Course Introduction

Course Objectives:

1. understand the theories of postmodern urban culture (e.g. history and oblivion, urbanism as a way of life, urban migrant and family, flâneurism, global capital flows and simulation, risk soceity) and respond critically the issues brought up;
2. analyze urban films both in terms of form and content
3. analyze the issues of postmodern global cities as they get embodied in selected postmodern urban films (set in Taipei and various cities in the world);
4. relate the issues discussed to the urban spatial practices and landscapes in our city and/or another global city.
5. develop a sense of glocality through a focus on Taiwan/Taipei cinema.     

Description
In this era of globalizing capitalist cultures, postmodern global city is not just a meeting place of different forces and people, but also a center where these connecting and contradictory forces spread and extend their influences.  In the form of advanced technologies, the influences can mean enhancement of city dwellers’ lives and communication.  On the other hand, cities are also the centers of risk factors whose viral growth and impact far exceeds human control or expectation.  One central reason for this coexistence of prosperity and risks is that cities are the major hub of flows: the flows of people, commodities, information as well as unpredictable elements such as desires and viruses. 
In order to start to understand the nature and possible consequences of these global flows, this course makes a wide selection of city films set in a few major cities in the world, while also focusing on a city you may know better: Taipei.  The issues we address are: worldly simulation vs. city as archive, love and family amidst flows, (im)possibility of traumatic community. While we will make a wide selection of the urban films in different places of the world, Taipei films will be used to showcase how the central topics get treated by one city: history and loss of memory, urban anomie, urban nomad and overall commercialization.   
The questions we will ask are:

1. are city residents oblivious? Where do we find a city’s histories?
2. is urbanism a way of life? Do we share a similar way of life with people in the other global cities? How do urban residents relate to one another? How do we establish communities in a city?  
3. how do we define global cities as a “place” with history? Or as spaces of flows? In spaces of flows, how do we relate to strangers?
4. Many other questions as they arise in our reading, film analysis, thinking and writing.   

 
Requirements:
Filming watching before class, Attendance and Participation -- a must; 3 absences constitutes reason for failing the course.
Plagiarism – (of any kind) = failing the course
  
Chosen Films (subject to change):

1. Fight Club (David Finch 1999) 
2. The World (Jia Zhangke 2004)
3. Happy Together (Wang Kar-wai 1997)
4. Monsoon Wedding (Mira Nair 2001)
5. Central Station (Walter Salles 1998)
6. The Bubble (Eytan Fox 2006)
7. Incendies (Denis Villeneuve 2010)
8. Amelie (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001)
9. 11’09’01 September 11 (Youssef Chahine, etc. 2002)

1.     《超級大國民》(萬仁1994)         
2.     《天橋不見了》(蔡明亮2002)    
3.     《愛情萬歲》(蔡明亮1994)
4.     《愛情來了》(陳玉勳1997)
5.     《運轉手之戀》(張華坤、陳以文2000) 
6.     《台北台北》(石昌杰1993)
7.     《台北四非》(石昌杰、盧憲孚、王俊雄、吳俊輝 2005) 
8.     《流浪神狗人》(陳芯宜2008)
【Journal & Assignments due-- Tues before Class】

Textbooks:

1.  Wirth, Louis.  "Urbanism as a Way of Life."  The City Reader.  Eds. Richard T. LeGates and Frederic Stout.  NY: Routledge, 1996: 96-104. (T1)
2. Gregory, Derek, et al, eds. The Dictionary of Human Geography. 5th Revised edition edition. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. (T2)
3. Sibley, David, et al, eds. Cultural Geography: A Critical Dictionary of Key Concepts. London: I. B. Tauris, 2005. (T3)
4. Amin, Ash and Stephen Graham. “Cities of Connection and Disconnection.” Unsettling Cities: Movement/Settlement.  Eds. Allen, John, Doreen B. Massey and Michael Pryke. Psychology Press, 1999. (T4)
5. Giddens, Anthony. The Consequences of Modernity. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1990.

Requirements and Grading Policy

Quizzes	10%	Final Exam	30%
Online Discussion (Q & A every 2 wks)	20%	Photo Journey in Taipei/My City	20%
Group Presentation	20%

References:
Braester ,Yomi.  Painting the City Red: Chinese Cinema and the Urban Contract [ (The Skywalk is Gone) "Angel Sanctuaries: Taipei's Gentrification and the Erasure of Veterans' Villages"]
Clarke, David, ed.  The Cinematic City. London and New York: Routledge, 1997.
Davis, Darrell William, Ru-shou Robert Chen, eds.  Cinema Taiwan: Politics, Popularity and State of the Arts. NY: Routledge, 2007.
Friedberg, Anne.  Window Shopping: Cinema and the Postmodern.   -- flaneuse
Hong, Guo-Juin.  Taiwan Cinema: A Contested Nation on Screen.  ["Anywhere but Here: The Postcolonial City in Tsai Ming-Liang's Taipei Trilogy."]
Mennel, Barbara.  Cities and Cinema - – 2008 [“The Global City and Cities in Globalization,” Conclusion; Others: Modernity, film industry, utopia, divided city, city of love]
Shiel, Mark & Tony Fitzmaurice. Cinema and the City: Film and Urban Societies in a Global Context [3 parts: Cinema and the City in History and Theory; Postmodern Mediation of the City; Postcolonial Metropolis]
Tweedie, James.  The Age of New Waves: Art Cinema and the Staging of Globalization.  ["The Urban Archipelago: Taiwan's New Wave and the East Asian Economic Boom" “Morning in the New Metropolis: Taipei in the Globalization of City Film”]
Yeh, Emilie Yueh-yu & Darrell William Davis.  Taiwan Film Directors: A Treasure Island. NY: Columbia UP, 2013 .
 Wang, Lingzhen, ed.  Chinese Women’s Cinema: Transnational Contexts.  NY: Columbia UP, 2011.
Simon Parker. Urban Theory and the Urban Experience: Encountering the City