"Noir Urbanisms deserves to be widely read and debated. In describing why inequalities or disasters have occurred, this becomes a lesson for the architects and urban designers master-planning cities of the future."--Esme Fieldhouse, Blueprint Magazine

Dystopic imagery has figured prominently in modern depictions of the urban landscape. The city is often portrayed as a terrifying world of darkness, crisis, and catastrophe. Noir Urbanisms traces the history of the modern city through its critical representations in art, cinema, print journalism, literature, sociology, and architecture. It focuses on visual forms of dystopic representation--because the history of the modern city is inseparable from the production and circulation of images--and examines their strengths and limits as urban criticism. Contributors explore dystopic images of the modern city in Germany, Mexico, Japan, India, South Africa, China, and the United States. Their topics include Weimar representations of urban dystopia in Fritz Lang's 1927 film Metropolis; 1960s modernist architecture in Mexico City; Hollywood film noir of the 1940s and 1950s; the recurring fictional destruction of Tokyo in postwar Japan's sci-fi doom culture; the urban fringe in Bombay cinema; fictional explorations of urban dystopia in postapartheid Johannesburg; and Delhi's out-of-control and media-saturated urbanism in the 1980s and 1990s. What emerges in Noir Urbanisms is the unsettling and disorienting alchemy between dark representations and the modern urban experience. In addition to the editor, the contributors are David R. Ambaras, James Donald, Ruben Gallo, Anton Kaes, Ranjani Mazumdar, Jennifer Robinson, Mark Shiel, Ravi Sundaram, William M. Tsutsui, and Li Zhang.
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Dystopic imagery has figured prominently in modern depictions of the urban landscape. The city is often portrayed as a terrifying world of darkness, crisis, and catastrophe. This book traces the history of the modern city through its critical representations in art, cinema, print journalism, literature, sociology, and architecture.
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Introduction: Imaging the Modern City, Darkly by Gyan Prakash 1 MODERNISM AND URBAN DYSTOPIA Chapter 1: The Phantasm of the Apocalypse: Metropolis and Weimar Modernity by Anton Kaes 17 Chapter 2: Sounds Like Hell: Beyond Dystopian Noise by James Donald 31 Chapter 3: Tlatelolco: Mexico City's Urban Dystopia by Ruben Gallo 53 THE AESTHETICS OF THE DARK CITY Chapter 4: A Regional Geography of Film Noir:Urban Dystopias On- and Offscreen by Mark Shiel 75 Chapter 5: Oh No, There Goes Tokyo: Recreational Apocalypse and the City in Postwar Japanese Popular Culture by William M. Tsutsui 104 Chapter 6: Postsocialist Urban Dystopia? by Li Zhang 127 Chapter 7: Friction, Collision, and the Grotesque: The Dystopic Fragments of Bombay Cinema by Ranjani Mazumdar 150 IMAGING URBAN CRISIS Chapter 8: Topographies of Distress: Tokyo, c. 1930 by David R. Ambaras 187 Chapter 9: Living in Dystopia: Past, Present, and Future in Contemporary African Cities by Jennifer Robinson 218 Chapter 10: Imaging Urban Breakdown: Delhi in the 1990s Ravi Sundaram by 241 Contributors 261 Index 265
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"This collection of essays is a welcome addition to urban cultural studies. By bridging the history of dystopian imaginings and urban social and cultural history, it opens up new territory for interdisciplinary discussion."—Jordan Sand, Georgetown University"This is an exciting collection ranging across an impressive disciplinary span, including not only history and film studies but also anthropology, geography, and modern languages. The volume combines scholarly rigor with political and social engagement, and is full of eloquence and insight. It speaks to researchers across the arts, humanities, and social sciences who are concerned with the place of urban spaces in the dystopic visions of modernity."—Jackie Stacey, University of Manchester
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This collection of essays is a welcome addition to urban cultural studies. By bridging the history of dystopian imaginings and urban social and cultural history, it opens up new territory for interdisciplinary discussion. -- Jordan Sand, Georgetown University This is an exciting collection ranging across an impressive disciplinary span, including not only history and film studies but also anthropology, geography, and modern languages. The volume combines scholarly rigor with political and social engagement, and is full of eloquence and insight. It speaks to researchers across the arts, humanities, and social sciences who are concerned with the place of urban spaces in the dystopic visions of modernity. -- Jackie Stacey, University of Manchester
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Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9780691146447
Publisert
2010-10-17
Utgiver
Vendor
Princeton University Press
Vekt
397 gr
Høyde
235 mm
Bredde
152 mm
Aldersnivå
U, P, 05, 06
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet
Antall sider
288

Redaktør

Biographical note

Gyan Prakash is the Dayton-Stockton Professor of History at Princeton University. His books include "Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India", and "The Spaces of the Modern City: Imaginaries, Politics, and Everyday Life" (both Princeton).