HIS 195 Dr. R. W. Pointer
The City in Europe email:
Fall 2017
4 Credits
Course Description:
Cities have always been at the heart of European history and culture. In fact, the European city essentially began with the start of Europe itself. Using Europe Semester’s location within a host of key urban areas across the continent, this course will examine the history of the European city from ancient Rome to the present. Special attention will be paid to the experience of the migrant/refugee within Europe’s urban history. We will essentially take a fifteen-week excursion through the medieval towns, industrial cities, burgeoning capitals, sprawling metropoles, and post-modern urban landscapes of Europe. We will consider the city in its many guises: as physical space, marketplace, political and administrative center, military fortress, high culture producer, religious hub, place of refuge, entertainment capital, cultural crossroads, and mythic symbol. On our journey we will ask a series of questions about the physical forms, design models, and human relationships central to Europeans’ urban experience: How did these cities manage the challenges of dense human settlement, including influxes of refugees? What different physical shapes and forms did cities take? How did these cities change over time? What relationships existed between urban and rural areas? What kinds of struggles (political, social, economic, religious and cultural) were played out in cities? How were these urban spaces experienced by different social classes and ethnic/racial/religious groups? What criticisms did they provoke? What were their dangers? What fears did they arouse? And what was their promise? As these questions suggest, the evolution of the city in Europe provides an excellent window into the evolution of Europe itself across time and space.
HIS 195 and General Education:
This course fulfills the Serving Society, Enacting Justice General Education requirement (part of the Competent and Compassionate Action component). Each student will participate in a community-based learning project that will be closely connected to the academic content of the course and will expose them to issues of social justice regarding migrants and refugees in contemporary Europe. This experiential learning opportunity will provide students with meaningful work that meets a need or a goal defined by the community being served. As the College Catalog explains, “through this experience, students will raise their awareness of issues of justice such as those grounded in social class, gender, ethnicity, human disability, the environment or the impact of technology. In completing this option, students will examine their own presuppositions and develop their skills in their exercise of charity and compassion.”
Course Purposes:
1. To provide a survey of the history of the city in Europe and to enlarge conceptions of urban life
2. To deepen understanding of the refugee experience in Europe, past and present
3. To use the locations of Europe Semester as a “learning lab”
4. To develop better reading, writing, and interpretive skills while using primary and secondary sources
5. To sharpen observational skills as we live, study, and work in European cities throughout the semester
6. To provide an opportunity for voluntary service and critical reflection upon that experience
7. To encourage greater empathy and compassion for the plight of current migrants and refugees
Course Learning Outcomes: By the completion of this course, students will be better able to
1. Explain the history of the European city
2. Understand and empathize with the experience of migrants/refugees
3. Use primary sources effectively
4. Use secondary sources effectively
5. Differentiate the past from the present
Course Bibliography:
Andrew Lees, The City: A World History (required)
HIS 195 Primary and Secondary Source Reader – to be supplied by the instructor (required)
One of the following:
Peter Demetz, Prague in Black and Gold: The History of a City
David Harvey, Paris, Capital of Modernity
Colin Jones, Paris, Biography of a City
Peter Ackroyd, Venice: Pure City
John Lukacs, Budapest 1900: A Historical Portrait of a City & Its Culture
Rory Maclean, Berlin: Portrait of a City through the Centuries
Course Procedure:
The summer assignments for the class are intended to bring students into the world of urban Europe. It is therefore extremely important that students complete the mandatory summer reading. Class sessions in Europe may include combinations of lecture, group discussion, student presentations, guest lectures, and documentaries. Beyond the formal classroom, there will be many group excursions that will provide experiential learning for the course, including the community-based learning project, architectural history tours, museum exhibits, exploration of city “green spaces,” and visits to distinctive neighborhoods. Even more broadly, virtually everything we do in Europe may relate or contribute to our understanding of the city in Europe so I encourage you to develop the “art of awareness.” It will also be very important for students to keep pace with and complete the assigned readings in a conscientious fashion. Course readings will typically form the basis for classroom discussion. Students are required to attend class and must come having read the assigned material, prepared to engage actively with the professor and student peers. Within class, student questions and comments are strongly encouraged and are welcomed at any time. Students are also required to attend all group excursions. Unexcused absence or tardiness at either class sessions or excursions will result in a grade penalty.
Academic honesty in your work is an absolute requirement. Plagiarism of any sort will be treated according to Westmont College policy. To plagiarize is to present someone else's work—his or her words, line of thought, or organizational structure—as your own. This occurs when sources are not cited properly, or when permission is not obtained from the original author to use his or her work. Another person's "work" can take many forms: printed or electronic copies of computer programs, musical compositions, drawings, paintings, oral presentations, papers, essays, articles or chapters, statistical data, tables or figures, etc. In short, if any information that can be considered the intellectual property of another is used without acknowledging the original source properly, this is plagiarism. Please familiarize yourself with the entire Westmont College Plagiarism Policy. Among other places, this policy may be found by going to the Westmont home page and clicking on Academics. Then click on the link to Policies and Procedures from the left hand column. Then click on Academic Integrity. From that page there is a link to the Plagiarism Policy. This document defines different levels of plagiarism and the penalties for each. It also contains very helpful information on strategies for avoiding plagiarism. It cannot be overemphasized that plagiarism is an insidious and disruptive form of academic dishonesty. It violates relationships with known classmates and professors, and it violates the legal rights of people you may never meet.
Students who have been diagnosed with a disability (learning, physical or psychological) are strongly encouraged to contact the Disability Services office as early as possible to discuss appropriate accommodations for this course. Formal accommodations will only be granted for students whose disabilities have been verified by the Disability Services office. These accommodations may be necessary to ensure your full participation and the successful completion of this course. The instructor will need to be given documentation of a disability prior to the beginning of the semester in order to make appropriate accommodations while in Europe. Please contact Sheri Noble, Director of Disability Services, as soon as possible. Her phone number is 565-6186. Her email is . The Office of Disability Services is located in Voskuyl Library rooms 310A and 311.
Students may use laptops or comparable electronic devices for note-taking. However, they must be used in class only for activities directly related to classroom work. Using a computer for any purpose beyond the immediate needs of the class will result in your dismissal from class that day, an absence toward your participation grade (see below), and the loss of your computer rights. These policies are in place to protect the learning space for you and your peers while offering all of us your full attention and focus. All other electronic devices need to be turned off or silenced before class begins.
Course Assignments and Grading:
1. Exams - A midterm exam and a final exam will be given for HIS 195. Exams will be non-cumulative and most likely rely on a combination of objective and subjective questions. Each exam will constitute 25% of the course grade.
2. Class Attendance and Participation - Since faithful class attendance, evidence of careful preparation, and active participation are essential requirements for making this course a success for students individually and collectively, 15% of the grade will be determined by the student’s overall performance in class.
3. Serving Society Project – As noted above, this course fulfills the Serving Society, Enacting Justice component of Westmont’s General Education program. As we study the history of the city in Europe, one of the course themes will be the experience of the migrant/refugee within European urban history. We will bring that story up to the present and examine the current migrant/refugee situation. Students are required to spend a minimum of 12 hours throughout the semester doing volunteer work with non-profit organizations engaged with refugees. Opportunities for work will likely be provided in the following cities: Vienna, Prague, Berlin, and Paris. This will facilitate students making comparisons of refugees’ experiences and treatment in multiple countries. The aim of this community-based learning project is to raise students’ awareness of justice issues for refugees related to their religion, ethnicity, gender, and social class. It will also seek to enhance student empathy for the challenges facing refugees and those societies now hosting them. Program leaders will organize the volunteer opportunities in advance, orient students in class to the organizations they will be working with, arrange for guest lectures relevant to the topic, provide appropriate readings for class discussion and analysis, and facilitate post-project de-briefings. Following the completion of the service hours and in-class discussions, students will write a 6-7 page, double spaced paper in which they draw upon their practical experiences, course readings, and class lectures and discussions to address the following: Assess the ways in which religion, ethnicity, gender, and/or social class are shaping the physical and psychological experience and treatment of refugees in Europe today. In your view, what does justice require or call for in this case? Be sure to note continuities and differences in that treatment from earlier generations of refugees in Europe, as well as from one contemporary city/nation to another. Give specific examples to support your generalizations. Completion of the service project hours will constitute 5% of the course grade; the paper will constitute 20% of the course grade.
4. Summer assignment – From the list of books provided in the Course Bibliography on p.2 of this syllabus, students will select one “city biography” and read it during the summer of 2017. This reading will introduce you to the field of urban history and the intriguing pasts of many of the places we will be visiting during our semester together. It will also make you something of a resident “expert” on that city for discussion purposes in class. Students will inform the instructor of which book they have selected to read by July 1, 2017, and will complete that reading before our August 19th departure for Edinburgh. Students will then compose a list of their top ten analytical “take away” points from their reading. These points should be substantive insights of the author or your own, not just factual statements about “your” city. The list should be presented in bullet point fashion in 1-2 single-spaced pages and submitted electronically to the instructor by August 21, 2017. Completion of this reading and the written list of key points will constitute 10% of the course grade.
5. Course Grading -- Two Exams = 50%
Class Performance = 15%
Serving Society Project Participation = 5%
Serving Society Essay = 20%
Summer Reading and List = 10%
Course Schedule:
Topic Location
Introduction Edinburgh
The City as an object of study London
The ancient city in Europe Rome
Rome’s genius and failure Rome
Walls, cathedrals, and markets Florence
The Florentine model Florence
The Merchants of Venice Venice
Community-based Learning Project Orientation Vienna
A Look Ahead: Fin-de-Siècle Vienna Vienna
A Look Ahead: Budapest in 1900 Budapest
Northern Renaissance Cities Krakow
Enlightenment City Warsaw
The Beautiful City Warsaw
The Wonders of Prague Prague
Mid-Term Exam Prague
The Industrial City Berlin
Urban Protests and Reforms Berlin
Re-designing the Nineteenth-Century City Berlin
Community-based Learning Project De-Briefing Berlin
High Culture and Mass Leisure Copenhagen
City Parks and Green Spaces Copenhagen
Imperial and Colonial Cities Bruges
The Great War’s Urban Impact Bruges
Inter-war Re-building Bruges
World War Two Devastation Normandy
World War Two Refugees Paris
Postwar Urban Reconstruction and Growth Paris
Immigrants in Paris Paris
The Post-Modern City Paris
The Migrant and Refugee Crisis in 2017 Paris
Community-based Learning Project Final Reflections Paris
Final Exam Paris