ROMANCE STUDIES 135 - Writing and Urban Life | Romance Languages & Literatures

Semester: Spring

Year offered: 2027

Link: Course Website

In this seminar we will study representations of urban experience, and how the evolution of cities has been shaped by writing. Each week will pair literary and planning texts from the 1860s onward. We will discuss shared aspirations and tense relations among various urban dwellers, focusing on literature, urban planning, and everyday life. Topics include the impact of technology on cities as lived and imagined spaces; interfaces between literacy, orality, and visual cultures; intersections between fiction, poetry, and social history; porous boundaries between built and natural environments; relationships between modernity, writing, and urban planning. Focus will be placed on major cities where Romance languages are spoken.

Bruno Carvalho

bcarvalh@fas.harvard.edu

On Leave Academic Year 2025-26

Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and African and African American Studies

Co-Director of the Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative

Affiliated Professor in Urban Planning and Design at the Graduate School of Design

Bruno Carvalho specializes in urban life and how cities change. He is the author of The Invention of the Future: A History of Cities in the Modern World (Princeton University Press, forthcoming in January 2026).The book opens in the 1750s, when city...