The City as Archive

Course Description

This course explores conceptual, political, and practical questions about archives, using the city (primarily Basel) as a lens for urban research. From the premise that archives are repositories of selected material records containing public/private memories and sources of “objective” knowledge, this course rethinks, revises, and expands how archives are defined. Building on that, we will engage alternative archives (e.g., ephemeral traces and oral history) curated by activists and civil society next to formal holdings managed by state institutions. We will aim to imagine the possibilities of finding evidence for research beyond existing archival repositories by scrutinising (un)built spaces as historically formed deposits of sources for conducting urban research. This seminar encourages students to approach urban research partly as a collaborative archival intervention for transformation that engages advocacy groups and marginalised (peoples’) conditions.