Introduction

Two episodes created the occasions for the essays in this monograph issue of the Journal for Cultural Research. The first was the graduate research seminar on “Genre and the City” that I taught in the spring of 2007. This paragraph from the course syllabus tells much of the story:

This seminar on “research methods” will be oriented by a concern with the politics of aesthetics and will feature a variety of genres aimed at illuminating urban life worlds. During the first half to two thirds of the course, we will — based on readings and visual materials — discuss the way the city can be understood by heeding architecture, crime fiction, film (noir among other genres), photography, painting, novels, television, and treatises on political economy. The latter part of the course will be devoted to student [writing] projects in which each student chooses a city and analyzes the way its political life can be discerned by focusing on alternative (at least two) genres.

The essays in this monograph by Bettina Brown, Brianne Gallagher, Allison Pan, Sam Opondo, and Nicolette Rowe are revised versions of the seminar papers they wrote for the course. As is evident from the content of the essays, the authors draw in large measure on the same pool of theoretical references — which constituted some of the course readings — while deploying them on different urban venues — Tokyo, Paris, New York, Nairobi, and Boston respectively.