This Law and the City seminar aims to introduce the students to the spatial effects the law has in our everyday life's urban spaces. At the beginning of the 1990s, legal scholars started to turn towards problems related to geography in general, and cities in specific. This twist is commonly called the spatial turn in legal theory. In giving a look at the space and law's relationship the seminar poses the attention on how “law and legal theory are essential starting points in understanding cities”[G. Frug] and vice versa. This “The Law and City” class invites students to confront mainly with legal/social theories, but also with the city they live, they dream, they were born in. In doing so not only laws and legal theories will be used, but also architecture, literature, films, art, and a legal ethnographic approach.
How does law create space? How are national and international laws able to construct cities? How do law, literature and film represent cities? And how is it possible to do legal research in this field? These are the main questions on which this seminar revolves and aims to discuss.
Vittoria BECCI
Séminaire
English
Autumn 2021-2022
The students are invited to participate in the debate with their interpretations of cities and law in relation to the readings during each session. Therefore, the class participation (10% of the evaluation) is recommended. A group presentation on a topic presented during the first class is also requested and it will represent the 30% of the evaluation. An individual reading note on a reading, film/book/documentary will be also part of the evaluation (20%). For their final assignment (40%) the students can choose to produce an essay on a topic discussed in class, or they can also present an essay based on a field work research on the city of Paris. In this case is admitted a video essay or an audio essay.
-George Simmel, The art of the city. Rome, Florence, Venice, Pushkin Press, 2018, first published in 1898