SPAN 538 Representations of the Urban Space in 20th-21st-century Spanish Culture
This course explores cultural productions 20th and 21st-century Spain from the perspective of urban studies. Through a series of primary and secondary readings as well as visual works, the course studies how Spanish cities have been transformed since the arrival of modernization and industrialization up to the present day, and how cultural productions have represented these transformations. The course will pay particular attention at how successive historical, political, and intellectual periods in Spain have fostered discussions about modern narratives of progress, secularization, and cosmopolitanism using the city and the urban experience as pivotal concepts. Readings and discussions will also look at the creation of a dynamics of opposition, reproduction, and interdependence between the city and supposedly antagonistic spatial categories (rural, country, nature).