Frans-Willem Korsten is professor of Literature, Culture, and Law at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society and professor of Literature and Society at the Erasmus School of Philosophy. He was responsible for the Dutch Research Council (NWO) internationalization program "Precarity and Post-Autonomia: The Global Heritage" and took part in the NWO/Research Foundation Flanders (FWO)-funded program "Imagineering Techniques in the Early Modern Period." He currently takes part in a program funded by the NWO entitled "Playing Politics: Media Platforms, Making Worlds." He published extensively on the Dutch Republican baroque, theatricality, and sovereignty (A Dutch Republican Baroque; 2017), and on the relation between literature, art, politics, justice, and law-Art as an Interface of Law and Justice: Affirmation, Disturbance, Disruption (2021) and Cultural Interactions: Conflict and Cooperation (2022).

Anthony T. Albright is a PhD candidate and lecturer at the Leiden University Center for the Arts in Society. He received a bachelor of arts (BA) with a concentration in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University and a master of arts (MA) in Media Studies from Leiden University.

Preamble

Urban complexities: a humanities toolkit of tropes, media, genres

I

Tropes

1. What holds cities together?

Body Politic - Network - Belt: Hong Kong & Atlanta

2. Cities as paradigms of nature-culture

Jungle - Desert - Garden : Mexico City & Canberra

3. Urban distributions of access

Archive - Labyrinth - Zone: Istanbul & Moscow

4. Cities as centers of expectation and disillusion

Utopia - Dystopia - Non-Place: Paris & Brasilia

II

Media

5. Bringing urban selves and world into perspective

Theatre - Spectacle: Amsterdam & Naples

6. Connecting the private and the masses

Newspaper - Radio: Chicago & Caïro

7. Battlegrounds of representation and motors of desire

Television - Cinema: Beijing & Bangkok

8. Media relating dividuals and scapes

Digital - Social Media: Mumbai & Nairobi

III

Genres

9. Cities as forms of emplotment

Narrative - Documentary: Rio de Janeiro & Seattle

10. Urban life fragmented and improvized

Collage - Play: Lagos & Barcelona

11. Who does a city address and what do its rhythms express?

Lyric - Poetry: Isfahan & Jakarta

12. City secret, city trauma and the unrepresentable

Allegory - Comics: Jerusalem & Hiroshima

Postscript

The smart city: archipelagos of tests