The purpose of this course is to develop an account of industrial modernity that de-centers the metropolis. On the one hand, the experience of the industrial megacity is both a topic of and inspiration for some of the formal innovations associated with the historical avant garde. But to equate the "urban" with the "modern" is itself a kind of provincialism. Ostensibly "rural" places do not fall outside of history because of the concentration of economic and political power in cities, but moreover, many countrysides often bear the marks of their integration into global relations of production, relations visible in the landscape if one knows where and how to look. Not only are phenomena such as pollution and urban sprawl ways in which industrial production is inscribed on the landscape, but the ideological divide between urban and rural itself shapes the way in which these spaces are perceived. With that in mind, in this course we will encounter texts that think through the city/country divide. We will read fictional texts from a variety of traditions by authors such as Thomas Hardy, Ishimure Michiko, Arun Kolatkar, and W.G. Sebald and theoretical texts by authors such as Karl Marx, Raymond Williams, Theodor Adorno, and Mike Davis.
alexander.phillips@ashoka.edu.in