Cities and Farms: (re)thinking “urban” and “rural” in the 21st Century

This course provides an interdisciplinary introduction to the study of urban and rural spaces. Cities and farms, villages and forests, are socially, politically, and environmentally contested spaces that are seldom addressed in their relations to one another. This course, on the other hand, will examine urban and rural spaces both historically and cross-culturally, and study how the relation between them has been imagined and incorporated into planning and governance, as well as its impact on community livelihood and the environment. In particular, in this course we introduce some of the theories about how cities and the countryside are formed as distinct, often separate entities, as well as analyses that move beyond such dichotomies. Reading (and watching) the work of anthropologists and human geographers, but also environmental historians and urban planners, we address the unresolved tension between the urban and the rural, and ask fundamental questions for the current times. What is the relation between the “urban” and the “rural”? How has this relation changed over the past decades? How does our understanding of urban and rural spaces shape the ways in which we approach nature and the environment? How does rural-urban migration re-configure both urban and rural environments, imaginaries, and gender roles? What is the future of cities and farms?