Arts and the City WNY 307

Instructor: Jerry Carlson ‘72

The legendary city that never sleeps, New York offers an unparalleled array of artistic activities and diversions. As a global city, it boasts a depth of cultural institutions to match the power of its political, financial, and corporate spheres. Yet New York is also the most diverse city in the United States in terms of its immigrant population, which is now more than 50 percent of the city’s residents. Our course will explore the practice of the arts in settings that range from canonical institutions of international repute (i.e. The Metropolitan Opera or MoMA) to sites of vernacular artistic production (i.e. Haitian painting in Brooklyn or Bukharian Jewish music in Queens). We will investigate the realms of music, dance, theater, literature, film, the visual arts, and a few things that defy easy definition. We will pose questions about the many contexts of creation, presentation, and reception that overlap in the Big Apple. Students will explore these many realms for themselves and bring their “field” experience back to the seminar. “Wandering off a city’s beaten track, like wandering off in a wood,” noted the German social theorist Walter Benjamin, “requires a whole separate education.” And a Metrocard for the subway, New Yorkers will add.

Format: seminar
Requirements: attendance at 12 arts events and brief papers on each of these experiences, a field journal, and full participation in seminar discussions