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Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology

 

Search Brown

 

 

Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology & the Ancient World
Brown University
Box 1837 / 60 George Street
Providence, RI 02912
Telephone: (401) 863-3188
Fax: (401) 863-9423
[email protected]

Assignment 1. Calvino's cities: Choose one of Calvino’s cities and post a paragraph and/or an image (photograph, drawing, etc) on the wiki here to reflect upon your own imagination of that city. We will discuss your postings along with Calvino’s cities, thinking through what constitutes what we call a city.

Due: Tuesday September 11, 10:30 am. on the wiki


Assignment 2. Modernism, modernity, the city and the ancient past: Responses to class discussions of Week 2.
Please write a paragraph or two, most preferably with images, a response to this week's discussions and readings about the project of modernity, its transformations of the cities we live in, its approaches to the ancient past, hybrid modernities.

Due: Tuesday September 25, 10:30 am. on the wiki


Assignment 3: Heterotopias: badlands of modernity.

Please read the two articles below and write a 2-3 page essay on Foucault's concept of heterotopias as marginal sites in the human engagement. In your essay try to draw examples from the ancient world, your own experiences of city spaces, city photographs or related artwork (such as this), or Providence itself! Please consider this as an intellectual exercise to prepare for your final essay on the Crook Point/Fox Point project. Be as creative as possible.

Readings:

Due: October 22, 2007 Monday 5pm (to be posted on the wiki). Please use this page for posting your assignments.


Assignment 4: Crook Point Project

This is the second and final essay on the Crook Point/Fox Point bridge, tunnel and their environs, the Seakonk river front as urban wasteland. Each of you will choose to write on one aspect of the area based on our conversations so far (see here Crook Point Project page. The topics that come to my mind include:

a. the graffiti on and around the bridge

b. the Providence city government's treatment of this landscape: not too strictly closing off the area while ignoring its existence. The tunnel party incident of the 1990s is an interesting case where the fencing of the tunnel appeared right after the media coverage of the issue.

c. the "suspended" temporary character of this urban landscape, prior to "gentrifications" and "re-commodification". Notable is the 2003 development plan of the city about this area which was later abandoned.

d. heterotopic character of the landscape, in dialogue with Foucault's conceptualization of the "badlands of modernity".

e. the bridge and its environs which bring together a constellation of relationships, including the occasional inhabitants of the bridge. The bridge and the material residues of thses rather marginal urban practices (including but not exclusive to graffiti art).

f. architectural history of the bridge-building on the Seakonk river.

This is intended to be a 5-8 page paper, preferably incorporating a visual component (photographs, drawings, sketches, videos).

Due: Nov 27, Tuesday. All materials should be posted on the wiki before class.

Bibliography