Documentary Experiments in Urban Research

What can video art, experimental documentary, and sensory ethnography teach us about the practice of urban research? This course combines seminar readings on topics such as urban political ecology, gender and public space, and the architectures of racial division with regular screenings on related themes. Throughout the semester, we will survey a range of film and video works about urban phenomena including the production of space, human-environment interaction, and the politics of infrastructure. Taken as a genre, these time-based works provide a powerful model for training scholars’ observational skills, conceptualizing scales of analysis, and engaging broader publics in urban research. We will also complete a series of workshops on photo, video, audio, and postproduction skills so that students may develop and situate their own experimental documentary research projects in dialogue with urban studies scholarship. Suitable for all levels of filmmaking experience. Graduate students welcome.