During the first year, Cities students take an integrated sequence of four courses inthe program-two each semester. These courses have been expressly created for the Program and are open only to students enrolled in it. As sophomores, students choose an approved elective from the regular curriculum that addresses a particular interestthey have in cities (e.g., urban architecture and design, urban politics, the history of cities, contemporary urban problems). The elective is usually taken in the fall, but maybe taken in the spring with the approval of the director of the Program. Then in thesecond semester of the sophomore year, students satisfy the Program's Final Requirement by any one of several approved means. (Additional information about this requirement appears below.)

The First Year Courses

Fall Semester

CTYP 200. Hartford, Past and Present

Over the course of almost 400 years, just about every important development in American urban life has left its mark for good and ill on Hartford. The city is, therefore, an excellent point of entry into the study of American cities. The course offers anexamination of Hartford's  development as a major financial and manufacturing centerin the 19th and 20th centuries and its subsequent transformation into a troubled post-industrial city at the heart of a privileged metropolitan area. Particular attention will be paid to changes over time in the city's economy, its ethnic, racial, religious, and class  composition, its political and civic life, and its culture. The course will also explore the causes of the social and economic problems now confronting Hartford  and recent efforts at reform and redevelopment.

CTYP 202. The City as Built Environment

This course selectively examines the architectural and planning history of major European and American cities from ancient Greece to ca. 1900. Topics include the nature of city centers and the role of public space, the formalization of town planning as a discipline, patterns of patronage and architectural education, the infrastructure of cities, and the influence of new technologies and industrialization on cities. A selection of  examples-Athens, Rome, Paris, Amsterdam, London, Washington, DC, Berlin, Vienna, New York-will serve as case studies.

Spring Semester

CTYP 206. Writing the City: Visual and Literary Representations of Urban Life

Drawing upon works of imaginative literature, the visual arts, film, and popular  culture, this course will examine representations of urban life from the 16th century to the present. The approach of the course will be both comparative, drawing upon works from a variety of cultural and historical settings, and thematic, considering such issues as the city and immigrants, urban life and work(ers), cities and the production of culture, and utopian and dystopian visions of urban life. We will be primarily concerned with exploring the ways in which urban life shapes, and is shaped by, these cultural representations.

CTYP 207. Cities in Global and Historical Perspective

This course will examine cities, past, present, and future, from the standpoint of the social sciences. It is concerned with historical patterns of city growth, planning, and change;the variation in cities across the regions of the world; and the way in which the increasingly global economy has shaped contemporary cities and the interconnections between cities. The course also focuses on the distinctive impact of cities on social, political, and intellectual life.

The Sophomore Year

The Elective

A variety of courses are available in the regular curriculum from which students will choose an elective that addresses their particular interest in cities. Examples include Black Politics in Urban America, The Classical City, Urban Economics, Cities, Suburbs, and Schools, London - Literary Life, 19th-Century Architecture, Modern Architecture - 1900 to the Present, Global Hartford, A Tale of Two Cities - Hong Kong and Shanghai, The "Islamic" City, Urban Politics, and Social Problems in American Society.

The Final Requirement

This requirement, which students satisfy in the spring of the sophomore year, rounds out the Program. A number of options for fulfilling the requirement are offered. They include a tutorial, an individual or small-group research project, an internship, or a suitable course. The option chosen must be  approved in advance by the student's Cities Program adviser and the director of the program. Most of the options are valued at one course credit, but some of them carry more or less than one.