Walking and Writing New York City

Navigating the streets and sidewalks of New York City is both an intensely personal and a complex collective experience. During your time in New York, you will do it nearly every day, and you will almost certainly find yourself describing it to others. This course will give you concepts to understand this activity in a broader context, and skills to undertake it more intentionally and effectively. How do people - sociologists, photographers, poets, urban planners, and ordinary New Yorkers - observe the streets, and how do they depict that experience? What do these observations tell us about ourselves, and about the possibilities and inequities of urban life? We will attempt to answer these questions through reading, watching, and listening to the works of New York walkers past and present, and through a close analysis of our own experiences of moving through the city.