Cities of Knowledge: Orientalizing Manhattan

In this course, graduate students from different disciplines will explore the ‘Orient’ in Manhattan. The course involves the active search for and analysis of Manhattan’s urban space to survey its ‘Oriental’ buildings, monuments, parks, public inscriptions, and even ephemeral, everyday spaces that carry the sense of the ‘Orient’ to the city. Cities are physical places, yet, they are also assemblages of different layers of time, and geographies. These layers are designed to create communal identities and evoke recollections of past memories. Focus will be put on the written history of these spaces by searching in archives (in the City of New York) and digging out written and oral information about the histories of the formation of these spaces and their interactions with their surroundings.

The course will cover many monuments, like the famous obelisk in Central Park or the less-known Jordanian column in Flushing Meadows Park in Queens; public buildings like Central Synagogue on Lexington, the Islamic Cultural Center on Upper East Side Mosque, or Olana State Historic Site in Hudson, NY; but also, the inner decorations of restaurants, bars (the Carlyle Bar) and even oriental Halal shops, as well as ephemeral spaces like international fairs, and Cairene grill boots.

Traditionally, Islamic art and Islamic architecture have been studied separately within art history and architecture history disciplines. The purpose of this course is, in the first place, to bridge the gap between the two disciplines while working across theories of visual culture and critically revisiting urban studies. A further aspect evolves the discourse about architectural ornament as part of the entire approach to ornament as an ‘Oriental’ trope. Thus, canonical discussions about Orientalism will form part of the course’s readings and will contribute to understanding how the architectural ornament of Manhattan forms identities. The course will introduce and discuss theoretical issues concerning urban architecture and ‘Orientalism’ and the making of the image of ‘Others’ in NYC public spaces. It will also provide a historical survey of these spaces and aim to create a novel comprehensive map for ‘Orientalized’ New York.