First Year: The Global City

Lay the Groundwork

Form tight bonds with your peers in a small, year-long course, focused on developing advanced writing skills through intensive study of the urban environment

All first year students begin with HON 101 (even students who earned AP/IB credit in high school). This year-long sequence is designed to help you develop the reading, writing, and analytical skills that will serve as a foundation for the Honors thesis -- and for all your undergraduate and graduate work. Each term, we will focus on a specific set of linked skills: summary of argument, close reading, disciplinary conversation. The texts you will read both help you learn the scholarly skills and provide the occasion for engaging in meaningful inquiry.

Each section of The Global City will have different reading material, but the writing tools studied throughout the year are the same from section to section. Throughout your first year, you will get to experience small, in-person classes that emphasize engaged student participation in classroom discussions and collaborative assignments.

(Post)Colonial Worlds: Geographies of Urban Power and Resistance (HON 101A)
This year-long course is an exploration of the history, representations, and contemporary politics of global urbanism. During the fall we focus on the rise of European colonialism since the fifteenth century,  tracing the power struggles––the forms of domination and modes of resistance––that have shaped cities across the globe and into the present. In the winter we continue our exploration of global life in the aftermath of decolonial struggles and as Western imperialism was reconfigured across the globe. Finally, we consider the legacies of these global histories––the afterlives of colonialism––in contemporary battles over land and resources, racial and social justice, and political mobilization and citizenship. The course draws heavily on anthropology, history, urban studies, journalism, graphic non-fiction, and film. 
Dr. Federico Perez Fernandez
Time: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 1:30pm-3:10pm
CRN:  11189

Cinema's Urban Modernity (HON 101B)
The beginning of the 20th century witnessed convulsive change. Western urban life was dramatically altered as industrialization, revolution, and global finance capital rearranged the rhythms and practices of modern life. By studying film, photography, and other performance-based representations from the era, reading philosophy and social history, and focusing on the figure of the flaneur/flaneuse – a walker who learns a city via their on-foot journeys – we will learn how our contemporary urban experiences are rooted in the past and consider how photography, cinema, and philosophy thought through and represented the modern and how it may be differentiated from the contemporary. Over our three quarters, we will study cinema, literature, and photography from the US, France, England, the USSR, and Shanghai as part of the Republic of China
Dr. Amy Borden
Time:  Mondays and Wednesdays, 11am-12:40pm
CRN: 11190

Women in Middle Eastern Cities (HON 101C)
Focusing on questions of women and gender, this course invites the participants to reflect on women's experiences critically in modern Turkish, Arab, and Iranian contexts. We examine diverse experiences, observe connections to the United States, and explore how gender intersects with class, education, and ethno-religious standing, among others.
Dr. Pelin Basci
Time:  Tuesdays and Thursdays, 3:30pm-5:10pm
CRN: 11191

Race, Capital, and the City (HON 101D)
This section of the Global City will consider the transnational history of capitalism, colonialism, segregation, imperialism, settlement, protest, and political struggle to understand how something seemingly “local” in scale -- like the events surrounding George Floyd’s death -- connect to, and intersect with, systems and processes at the national and global scale. As we travel, we will consider the historical relationship between urban activism within communities of color to national and transnational movements. Our goal will be to understand how networks of racialized capital forged in the 17th century mapped themselves onto the contours of contemporary urban space. 
Dr. Paul McCutcheon
Time: Mondays and Wednesdays,1:30pm-3:10pm
CRN:  11192

Writing the City (HON 101E)
This section of the Global City examines the numerous ways writing is used as an instrument of power within urban environments. We will scrutinize key texts produced by activists and radicals—both within and outside academic institutions—to better understand the rhetorical strategies and styles that shape and influence the cities we inhabit and how we can better use these strategies in academic environments.
Dr. Eric Rodriguez
Time: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 9am-10:40am
CRN:  11193