What do the sprawling cities of the global South tell us about the contemporary urban condition? How is urban space produced and experienced in an era of increased interconnectedness, but also of great inequality and instability? How does the view from the South change our understanding of urban forms and processes, especially when so much of the "South" seems to be located in the "North"? To address these questions we will explore urban lives and spaces across cities in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. The course will include works in anthropology, geography, urban...

In a story titled Africa Rising (2011), The Economist argued that the continent epitomizes both the "transformative promise of [capitalist] growth" and its bleakest dimensions. This workshop will explore Africa's changing place in the world - and the new economies, legalities, socialities, and cultural forms that have arisen there. It will also interrogate the claim that the African present is a foreshadowing of processes beginning to occur elsewhere; that, therefore, it is a productive source of theory about current conditions world-wide. The workshop, open to faculty and students,...