Week 1: September 10. Introduction.

Thursday: Introduction: scope of the course, methods, overview…

• Start reading: Italo Calvino’s Invisible cities.

Week 2: September 15-17. Cities, urban spaces and imaginations

Tuesday: City worlds: the countless ways to define a city (a contemporary perspective).

• Massey, Allen and Pile; 1999. City worlds. 4-19, 42-52, 100-113, 157-171.
• Perec, Georges; 1997. “The town” in Species of spaces and other pieces. Penguin, 60-67.

Thursday: City as image or city as everyday experience? From city-plans to public happenings.

• Kostof, Spiro; 1991. “Introduction” in The city shaped: urban patterns and meanings through history. New York: Bulfinch Press, 1-41.
• Carl, Peter; 2000. “City-image versus topography of praxis,” CAJ 10: 328-335.

Week 3. September 22-24. The ancient city: approaches and challenges

Tuesday: Approaching the ancient city: social space and the urban event

• Marcus, Joyce and Jeremy A. Sabloff; 2008. “Introduction,” in The ancient city: new perspectives in the ild and new world. J. Marcus and J.A. Sabloff (eds). Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research, 3-26.
• Favro, Diane; 1999. "Meaning and Experience: Urban History from Antiquity to the Early Modern Period" Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 58/3: 364-373.

Thursday: Ancient Near Eastern cities: an overview

• Stone, Elizabeth C.; 2007. “The Mesopotamian urban experience,” in Settlement and society: essays dedicated to Robert McCormick Adams. E.C. Stone (ed). 213-234.
• Mieroop, “The origins and the character of the Mesopotamian city” in The ancient Mesopotamian city, 23-40.

Week 4. September 29-October 1. Cities and desire: Uruk

Assignment due: Invisible cities: Monday Sept 28, 5 pm (to post on the wiki)

Tuesday: Calvino’s cities: a discussion on student projects (cities , imagination and stories).

• Calvino, Italo; 1974. Invisible cities. Harcourt: New York.

Thursday: The urban revolution: early cities of southern Mesopotamia

• Van de Mieroop 2006: “Origins: The Uruk phenomenon,” in A history of the ancient Near East : ca. 3000-323 BC, 19-40.
• Leick, Gwendolyn; 2001. “Uruk” in Mesopotamia: the invention of the city. London: Penguin, 30-60.

Week 5. October 6-8. Trading cities: Ur

Tuesday: The Third Millennium cities of southern Mesopotamia: the temple, the palace and the wealthy neighbor

• Yoffee, Norman; 2005. “The meaning of cities in the earliest states and civilizations,” in Myths of the archaic state: evolution of the earliest cities, states and civilizations. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 42-62.
• Postgate, J. Nicholas; 1992. “Cities and dynasties,” in Early Mesopotamia: Society and Economy at the dawn of history. Routledge: London and New York, 22-50.

Thursday: Bronze age cities of the south: the giant mound and the gigantic ziggurat

• Westenholz, Joan Goodnick; 1996. “Ur – The capital of Sumer,” in Royal cities of the Biblical world. J.G. Westenholz (ed.). Jerusalem: Bible Lands Museum.
• Mieroop, “The urban landscape” in The ancient Mesopotamian city, 63-100.

Take home midterm questions distributed via e-mail (Oct 9, Friday).

Week 6. October 13-15. Cities and imagination: Nippur

Take home midterms essays due: Oct 12, Monday (5 pm)

Tuesday: Nippur as ceremonial center

• Van de Mieroop, M.; 1997. “City and countryside: the Mesopotamian view,” The ancient Mesopotamian city. Oxford University Press: Oxford, 42-62.
• Zettler, Richard L.; 1987b. “Enlil’s city Nippur, at the end of the late 3rd mil. B.C.” BSMS 14: 7-19.
• Gibson, McGuire; 1993. “Nippur, sacred city of Enlil, supreme god of Sumer and Akkad,” Al-Rāfidān 14: 1-18.

Thursday: Cattlepen and the sheepfold: poetic imagination of the city in Early Mesopotamian city laments

• Bridge, Gary and Sophie Watson; 2000. “City imaginaries,” in A companion to the city. Gary Bridge and Sophie Watson (eds.). Malden MA: Blackwell, 7-17.
• Lambert, Wilfred G.; 1992. “Nippur in ancient ideology,” in Nippur at the centennial. M. deJong Ellis (ed.), Occasional Publications of the Samuel Noah Kramer Fund 14: Philadelphia, 119-126.

Tinney, Steve; 1996. The Nippur Lament: royal rhetoric and divine legitimation in the reign of Išme-Dagan of Isin (1953-1935 BC). Philadelphia. (Read the whole poem and introduction).

Week 7. October 20-22. Cities and spectacle I: Hattusha

Tuesday: Hittite empire and its cities in Anatolia

• Gorny, Ronald L.; 1989. “Environment, archaeology and history in Hittite Anatolia,” Biblical Archaeologist 52: 78-96.
• Bryce, Trevor R.; 2002. “Festivals and rituals” in Life and society in the Hittite world. Oxford University Press: Oxford, 187-210.

Thursday: Hattusha: city of ritual and spectacle

• Hawkins, J.D.; 1998. “Hattusa: home to the thousand gods of Hatti,” in Capital cities: urban planning and spiritual dimensions. J. G. Westenholz (ed.), Bible Lands Museum: Jerusalem.
• Van den Hout, Theo; 2002. "Tombs and memorials: the (Divine) Stone house and Hegur reconsidered," in Recent developments in Hittite archaeology and history. K. A. Yener and H.A. Hoffner Jr. (eds.). Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 73-91.

Week 8. October 27-29. Cities and memory: Karkamish

Tuesday: The Early Iron age in Northern Mesopotamia

• Hawkins, John David; 1995. “Karkamish and Karatepe: Neo-Hittite City-States in North Syria” in Civilizations of the Ancient Near East. J.M. Sasson (ed.); New York: Simon & Schuster Macmillan, vol. II, pp. 1295-1307.
• Mazzoni, Stefania; 1994. “Aramaean and Luwian new foundations,” in Nuove fondazioni nel Vicino Oriente antico: realta e ideologia. S. Mazzoni (ed.). Giardini: Pisa, 319-339.

Thursday: Monuments and memory at Karkamish

• Alcock, Susan E.; 2002. “Archaeologies of memory” in Archaeologies of the Greek past: landscape, monuments, and memories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1-35.
• Mazzoni, Stefania; 1997. “The gate and the city: change and continuity in Syro-Hittite urban ideology,” in Die orientalische Stadt: Kontinuität, Wandel, Bruch. G. Wilhelm (ed.), SDV Saarbrücker Druckerei und Verlag: Saarbrücken: 307-338.
• Bonatz, Dominik; 2001. “Mnemohistory in Syro-Hittite iconography,” in Historiography in the cuneiform world. T. Abusch et.al. (eds.), CDL Press: Bethesda, Maryland, 65-77.

Week 9. November 3-5. Cities and festival: Kalhu/Nimrud

Tuesday: No class: Omur is out of town.

Thursday: City foundation as festival and the case of Kalhu: a banquet for thousands.

• Oates, Joan and David Oates; 2001. Nimrud: an Assyrian imperial city revealed. British School of Archaeology in Iraq: London, 13-35.
• Collon, Dominique; 1992. “Banquets in the art of the ancient Near East,” in Banquets d’Orient. R. Gyselen (ed.), Bures-sur-Yvette: 23-30.
• Wiseman, Donald J.; 1952. “A new stela of Aššur-Nasir-Pal II,” Iraq 14: 24-39.

Assignment 2: “Walking in the city”/”Providence Waterfire” paper due: Nov. 6, Friday (5 pm).

Week 10. November 10-12. Cities and Power: Ninuwa/Nineveh

Tuesday: Assyrian cities as imperial landscapes

• Van de Mieroop 2006, “Assyria’s world domination” 247-269.
• Barbanes, Eleanor; 2003. “Planning an empire: city and settlement in the Neo-Assyrian period,” BCSMS 38: 15-22.

Thursday: Cities and power: urban spaces as platforms of political action.

• Amin, Ash and Nigel Thrift; 2002. "Powerful cities" in Cities: reimagining the urban. Polity Press; Malden MA, 105-130.
• Stronach, David; 1995. “Notes on the topography of Nineveh,” in Neo-Assyrian geography. M. Liverani (ed.). Roma: Sargon srl, 161-170.
• Lumsden, Stephen; 2005. "The production of space at Nineveh," in Nineveh: Papers of the XLIXe Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale. D. Collon and A. George (eds). London: British School of Archaeology in Iraq, 187-197.

Week 11. November 17-19. Cities and festival: Babylon

Tuesday: Narratives of the city: archaeology and poetry of Babylon

• Van de Mieroop 2006, “The Neo-Babylonian Dynasty” 276-285.
• George, Andrew R.; 1997. “ ‘Bonds of the lands’: Babylon, the cosmic capital,” in Die orientalische Stadt: Kontinuität, Wandel, Bruch. G. Wilhelm (ed.), SDV Saarbrücker Druckerei und Verlag, Saarbrücken: 125-145.

Thursday: Babylon’s Akitu Festival and the shaping of urban space

• Van de Mieroop, Marc; 2003. "Reading Babylon" American Journal of Archaeology 107.2: 257-275.
• Black, Jeremy A.; 1981. “The new year ceremonies in ancient Babylon: ‘taking Bel by the hand’ and a cultic picnic,” Religion 11: 39-59.
• Sommer, Benjamin D.; 2000. “The Babylonian akitu festival: Rectifying the king or renewing the cosmos?” The Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society 27: 81-95.

Week 12. November 24. Cities and Spectacle II: Ephesus

Tuesday: The Salutaris Procession in its urban context

• Rogers, Guy McLean. 1991. "The procession of statues," in The Sacred Identity of Ephesus. London and New York: Routledge, 80 - 115
• Yegul, Fikret. 1994. "The street experience of ancient Ephesus," in Streets: critical perspectives on public space. Celik, Z., D. Favro, R. Ingersoll (eds.). Berkeley: University of California Press, 95 - 107.

Thanksgiving Recess: Nov 25-29

Week 13. December 1-3. Cities, conflict and desire: Jerusalem.

Tuesday: Jerusalem: “space of frustrated desire”.

• Wharton, Annabel Jane; 1995. “Jerash and Jerusalem” in Refiguring the post classical city : Dura Europe, Jerash, Jerusalem and Ravenna. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 85-100.

Thursday: Returning to the original question: city as image, city as experience? Wrap-up discussion.

• Boyer, M. Christine; 2001. “City images and representational forms,” in The city of collective memory: its historical imagery and srchitectural entertainments. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press, 31-70.

Last day to hand Ömür paper drafts: Dec 3, Thursday.

Final Papers due: December 9, Wednesday by 5 pm.

Reading period: December 7-11