First Year: The Global City

Lay the Groundwork

Form tight bonds with your peers in a small, year-long course, focused on developing advanced writing skills through intensive study of the urban environment

All first year students begin with HON 101 (even students who earned AP/IB credit in high school). This year-long sequence is designed to help you develop the reading, writing, and analytical skills that will serve as a foundation for the Honors thesis -- and for all your undergraduate and graduate work. Each term, we will focus on a specific set of linked skills: summary of argument, explication, placement in relation to a discourse community. The texts you will read both help you learn the scholarly skills and provide the occasion for engaging in meaningful inquiry.

Each section of The Global City will have different reading material, but the writing tools studied throughout the year are the same from section to section.

HON 101A, 102A, and 103A

Dr. Pelin Basci

HON 101B, 102B, and 103B

Dr. Paul McCutcheon

Thematically, this this section of the Global City will consider the transnational history of capitalism, colonialism, segregation, imperialism, settlement, protest, and political struggle to understand how something seemingly “local” in scale- like the events surrounding George Floyd’s death - connect to, and intersect with, systems and processes at the national and global scale. As we travel, we will consider the historical relationship between urban activism within communities of color to national and transnational movements. Our goal will be to understand how networks of racialized capital forged in the 17th century mapped themselves onto the contours of contemporary urban space.

HON 101C, 102C, and 103C

Dr. Federico Perez

This course explores the history, representations, and contemporary politics of global urbanism.

During the fall we examine the historical precedents of what we now call globalization. Focusing on the rise of European colonialism since the fifteenth century, we trace the power struggles––the forms of domination and modes of resistance––that have shaped cities across the globe and into the present.

In the winter we continue our exploration of global life in the aftermath of decolonial struggles and as Western imperialism was reconfigured across the globe. We pay especial attention to the urban violence and conflicts associated with rise of nationalism, ethnic and racial divisions, and deepening socioeconomic inequalities. Of particular interest during this term is how violence is represented in different genres and media and with what social and political implications.

Finally, in the spring we conclude our intellectual journey by considering the legacies of these global histories––the afterlives of colonialism––in contemporary battles over land and resources, racial and social justice, and political mobilization and citizenship. The course draws heavily on anthropology, history, urban studies, journalism, graphic non-fiction, and film. We will read about cities North and South, East and West.

HON 101D, 102D, and 103D: Portland

Dr. Eric Rodriguez

To many people in the United States of America, Portland is seen as a city in near constant conflict. In 1991, President George H.W. Bush referred to the city as "Little Beirut" (a reference to the Lebanese city rocked by civil war in the 1980s). What is it about the city of Portland that has created this contentious reputation?

In this course, we will examine various texts, including treaties, manifestoes, and zines, to examine how writing practice, both analog and digital, affects representations and perceptions of Portland. We will examine the various ways state-sanctioned entities and activist networks engage in writing practice to assert power or animate communities to answer the following question: “How does writing change, both literally and metaphorically, urban environments?

HON 101E, 102E, and 103E

TBD

HON 101F, 102F, and 103F

Dr. Amy Borden

At the beginning of the 20th century, a series of forces that historians have named modernity reshaped urban life all over the globe. Emergent photochemical media: the flics and flickers, attractions and photoplays, serials and melodramas … the movies are intimately bound to early-twentieth century urban systems and cultures. Focused on Paris, New York/Hollywood, and Shanghai, we will study how films flowed on and as a global pathway circulating ideas such as Cosmopolitanism, colonialism, and the 1920s new woman.

To consider their local and regional uses and the development of cinema as an urban industry, we will learn how to use the concept of vernacular modernism to highlight modernity’s cinematic material cultures. We also study discourse around the materiality of photochemical motion pictures as it publicly animated ideas about personhood, the material nature of bodies, and human perception, including international stars and the beginnings of modern celebrity culture. We will learn from international film and media studies scholars who have studied Chinese, French, and US national cinemas, concentrating on attractions-based melodramas and genre films, aka the popular cinema of the time.

Our materials will be scholarly works of history and critical theory, films–many of which have only recently been restored and made available—and online film/media archives and databases to access ephemera and digitized film-adjacent materials to be used in our own scholarship.