13338
Seminar
Cities in Global History
Michael Goebel
Comments
Cities have long been regarded, in Lewis Mumford’s words of 1938, as "a point of maximum concentration for the power and culture of a community." Yet they served not only as centers of regional or national communities but also as nodal points of long-distance connections and cross-cultural encounters as well as drivers of ecological change. Looking at urban areas through the lens of global history, the seminar will explore the role played by cities in a world connecting and ask in how far the development and experience of cityscapes was affected by conditions of global connectedness. Focusing on selected case studies since the nineteenth century, we also explore the effects of asymmetrical power relations that produced segmented and unequal cityscapes and continue to shape urban historical narratives. In sum, the seminar aims at furnishing historical tools for a better understanding of the intersections between globalization and urbanization. close