Globalized Durham
Seminar and Working Group

El Kilombo Intergalactico

The Globalized Durham Seminar/Working Group will meet every other Friday at 6pm, at El Kilombo (324 B W. Geer St.), beginning this Friday, September 21. We hope that even if you miss this first meeting this Friday due to short notice, you will still consider joining us for the following weeks. Below you will find a syllabus of outlined themes and readings. The readings for the first five weeks are confirmed, and the remaining weeks still need to be finalized. For each meeting we will have a presenter and facilitator. Please do email us at elkilombo@gmail.com if you intend to participate, so we can make sure you receive emails about securing readings for each week.

Summary
Durham is a city contending with the global realities of the 21st century. The tobacco factories which once served as the city's economic and physical backbone now stand empty, succumbing to the advances of powerful business interests eager to transform their spacious remains into corporate offices and high-end housing. The violence of disillusioned and disenfranchised youth and working-class constituencies, long since abandoned by civil institutions and increasingly embattled by the repressive forces of the State, has held Durham's per capita crime rate among the highest in the nation. Meanwhile, the immense commercial, intellectual and scientific production of Universities and instituions in Research Triangle Park have guaranteed the city's stake in transnational research and informational networks, military and technological commerce, and international policymaking. In the wake of NAFTA's aggression, North Carolina's booming migrant population is the fastest-growing in the U.S. In this seminar, we seek to study the dynamic history of Durham, connecting it to the dynamic conditions of Durham's current life – the intensification of wealth as well as suffering and the incapacity of state and civil institutions to offer redress; the increasing mobility of money, information, business, and people; and the struggle to control that mobility. Durham, we must understand, is globalized.

Preliminary Schedule and Syllabus:


This seminar meets every other Friday at El Kilombo at 6pm , starting Friday, September 21. (The readings for the 1st five weeks are confirmed. The latter weeks are still to be developed and refined).

* This star next to readings below indicates the text as the central text for the week. Readings without the stars are encouraged but supplemental; these you should read as you please and as time allows.

Week 1: September 21: History of Durham
§ Davidson, Osha Gray. The Best of Enemies: Race and Redemption in the New South. 352pp.
§ "A Brief History of Durham" in Roberts, Claudia P., et al. The Durham Architectural and Historic Inventory. Durham, NC : City of Durham, 1982 (pp205-358).
Presenter: Dr. Anita Keith-Foust
Week 1a: Friday, September 28: "The Color of Whiteness" lecture, 7pm at Multicultural Center in the basement of the Bryan Center , West Campus, Duke University.

Week 2: October 5: History of Hayti & "Old North Durham "
§ * Frazier, E. Franklin. " Durham: Capital of the Black Middle Class." in The New Negro, by Alain Locke. New York: A. and C. Boni Company, 1925. (pp. 333-40).
§ Chapter 10: "A House Divided: An Independent Black Culture, 1865-1880" in Anderson, Jean Bradley. A History of Durham County, North Carolina . Durham, NC : Duke University Press, 1991 (pp153-165).
§ Negro Durham Marches On. (AV 975.6563 N). Videotape from 16mm film of Hayti business ca. 1950 produced by the Durham Business and Professional Chain.
§ "Sweet home Hayti," by Currin, Grayson. The Independent. September 5, 2007. http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A160103
Week 2a:
Optional Read: We Took the Streets

October 11: Watch P'alante Siempre P'alante

October 12: Denise Oliver-Velez talk, 5:30PM, Richard White Lecture Hall, East Campus, Duke University

Week 3: October 19: Urban Resistance in the 1960s and 70s–––
§ * James Boggs, "The City is the Black Man's Land"
§ * Koolhass, Rem. Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan (320 pgs whole book)
§ The Legacy of Malcolm X and the Coming of the Black Nation (Amiri Baraka)
§ Chapter 19, "Civil Rights: 1954-1978," pp429-450 in Anderson, Jean Bradley. A History of Durham County, North Carolina . Durham, NC : Duke University Press, 1991.
§ Chapter 6: Black Power in Greene, Christina. Our Separate Ways: Women and the Black Freedom Movement in Durham, North Carolina, 1940-1970.

Week 4: November 2: Capitalist Restructuring
§ * The Political Economic Transformation of Late 20th Century Capital (Harvey's
Postmodern Condition, pp.120-197)
§ * BOOK: The Rise of the Network Society, Chs. 2,3,4 (Castell's)
§ * BOOK: The New Spirit of Capitalism (Boltanski and Chiapello)
§ "Intercommunalism," Huey Newton
§ From Mass Worker to Social Worker (Negri, Internet)
Week 5: November 16: The Birth of Research Triangle Park
§ * "Disconnecting the The Dots of The Research Triangle" by Brian Holmes http://brianholmes.wordpress.com/2007/02/26/disconnecting-the-dots-of-the-research-triangle/
§ * "The Growth of Research Triangle Park, Albert Link and John Scott," in Small
Business Weekly.
§ RTP website: http://www. rtp.org
§ "Research Triangle Park: Evolution and Renaissance", by RTP, June 2006, found on website under "About RTP" and "history"
§ RTP "Overview Fact Sheet" also found on RTP website under About RTP

Week 6: New York, Prototype Capitalist Offensive __
§ The Great Society Pacification Programs, form The Choice by Samuel Yette pg. 31-72.
§ "The Construction of Consent," Chapter 2 in David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism. (NYC as a model of neoliberalism) pp39-64 (26pgs)
§ "Flexible accumulation through urbanization: Reflections on Postmodernism in the American City " Chapter 9 in Harvey, David. The Urban Experience. pp256-278 (23pgs)
§ "Mapping neo-liberal American urbanism" by Wyly, Elvin K. and Daniel J. Hammel. Chapter 2 in Gentrification in a Global Context. Atkinson, Rowland and Gary Bridge, eds. pp18-39 (22pgs)

Week 7: November 16: Gentrification and The Creative Class
§ Film: Flag Wars (90 min.) Working-class black residents in Columbus, Ohio fight to hold on to their homes. Realtors and gay home-buyers see fixer-uppers.
§ Morgan, Fiona, "Creative Class War," The Independent, April 20, 2005.
§ Selections from Smith, Neil, New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City , pgs. 3-92.
§ Chapter 5: Smith, Darren P. "'Studentification': the gentrification factory?" in Gentrification in a Global Context. Atkinson, Rowland and Gary Bridge , eds. pp72-90 (19pgs)

Week 8: University

Week 9: Cities in the Global Economy
§ Ch's 4,6,7 from Sassen, Saskia. Cities in a World Economy, 2nd ed. (144pgs)
§ "Planet of Slums" the article by Mike Davis in New Left Review, March-April 2004
§ Multitude and the Metropolis, by Antonio Negri, http://www.generation-online.org/t/metropolis.htm
§ Cities in the Global Economy -The Space of Flows, Manuel Castell's

Week 10: Cities in the Global Economy
§ Wacquant, Loic. "Gutting the Ghetto: Political censorship and Conceptual Retrenchment in the American Debate on Urban Destitution," Globalization and the New City, Cross, Malcolm and Robert Moore, Eds. pp32-50 (19pgs)
§ Sandro Mezzadra, "Migration, Detention, Desertion: A Dialogue," http://www.borderlandsejournal.adelaide.edu.au/vol2no1_2003/mezzadra_neilson.html
§ Plus Selections on Migrants in the City from Globalization and the New City.

Week 11: Creative Class or Multitude
§ "Factory, Territory, Metropolis, Empire" by Alberto Toscano
§ Multitude and the Metropolis, Negri
§ (PDF) Robin Kelley, "Playing for Keeps: Pleasure and Profit on the Postindustrial Playground" in: Waheema Lubiana (ed.), The House that Race Built (Vintage Books: New York, 1998), p. 198
§ Naomi Klein. about Cool Hunters going into poor neighborhoods to get fashion.
§ Arlene Dávila. The Marketable Neighborhood, Outdoor Ads Meet Street Art in Barrio Dreams: Puerto Ricans, Latinos, and the Neoliberal City
§ Mike Davis' Magical Urbanism
§ "El Alto, The World From The Perspective of Difference," Raul Zibechi
§ The Independent. About the Full Frame Festival and creative class
§ http://www.sparkcon.com/