Gary W. McDonogh

One of the dilemmas of teaching about the global city entails learning to deal with the experience and ideas that we bring to urban issues. 对我们很多人来说, the city is not only an abstract concept but also a place of life, 家庭, friends and memories where our profound engagement with everyday metropolitan knowledge sometimes keeps us from seeing the way issues, conflicts and meanings may be negotiated in other urban circumstances. My goal in teaching about cities is to develop "hometown knowledge" and commitments by challenging students with a deep and critical examination of global forms of urban life and consciousness.  通过这些, students may seek new ways of understanding problems and solutions by exploring the choices that other urbanites have dreamed of and fought for. 在一起, 然后, 我们可以找到新的愿景, evaluate them and share them with others with whom we share goals and commitments of local and global citizenship that last long after Bryn Mawr. 在我的研究中, 写作与教学, 城市的挑战和发现, 然后, provide a continual renewal of challenges and interests.

在过去的几十年中, I have explored many cities worldwide through perspectives drawn from anthropology, 地理位置, 社会历史, 规划和大众传媒/文化研究. This intimate knowledge of cities in turn provides foundations for teaching classes thematic courses on urban social and cultural issues and classes that guide students into comparative exploration of urbanism. 巴塞罗那, 西班牙, has been the cornerstones of my work since the mid-1970s, 在各种各样的作品中，如专著 巴塞罗那的好家庭 (普林斯顿，1986)，编辑卷 加泰罗尼亚的冲突:城市社会的形象 (佛罗里达州，1986年)和 《十二步走巴塞罗那 巴塞罗那政府, 1993) as well as numerous other articles in Spanish, 法国, 加泰罗尼亚语和英语.  My foci in 巴塞罗那 include the nature of class conflict and divisions within the city, from 19th-century capitalist expansion to the issues of contemporary third-world migration or questions of nature and spatial justice.   

作为一名人类学家, I have also felt it equally important to reflect on issues in American society as well.  我在萨凡纳工作了十年, 解开痛苦的种族关系, 一个严重分裂的社会中的阶级和宗教, 倾听叙事, resistance and adaptations that 非洲n-Americans created in relation to the sacred and secular power structures around them. 这就产生了专著 乔治亚州萨凡纳的黑人天主教徒 (Tennessee, 1993) while I also edited a critical yet previously unpublished WPA manuscript, 佛罗里达黑人, including contributions from Zora Neale Hurston. 我还成为了  The Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture (Routledge出版社2001年出版).  迟来的, my primary American research has grappled with issues of suburbia and its cultural meanings as part of a global comparison.

The fascination of world cities has also taken me to 香港 and East Asia, including a year as a Fulbright lectureship in American Studies program at 香港 University (1996-1997).  In 2005, this longterm relation resulted in a monograph, 环球香港 (Routledge) co-authored with my wife, Cindy Hing-Yuk Wong. We continue to work together on a longer term project on comparative globalization evident in the form, 全球唐人街的意义和媒介, 我们在欧洲进行研究的地方, 拉丁美洲, North America and Australia in addition to our Asian experiences.  在这里 we are interested in globalization as seen from multiple perspectives, including Chinese agency and articulation through 香港, 与多个本地基团杂交, 以及变化的流程和含义.

My current projects continue to combine these projects to find new and creative understandings of cities as dynamic human creations and as spaces facing real and pressing problems.  2008年11月, 例如, I brought my concerns with globalization back home to 巴塞罗那 with a new monograph on the millennia of global expansion and experiences of the 人s of the Iberian peninsula in Europe, 非洲, 亚洲和美洲-伊比利亚的世界 (Routledge出版社2008年出版).  I am also completing a co-edited ethnographic collection on Global Downtowns which includes my work on Chinatowns (and why they are near but not in so many downtown areas).  在课堂和研究中, I continue to explore myths –the paradigms through which we read and act -- and diversities of suburbs worldwide in 社会历史, form, 和小说, 无论是巴黎的郊区, 香港的新城镇, the gated communities of China and Buenos Aires or shanty towns of the Global South, 向我的同事胡安·曼努埃尔·阿博纳学习.  在和我的同事Ellen Stroud的对话中, I am also exploring cultural definitions of nature that link studies around cities to concerns of our growing connection to Environmental Studies.

所有这些城市, 人, texts and issues continually come up in my classes and interactions with student research. 概览导论课程, 城市185 -城市文化与社会, 学生们在这里读到曼彻斯特的故事, 巴塞罗那, 库斯科, 巴黎, New York and Los Angeles as well as Philadelphia is complemented by students' field research in Greater Philadelphia. 城229, 比较都市生活, focuses each year on a few key cities for in-depth research on topics like colonialism and post-colonialism, 环境问题或种族和移民问题. 在这里, students can work with the college's rich collections on 巴塞罗那, 香港, 洛杉矶和其他城市.  Advanced classes may focus on issues like the city and film or questions of public space and public citizenship.  These reach fruition in the collaboration of senior theses students and post-thesis discussions and internships.