Who comes to the American city, and why?

In this online course, we will trace the crises of im/mobility that mark the histories of New York City and Los Angeles by exploring their representations in writing, music, maps, photography, and film.

“[F]or several decades, the complex of freeways was, to many observers, the singular architectural and engineering monument of the city’s contemporary public image. What the towering skyline is to Manhattan, the tangle of freeways is to Los Angeles.”

—From Raúl Homero Villa's Barrio-Logos: Space and Place in Urban Chicano Literature and Culture

"Manzanar Murakami sensed the time of day through his feet, through the vibration rumbling through the cement and steel, and by the intervals of vehicles passing beneath him. At that moment, cars swooped at steady intervals, trucks trundled but trundled quickly. Traffic was thick but moving."

—From Karen Tei Yamashita's novel Tropic of Orange

"The Manhattan neighborhood that surrounded me was caught up in a swirl of change. Entire buildings—some holding hundreds of apartments plus a small business or two—were being bought out by the nearby university ... Entire blocks were being re-categorized and re-named ... I quickly learned that—at least in certain circles—I shouldn’t mention that I was living in Harlem. I associated it with the Harlem Renaissance, the jazz age, and an exciting explosion of twentieth-century creativity, but the shifts in the language people were using to designate my adopted neighborhood suggested that its story was being actively re-made. For some reason that I couldn’t quite grasp, the neighborhood’s historical affiliation with Harlem needed to be shed in order to make way for a new identity to emerge.

My walks through Manhattan made me realize that my block wasn’t unique: the whole island seemed to be in a state of constant upheaval."