This course examines the city as a central site for understanding contemporary social, political, economic, and environmental transformations. Through cases drawn from diverse urban contexts across the Global South–including Cairo, Beirut, Istanbul, Sao Paulo, and Johannesburg–students examine how urban life is shaped by multiscalar forces and how theory travels, adapts, and transforms across urban sites. The course draws on the methods and approaches of urban sociology, political economy, and geography. Blending theory with collaborative and experiential methods, the course positions the city as both object of study and critical analytical lens.
Critically analyze the dominant paradigms, perspectives, and frameworks that shape the study of urbanism.
Engage in multi-methodological analyses of urban life.
Question urban phenomena through a theoretically and empirically informed and methodologically grounded lens.
Map the multi-scalar forces and actors that shape and connect cities across the world.
Understand the rich theoretical frameworks that inform urban studies globally, with a particular focus on the Global South.
Ingy Higazy is Assistant Professor of Middle East Studies and the Research Manager for Pathways Beyond Neoliberalism: Voices from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), based at the American University in Cairo (AUC). She holds a PhD in Politics from the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), where she specialized in political economy, political theory, and urban geography. Driven by a deep interest in the complex dynamics of space, power, and mobility, Higazy’s research explores how and why the spaces and infrastructures that facilitate movement for certain people and goods, systematically preclude it for others. Her academic writing has been published by Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, Politics, The Metropole, and Égypte/Monde Arabe, among others.