Walking in New York

Course Description

New York is a great walking city, and a uniquely urban form of literature has grown out of the activity of flanerie, or, aimless strolling. From the poetic reveries of James Schuyler and Frank O’Hara, to the meditations on exile of Walter Benjamin and Paul Celan, walking becomes a creative act. In this course, students plan and document a series of walks, creating their own literary and autobiographical map of New York—a personal poetics of space. We create a poetics of walking, of ethnography, and of autobiography, mapping discoveries of self and others through writing. These voyages and readings provide the occasion to write a series of texts, documenting our walks through New York and our responses to the literature of flanerie. Students are also encouraged to explore the intersections between writing and other media/art forms, such as performance, digital media, visual art, film and sound as we document the unfolding and creation of our own New York landscapes. Authors include Frank O’Hara, Joe Brainard, James Schuyler, Walter Benjamin, Charles Baudelaire, Blaise Cendrars, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Paul Celan.