Conflict Urbanism: Language Justice in New York City
Taught by:
Laura Kurgan, Associate Professor of Architecture (ljk33@columbia.edu)
Lydia Liu, Wun Tsun Tam Professor in the Humanities (ll2410@columbia.edu)
Michelle McSweeney, Mellon Associate Research Scholarmam (2518@columbia.edu)
This spring, the seminar will focus on the role of language as a structuring principle of cities, highlighting the ways that urban spaces and the world are physically shaped by linguistic diversity, and examining the results of languages coming into contact and conflict. For this work we will use New York City as our laboratory. The New York City metropolitan area is the most linguistically dense city in the world, hosting an estimated 700 different languages.To better understand this diversity, we will look closely at micro-neighborhoods such as Little Senegal (Manhattan), Little Korea (Queens), and Little Ramallah (Paterson, New Jersey). In thinking about the transnational and translingual nature of the city, we will consider structures from digital technology to remittances (small amounts of money sent“home”) and their role in language preservation and language extinction. Finally,through visualizing and mapping how language is situated in these micro-neighborhoods, we will begin to explore the cultures, languages, informal structures and architectures that migrants bring to the city.
