"Each city receives its form from the desert it opposes."
Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities (1974: 18).

"The possibility of recognizing cities as spatial formations gives us a legitimate object of analysis. But how should we read them to make sense of their extraordinary variety and complexity? Cities are places of work, consumption, circulation, play, creativity, excitement, boredom. They gather, mix, separate, conceal, display. They support unimaginably diverse social practices. They juxtapose nature, people, things, and the built environment in any number of ways."
Ash Amin and Nigel Thrift, Cities: reimagining the urban (2002: pp. 2-3).

Meets on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays 11:00-11:50 am (the so-called D-hour) at Sayles Hall 204
Ömür's Office: Joukowsky Instutute (70 Waterman St.) Room 202
E-mail him Call him: 401-863-6411 Read his webpage or wiki
Office Hours: Tuesday 10-12 am. (By appointment)

Course Description:

Cities are layered topographies of cultural histories, enchanted places of our social lives, messy landscapes of our everyday performances. Ancient cities were no less complex spaces in their liveliness. What did ancient cities look like and how were they shaped, in architectural form and in the imagination of its citizens? How do social events, festivals, cult practices, public spectacles shape the layout of a city? In the light of contemporary theories of urban space drawn from geography, architecture, cultural studies and anthropology, we will explore what makes a city a city in the first place, and attempt to make sense of the patchy and fragmentary archaeological evidence from the ancient Near East in understanding, reconstructing cities.

The course will pay particular attention to issues of social dramas, spectacles and performances in the urban sphere, of urbanization, formation of urban space, and architectural projects in relation to cult practices and commemorative ceremonies in the Ancient Near East. Investigating ten cities as case studies from early cities of fourth millenium BC Mesopotamia to the medieval Syro-Palestine, we will study the processes of the making of urban and extra-urban landscapes in the socio-religious context of cult festivals, state spectacles, everyday performances. We will therefore discuss the making of cities, negotiated between the representations of urban ideals, politics of space, monumental construction, and the material practices of the society, and explore aspects of the recent scholarly opinion that societies established their relationship with history through their construction and manipulation of architectural spaces.

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

• Amin, Ash and Nigel Thrift; 2002. Cities: reimagining the urban. Polity Press; Malden MA.

• Van de Mieroop, Marc; 2004. A history of the ancient Near East. ca 3000-323 BC. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

• Van de Mieroop, Marc; 1997. The ancient Mesopotamian city. New York : Oxford University Press.

• Uruk: Cities and Desire I - Ceremonial center. Social complexity, urbanization. Presenters: Omur

• Ur: Trading Cities- at the time of the Third Dynasty of Ur. Sea merchants of Ur. Monumentalization of the sanctuary. Isin-Larsa period neighborhoods. Presenter: Chris Oates.

• Nippur: Cities and Imagination- mythical city, ritual city, poetics of imagination in the Sumerian city laments. Cattlepen and the sheepfold. Urban metaphors. . Presenters: Omur

• Hattusha: Cities and Spectacle I- of the Hittite kings and the KI.LAM festival, festival of the gatehouse. Presenters: Michelle Beaulieu and Daniela Alvarado.

• Karkamish: Cities and Memory- Social memory and spoliation. Mazzoni. Presenters: Marlisa Wise.

• Nimrud: Cities and Eyes- Visual representation in the urban fabric. Assurnasirpal II’s new foundation. Building projects and spatial narratives. Presenters: Noah Wiener.

• Nineveh: Cities and Landscapes- Long term history of the city, its orchards and Sennacherib’s Nineveh. Presenter: Kate Janke and Bochay Drum.

• Babylon: Cities and Festival- Nebuchadnezzar’s city. Babylon in the modern imagination. Babel tower, hanging gardens. The akitu festival. Presenters: Luis Lanz-Tiena and Rachel Moranis.

• Persepolis: Cities and Spectacle II – Achaemenids and the ceremonial capital. Presenters: Kelsey Peterson

• Jerusalem: Cities and Conflict – in the medieval period: space, place and layering of meaning in the urban space. Politics and conflict. Presenters: Sarah Dawson and John Anderson-Lynch