American Cities Research Institute

The Community College Humanities Association <www.ccha-assoc.org (external link)>, has been awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to sponsor the American Cities Research Institute, a research project at the Library of Congress for community college faculty. George Scheper (Community College of Baltimore County) is project director and David A. Berry (Essex County College) is project manager.

This is a major professional development opportunity for a competitively selected group of ten community college scholars in the humanities to pursue guided individual research, on a topic related to American cities, for twenty-three days at the Library of Congress, spaced over three sessions in residence in Washington, D.C. The dates of residency are June 3- 15, 2007, January 13- 18, 2008 and June 1- 6, 2008.

Selected faculty will be able to conduct their research using the full facilities of the Library of Congress, with active guidance from a facilitator from the Office of Scholarly Programs and other professional Library staff representing the various collections. In addition, visiting scholars Mary Ryan (Johns Hopkins University), Tom Bender (New York University) and Clement Price (Rutgers University- Newark) will offer seminars to the group at the Library, and John Lawlor (Reading Area Community College) will serve as a mentor. Publishable papers resulting from the project will appear in a special issue of The Community College Humanities Review edited by project director George Scheper and general editor Ned Wilson.

For more information about the program, contact:
David A. Berry, Executive Director
Community College Humanities Association
c/o Essex County College
303 University Ave., Newark, NJ 07102-17998
Tel: (973) 877-3577, Fax: (973) 877-3578
mail: [email protected]

American Cities and Public Spaces: 2007- 2008
Daily Schedule

Institute Texts [For readings for individual seminars, see Institute Daily Schedule below]:
Bender, Tom. The Unfinished City: New York and the Metropolitan Idea (2002).
Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. NY: Vintage, 1961; 1992.
Rybczynski, Witold. City Life: Urban Expectations in a New World, NY: Scribner, 1995.
Mary Ryan, Civic Wars: Democracy and Public Life in the American City (1997).

Recommended:
Mumford, Lewis. The Culture of Cities (1970).
Hiss, Tony. The Experiencing of Place (NY: Random House, 1990).
Tuan, Yi-Fu, Space and Place/ the Perspective of Experience (U of Minn. 1977).

3 June - Sunday
Arrival of Participants in Washington, DC; check-in.
6:30 PM Reception; gathering in lobby of Carlyle Suites Hotel

4 June - Mon
8:15 AM Meet in lobby of Carlyle Suites Hotel.
9:00 AM Assemble outside Library of Congress James Madison
Memorial Building (101 Independence Ave., SE).
Reader registration and orientation to the Library
10 AM Research orientation, Thomas Mann (LOC) G-07
Noon Opening luncheon and introductory session, Mountpelier
Room, Madison Bldg, 6th floor.
2 PM Introduction and orientation: David Berry, George Scheper, and Mary Lou Reker, Kluge Center, Office of Scholarly Programs (LOC), LJ-113
3 - 9 PM Independent research time in the Library.

5 June - Tues
8:30 AM Coffee, juice pastries, sign in, LJ-119
9 - Noon Independent research
2:00 PM Mary Ryan (History, Johns Hopkins): "Theoretical Issues: "Democracy and Public Life in the American City," LJ-113

Readings for Mary Ryan seminars (in Reader):
Mary Ryan, Civic Wars: Democracy and Public Life in the American City (1997). (Text)
Jane Jacobs The Death and Life of Great American Cities (N.Y.: Vintage, 1961; 1992).
Christine Boyer, The City of Collective Memory (MIT Press, 1994), chaps. 1, 2 and 6.
George L. Scheper, "The Reformist Vision of Frederick Law Olmsted and the Poetics of Park Design," The New England Quarterly, LXII.3 (September1989): 369-402.

6 June - Wed
8:30 AM Coffee, juice, pastries, sign in, LJ-119
9 AM Mary Ryan: "Theoretical Issues: "Democracy and Public Life in the American City." continued, LJ-113.
2 - 9 PM Independent research

7 June - Thurs
8:30 AM Coffee, juice, pastries, sign in, LJ-119
9 AM C. Ford Peatross (Curator, Center for American Architecture, Design and Engineering, Library of Congress): Washington, D.C. and the Mall: Evolution and Design," LJ-113

Recommended Reading for Ford Peatross’s seminar:
The Mall in Washington, 1791- 1991, ed. Richard Longstreth (2003).

2 - 9 PM Independent research

8 June - Fri
8:30 AM Coffee, juice, pastries, sign in, LJ-119
9 AM - Noon Independent research
2 PM Research mentoring, John Lawlor (Reading Area CC), LJ-113

Presentation: John M. Lawlor, Jr., "Arts in the culture war: The battle over temperance in Reading, Pennsylvania during the Progressive Era." [View Webcast]

Using the city of Reading, PA as a case study, Lawlor attempts to show how the arts, as used by both sides in the Progressive Era battle, transcended locality. Fine arts, illustrations, photographs, low brow arts such as vaudeville, music, and dramatic works such as plays and films were all used to convince the public of various positions correctness on temperance in the period. The presentation explores the interconnectedness of many issues such as freedom, womens rights, child welfare, health, poverty, and crime. The format is multi-media based with film clips from T. S. Arthurs Ten Nights in a Barroom, digital audio with sheet music for a 1909 Harry Von Tilzer song, and many drawings and illustrations such as those by George Cruikshank in his works, The Drunkard and the Drunkards Children.

9 June - Sat
8:30 AM Informal roundtable, sign in, LJ-119
9 AM Research mentoring, John Lawlor (Reading Area CC), LJ-113
Noon - 5 PM Independent research

10 June - Sun
Library closed

11 June - Mon
8:30 AM Coffee, juice, pastries, sign in, LJ-119
9 AM - 9 PM Independent research

12 June - Tues
8:30 AM Coffee, juice, pastries, sign in, LJ-119
9 - Noon Independent research
2:00 pm Clement Price (History, Rutgers Newark): "Rethinking the Urban Experience: Focus on Newark" LJ-113

Readings for Clement Price’s seminars (in Reader):
Stuart Galishoff, Newark: The Nation’s Unhealthiest City, 1832-1895 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1988), Introduction, first and last chapters.
Clement A. Price, "The Beleaguered City as Promised Land: Blacks in Newark, 1917-1947," in Maxine N. Lurie, ed., A New Jersey Anthology (Newark, NJ: New Jersey Historical Society, 1994), pp. 433-461.
Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), chapters 10, 11, 12, 15.
Komozi Woodard, A Nation Within A Nation: Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) & Black Power Politics (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1999), chaps. 2, 3, & 4.
Ann Durkin Keating, "Cities, Suburbs, and Their Regions," Journal of Urban History 27 (July 2001): 650-657.

Recommended:
Philip Roth, Goodbye, Columbus (NY: Vintage, 1959, 1987, 1993).

13 June - Wed
8:30 AM Coffee, juice, pastries, sign in, LJ-119
9 AM Clement Price: "Rethinking the Urban Experience: Focus on Newark." LJ-113
2 PM Independent research

14 June - Thurs
8:30 AM Coffee, juice, pastries, sign in, LJ-119
9 AM - 9 PM Independent research

15 June - Fri
8:30 AM Coffee, juice, pastries, sign in, LJ-119
9 - Noon Independent research
12:30 pm Luncheon, Mountpelier Room, Madison Bldg, 6th floor.

16 June - Sat
8:30 am Informal roundtable, sign in, LJ-119
9 AM - 5 PM Independent research

Departure from Washington

January 2008 Session

13 Jan - Sun
Arrival of participants in Washington, DC

14 Jan - Mon
8:30 AM Coffee, juice pastries, sign in, LJ-119
9 AM - 9 PM Independent research

15 Jan - Tues
8:30 AM Coffee, juice, pastries, sign-in, LJ-113
9 - Noon Independent research
2 PM Thomas Bender (Humanities, NYU): "Metropolitanism: Focus on New York City", LJ-113

Readings for Thomas Bender’s seminars (in Reader):
Herbert Croly, "New York as the American Metropolis," Architectural Record, 13 (March, 1903), 193-206.
Georg Simmel, "The Metropolis and Mental Life," in Kurt H. Wolff, ed. The Sociology of Georg Simmel (1950), 409-24.
Raymond Williams, "The Metropolis and the Emergence of Modernism," in Edward Timms and David Kelley, Unreal City: Urban Experience in Modern European Literature and Art (New York, 1985): 13-24.
Neil Harris, "UrbanTourism and the Commercial City," in William R. Taylor, ed., Inventing Times Square: Commerce and Culture at the Crossroads of the World (New York, 1991): 66-82.
Alexander J. Reichl, Reconstructing Times Square: Politics & Culture in Urban Development (New York, 1999): chap. 7, "Learning From Forty-second Street."
George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 (New York, 1994): chaps. 9 &12: "Building Gay Neighborhood Enclaves: The village and Harlem" and "The Exclusion of Homosexuality from the Public sphere in the 1930s."

Recommended:
Thomas Bender, The Unfinished City: New York and the Metropolitan Idea (2002): chap. 6, "Metropolitanism and the Spirit of Invention."
Kenneth T. Jackson, "The Capital of Capitalism: The New York Metropolitan Region, 1890-1940, " in Anthony Sutcliffe, ed. Metropolis, 1890-1940 (1984), 319-53.
Thomas Bender, The Unfinished City: New York and the Metropolitan Idea (2002): chap. 13, "The New Metropolitanism."

16 Jan - Wed
8:30 AM Coffee, juice, pastries, sign-in, LJ-119
9 AM Thomas Bender: "Metropolitanism: Focus on New York City", LJ-113
2 - 9 PM Independent research

17 Jan - Thurs
8:30 AM Coffee, juice, pastries, sign in, LJ-119
9 AM - 9 PM Independent Research

18 Jan - Fri
8:30 AM Coffee, juice, pastries, sign in, LJ-119
9 AM - 5 PM Independent research

19 Jan - Sat
8:30 AM Informal roundtable, sign in LJ-119
9 AM - 5 PM Independent research

Departure from Washington

June 2008 Session

1 June - Sun
Arrival of participants in Washington, DC

2 June - Mon
8:30 AM Coffee, juice pastries, sign in, LJ-119
9 AM Roundtable: focus on presentation of individual research projects and curricular implications, LJ-113
10:00 - Independent research

3 June - Tues
8:30 AM Coffee, juice pastries, sign in, LJ-119
9 AM - 5 PM Independent research

4 June - Wed
8:30 AM Coffee, juice pastries, sign in, LJ-119
9 AM Meeting with Ned Wilson, editor CC Humanities Review
1 PM Project presentations, LJ-113

Mentors: Mary Ryan, Ned Wilson, and George Scheper

5 June- Thur
8:30 AM Coffee, juice pastries, sign in, LJ-119
9 AM - 5 PM

Project presentations, LJ-113

Mentors: Mary Ryan, Ned Wilson, and George Scheper

7 PM Farewell Reception hosted by CCHA

6 June - Friday
8:30 AM Coffee, juice pastries, sign in, LJ-119
9 AM Concluding Roundtable, evaluations, LJ-113
Independent research

Departure from Washington

Project Book List
Institute Texts: [For readings for individual seminars, see Institute Daily Schedule.]
Bender, Tom. The Unfinished City: New York and the Metropolitan Idea. NY: New Press, 2002.
Boyer, M. Christine. The City of Collective Memory. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994.
Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. NY: Vintage, 1961; 1992.
Mumford, Lewis. The City in History. NY: Harvest,1968.
Rybczynski, Witold. City Life: Urban Expectations in a New World, NY: Scribner, 1995.
Ryan, Mary, Civic Wars: Democracy and Public Life in the City during the Nineteenth Century. Univ of California, 1997.

Supplementary Recommended Bibliography:
Agnew, John and John Mercer, and David Sopher, eds. The City in Cultural Context. Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1984.
Bender, Thomas and Carl Schorske, eds. Budapest and New York: Studies in Metropolitan Transformation, 1870-1930. New York: Russell Sage, 1994.
Bender, Thomas. Toward an Urban Vision: Ideas and Institutions in Nineteenth-century America. 1975.
Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations. Tr. Harry Zohn. NY: Schocken Books, 1969.
Boyer, M. Christine. Manhattan Manners. Architecture and Style 1850-1900. New York: Rizzoli, 1985.
Burrows, Edwin G. and Mike Wallace. Gotham. NY: Oxford, 1999.
Castells, Manuel. The City and the Grassroots. A Cross-cultural Theory of Urban Social Movements. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983.
Castells, Manuel. The Informational City. Oxford: Blackwell, 1989.
Davis, Mike. City of Quartz/ Excavating the Future in Los Angeles. Random/Vintage, 1992.
Hall, Peter. Cities in Civilzation. New York: Pantheon, 1998.
Hayden, Dolores. The Power of Place. Urban Landscapes as Public History. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995.
Kunstler, James Howard. The City in Mind/ Notes on the Urban Condition. NY: Free Press, 2001.
Liggett, Helen and David Perry, eds. Spatial Practices. Critical Explorations in Social/Spatial Theory. London: Sage, 1995.
Morse, Richard and Jorge Hardoy, eds. Rethinking the Latin American City. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.
Olsen, Donald. The City as a Work of Art: London, Paris, Vienna. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986.
Rykwert, Joseph. The Seduction of Place: the City in the Twenty-First Century. NY: Vintage, 2000.
Tuan, Yi-Fu. Cosmos and Hearth. Space and Place: the Perspective of Experience. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1977.
Wheatley, Paul. "The Concept of Urbanism.," in Man, Settlement, and Urbanism, ed. Peter Ucko, Ruth Tringham and G. W. Dimbley. Cambridge: Schenkman, 1972.

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