Previous Issues

CONNECTING		The Cities Program
		Examining cities from a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives

Last semester, students in a course called “Twentieth-
Century Perspectives on the City” did a research project based on census data for Hartford from the 1940s to 2000. Their teacher, Andrew H. Walsh, associate director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life, had them focus on such areas as employment, housing, and education, and describe trends in particular neighborhoods of the city—information that they ultimately provided to the Center for Neighborhoods, a project of Trinity College faculty, students, and administrative staff working in partnership with United Connecticut Action for Neighborhoods (UCAN), community organizations, and other local educational and research institutions to provide support for neighborhood initiatives.

“It was a lot of number crunching,” says Katherine N. Sullivan ’04, “but it was exciting because we were producing new data that hadn’t been extracted before.”

The course is part of Trinity’s Cities Program, a nonmajor program that examines cities past, present, and future from a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives. The assignment is an example of how students in the program use Hartford to test urban theory in light of urban reality. Sullivan says that while the Cities Program exposes students to a number of cities across time and cultures—from Ancient Rome to present-day New York—“Hartford is always there as a basis of comparison.”

Associate Academic Dean J. Ronald Spencer, director of the Cities Program, says it, like the College’s overall urban project, has two elements: the study of cities in general and the use of Trinity’s home city as a richly varied educational resource.  Modeled on Guided Studies and the Interdisciplinary Science Program and begun in 1996, the program enrolls a select group of incoming students—usually 25 to 30— in each entering class. Participants take a sequence of six courses during the freshman and sophomore years and fulfill a final requirement in the junior or senior year.

Building an “intellectual and academic framework” for the study of cities The course that gets the ball rolling is “Reckoning with Cities: Issues and Insights,” taught by Anne F. Lundberg, director of the Internship Program. Lundberg says the course examines “a broad sampling of the big issues confronting cities today,” with segments on such topics as urban education, urban culture, and revitalization. The course is designed to “build an intellectual and academic framework” for the study of cities, and Lundberg draws upon local resources for both the broad view and the Hartford perspective. She has invited staff from the MegaCities Project, a Trinity-based transnational network of city leaders and activists from around the world, to speak on the topic of globalization. And a guest speaker from the Antiquarian and Landmarks Society discussed the role of tourism in the city. Students in the course are required to do a final project on Hartford, often involving research at the Hartford Public Library or other archives, and interviews with city officials. Last fall, Emily S. Foote ’05, a cities enthusiast from a small town in Vermont, researched welfare reform’s effects in Hartford. Three years ago, Rebecca J. Kanin ’02, an art history major from Washington, D.C., examined the history and role of Constitution Plaza in the city.

Kanin, who became an art history major after taking Associate Professor of Fine Arts  Kathleen A. Curran’s [pictured right] course on “The City as Built Environment,” which focuses on the history of architecture and planning in major European and American cities, says, “You take such a broad range of classes that you can find your niche in the program.” The other courses include “The City in History,” “The City Imagined: Visual and Literary Representations of Urban Life,” and “Social Science Approaches to the City.”

A foundation for further study in a variety of fields

Dean Spencer notes that while some program participants proceed to design their own majors in urban studies topics, others have used the program as a foundation for further study in the social sciences, architecture, and more. David J. Alexander ’03, who is a mentor for first-year students in the program, found that the interdisciplinary approach of the Cities Program was ideal preparation for his major in political science and minor in legal studies. One of his favorite things about mentoring is the fact that Cities Program students have such a broad range of interests, he says.

The program’s final requirement can be fulfilled in a variety of ways, including participating in CityTerm, which combines an internship at a government office or other local agency with a seminar on contemporary urban issues. Another option is to conduct an independent research project in Hartford or in a foreign city while studying abroad. Patricia Pelczar ’00, who is now a Ph.D. candidate in molecular microbiology at Dartmouth College, combined her interest in human health and cities by doing her final requirement on why tuberculosis, which has seen a resurgence in many cities, has not been such a major problem in Hartford in recent years. Lillian Yu-en Moulton ’02 took advantage of Trinity’s Rome Campus to satisfy her Cities Program final requirement, exploring fascism’s impact on Roman architecture.

A model program

Compared to the Guided Studies and Interdisciplinary Science programs, the Cities Program is still young and still evolving. Dean Spencer conjectures that the Cities curriculum may be revised in the future to give students some elective choice and to take even fuller advantage of Hartford as a multi-faceted educational resource. However, a recent self-study, a student survey, and also anecdotal evidence suggest students are enjoying and benefiting from the program. What’s more, Curran says people elsewhere have taken notice, pointing out that “MIT is forming a similar program using Trinity as a model.”

Kate Sullivan ”04, who expects to employ her Cities Program experience at the Cape Town global site next year, says she has spent her first two years at Trinity really delving into “a lot of tough issues” from historical, sociological, anthropological, and cultural perspectives. Ultimately, though, she says, “The program has shown me that there is hope for cities.”

-- Leslie Virostek