Imagining Urban Complexity

Frans-Willem Korsten is professor of Literature, Culture, and Law at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society and professor of Literature and Society at the Erasmus School of Philosophy. He was responsible for the Dutch Research Council (NWO) internationalization program "Precarity and Post-Autonomia: The Global Heritage" and took part in the NWO/Research Foundation Flanders (FWO)–funded program "Imagineering Techniques in the Early Modern Period." He currently takes part in a program funded by the NWO entitled "Playing Politics: Media Platforms, Making Worlds." He published extensively on the Dutch Republican baroque, theatricality, and sovereignty (A Dutch Republican Baroque; 2017), and on the relation between literature, art, politics, justice, and law—Art as an Interface of Law and Justice: Affirmation, Disturbance, Disruption (2021) and Cultural Interactions: Conflict and Cooperation (2022).Anthony T. Albright is a PhD candidate and lecturer at the Leiden University Center for the Arts in Society. He received a bachelor of arts (BA) with a concentration in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University and a master of arts (MA) in Media Studies from Leiden University.

• PreambleUrban complexities: a humanities toolkit of tropes, media, genresITropes1. What holds cities together?Body Politic - Network - Belt: Hong Kong & Atlanta2. Cities as paradigms of nature-cultureJungle - Desert - Garden : Mexico City & Canberra3. Urban distributions of accessArchive - Labyrinth - Zone: Istanbul & Moscow4. Cities as centers of expectation and disillusionUtopia - Dystopia - Non-Place: Paris & BrasiliaIIMedia5. Bringing urban selves and world into perspectiveTheatre - Spectacle: Amsterdam & Naples6. Connecting the private and the massesNewspaper - Radio: Chicago & Caïro7. Battlegrounds of representation and motors of desireTelevision - Cinema: Beijing & Bangkok8. Media relating dividuals and scapesDigital - Social Media: Mumbai & NairobiIIIGenres9. Cities as forms of emplotmentNarrative – Documentary: Rio de Janeiro & Seattle10. Urban life fragmented and improvizedCollage – Play: Lagos & Barcelona11. Who does a city address and what do its rhythms express?Lyric – Poetry: Isfahan & Jakarta12. City secret, city trauma and the unrepresentableAllegory – Comics: Jerusalem & HiroshimaPostscriptThe smart city: archipelagos of tests