Themis Chronopoulos

Undergraduate Courses
Themis Chronopoulos

American Cities since 1945

This course explores the dynamics of race and class in American cities during the post-world War II period. The readings and discussions focus on suburbanization, the decline of central cities, conflict over the use and definition of urban space, and the globalization of urban processes. Most of the works read represent the latest approaches to the study of cities.

Popular Music and Society

This course examines the relationship between popular music and its social and cultural context by concentrating on various Afrodiasporic music forms that include blues, soul, Jamaican music, Afrobeat, Afro-Brazilian, and hip hop. Readings focus on: (1) concepts such as audiences, the music industry, cultural infrastructure, youth culture, and race; (2) processes such as urbanization, demographic change, globalization, and politicization of popular music.

Immigration and Ethnic Identity in the United States

This course explores the history of immigration to the United States since the 1880s. It focuses on the various waves of immigrants according to their place of origin and ethnicity, on immigration legislation and its impact, and on debates about immigration and immigrant cultures. The course ends with an examination of how this history of immigration reflects on contemporary discussions about undocumented immigrants and their role in U.S. society.

World Cities since 1945

This course examines the history of a number of world cities in the Americas, Africa, and Europe with an emphasis on the challenges that their populations have been facing since 1945. Topics examined include inequality, race and ethnicity, immigration, formal and informal entrepreneurship, industrialization and deindustrialization, urban culture, gentrification, crime, globalization, and historic preservation.

Books (used in the past):

American Cities since 1945

Joe Austin, Taking the Train: How Graffiti Art Became an Urban Crisis in New York City (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002).

Lou Cannon, Official Negligence: How Rodney King and the Riots Changed Los Angeles and the LAPD (New York: Times Books, 1997).

Robert Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (New York: Random House, 1974).

Howard Chudacoff and Judith Smith, The Evolution of American Urban Society (Prentice Hall, 2004).

Mike Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (New York: Verso, 1990).

Samuel R. Delaney, Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (New York: New York University Press, 1999).

Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985).

Setha Low, Behind the Gates: Life, Security, and the Pursuit of Happiness in Fortress America (New York: Routledge, 2003).

Carlo Rotella, October Cities: The Redevelopment of Urban Literature (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).

Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).

Monique M. Taylor, Harlem: Between Heaven and Hell (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002).

Jon Teaford, The Rough Road to Renaissance: Urban Revitalization in America, 1940-1985 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990).

J. Phillip Thompson, III, Double Trouble: Black Mayors, Black Communities, and the Call for Deep Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).

Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh, American Project: The Rise and Fall of A Modern Ghetto (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000).

Camilo José Vergara, The New American Ghetto (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1999).

Popular Music and Society

Todd Boyd, Am I Black Enough for You? Popular Culture from the ‘Hood and Beyond (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997).

Jeff Chang, Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip Hop Generation (New York: Picador, 2005).

Angela Y. Davis, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism (New York: Random House, 1998).

Christopher Dunn, Tropicália and the Emergence of a Brazilian Counterculture (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001).

Michael Eric Dyson, Mercy, Mercy Me: The Art, Love and Demons of Marvin Gaye (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001).

Murray Forman, The ‘Hood Comes First:: Race, Space, and Place in Rap and Hip Hop (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2002).

Robin D. G. Kelley, Yo’ Mama’s Disfunktional: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America (Boston: Beacon Press, 1997).

Lawrence W. Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977).

Keith Negus, Popular Music in Theory: An Introduction (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1997).

Robert Palmer, Deep Blues: A Musical and Cultural History, from the Mississippi Delta to Chicago’s South Side to the World (New York: Penguin, 1981).

Raquel Z. Rivera, New York Ricans from the Hip Hop Zone (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

Suzanne E. Smith, Dancing in the Street: Motown and the Cultural Politics of Detroit (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001).

Norman C. Stolzoff, Wake the Town and Tell the People: Dancehall Culture in America (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000).

Michael E. Veal, Fela: The Life and Times of an African Musical Icon (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000).

Elijah Wald, Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues (New York: Harper Collins, 2004).

Immigration and Ethnic Identity in the United States

Nancy Foner, In A New Land: A Comparative View of Immigration (New York: New York University Press, 2005).

Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof, A Tale of Two Cities: Santo Domingo and New York After 1950 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007).

Pyong Gap Min, Caught in the Middle: Korean Merchants in America’s Multiethnic Cities (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996).

Mae N. Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003).

George Sanchez, Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).

Robert Smith, Mexican New York: Transnational Lives of New Immigrants (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005).

World Cities since 1945

Enrique Desmond Arias, Drugs and Democracy in Rio de Janeiro: Trafficking, Social Networks, and Public Security (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2006).

Teresa P. R. Caldeira, City of Walls: Crime, Segregation, and Citizenship in São Paulo (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).

Néstor Garcia Canclini, Consumers and Citizens: Globalization and Multicultural Conflicts (Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 2001).

Obika Gray, Demeaned but Empowered: The Social Power of the Urban Poor in Jamaica (Kingston: The University of the West Indies Press, 2004).

Phaswane Mpe, Welcome to Our Hillbrow (University of Natal Press, 2001).

Laura Podalsky, Specular City: Transforming Culture, Consumption, and Space in Buenos Aires, 1955-1973 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004).