Paule. Brown Girl, Brownstones. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2009 [1959].
ISBN-13: 978-0486468327.
● Yates, Richard. Revolutionary Road. New York: Vintage, 2000 [1961]. ·
ISBN-13: 978-0375708442.
● Revoyr, Nina. Southland. New York: A.. show more
Book list:
● Marshall, Paule. Brown Girl, Brownstones. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2009 [1959].
ISBN-13: 978-0486468327.
● Yates, Richard. Revolutionary Road. New York: Vintage, 2000 [1961]. ·
ISBN-13: 978-0375708442.
● Revoyr, Nina. Southland. New York: Akashic Books, 2003.
ISBN-13: 978-1888451412
● Lethem, Jonathan. The Fortress of Solitude. New York: Vintage, 2004 [2003].
ISBN-13: 978-0375724886.
This course satisfies the Literatures in English Major Requirement: https://english.berkeley.edu/major-requirements show less
● Marshall, Paule. Brown Girl, Brownstones. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2009 [1959].
ISBN-13: 978-0486468327.
● Yates, Richard. Revolutionary Road. New York: Vintage, 2000 [1961]. ·
ISBN-13: 978-0375708442.
● Revoyr, Nina. Southland. New York: Akashic Books, 2003.
ISBN-13: 978-1888451412
● Lethem, Jonathan. The Fortress of Solitude. New York: Vintage, 2004 [2003].
ISBN-13: 978-0375724886.
This course satisfies the Literatures in English Major Requirement: https://english.berkeley.edu/major-requirements show less
Rules & Requirements
Repeat Rules
Requirements class fulfills
American Cultures Requirement
Reserved Seats
Current Enrollment
No Reserved Seats
Textbooks & Materials
Associated Sections
None