Walter Benjamin's New York
 


Walter Benjamin is one of the most famous thinkers and writers of the twentieth century. But he is least famous for what is, arguably, his greatest work, a study of the material remains of nineteenth-century Paris.

In the multi-media essays that we have made—part of a class at the Bard Graduate Center in Spring 2002—we interpret and illuminate that history by making it speak to the present, as Benjamin believed all history should. We use his early twentieth-century guide to mid nineteenth-century Paris, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, to make sense of the New York of the second half of the twentieth.

This is an application of the technology of digital storytelling to advanced textual exegesis, an experiment in fusing form and content.

About the Course
Film Index
Paris Capital of the Nineteenth Century (Exposé of 1939)
Introduction
By Peter N. Miller,
Professor

A. Fourier, or the Arcades
By Gabriel Goldstein,
Ph.D student

B. Grandville, or the World Exhibitions
By Elisa Niemack,
M.A. student

C. Louis Philippe, or the Interior
By John Gordon,
M.A. student

D. Baudelaire, or the Streets of Paris
By Margaret Maile,
M.A. student

E. Haussmann, or the Barricades
By Peter N. Miller, Professor

Conclusion
By Peter N. Miller, Professor

Convolutes
H. The Collector
By Peter N. Miller,
Professor

S. Painting, Jugendstil, Novelty
By John Gordon,
M.A. student

m. Idleness
By Elisa Niemack,
M.A. student



Contact Info: wbny@bgc.bard.edu