"One of the dilemmas of teaching about the city entails learning to deal with the experience and ideas that we bring to urban issues. For many of us, the city is not only an abstract concept but also a place of life, family, friends and memories where our profound engagement with everyday metropolitan knowledge sometimes keeps us from seeing the way issues, conflicts and meanings may be negotiated in other urban circumstances. My goal in teaching about cities is to develop "hometown knowledge" and commitments by challenging students with a deep examination of alternative forms of urban life and consciousness to seek new ways of understanding problems and solutions by exploring the choices that other urbanites have fought for. Together, then, we can find new visions, evaluate them and share them with others with whom we share goals and commitments of local and global citizenship. In my research, writing and teaching, the challenges and discoveries of cities, then, provide a continual renewal of challenges and interests."

Gary McDonogh's work has entailed the exploration of many cities worldwide through perspectives drawn from anthropology, geography, social history, planning and mass media. This intimate knowledge of cities in turn provides foundations for teaching classes on comparative urbanism as well as thematic courses on contemporary urban social and cultural issues. He also works to make sure that students know that the city of Philadelphia provides a rich urban laboratory and a resource for scholarly investigation as well as civic participation and celebration. Barcelona, Spain, has been one of the cornerstones of McDonogh's work since the mid-1970s. He is the author of Good Families Of Barcelona (Princeton, 1986), editor of Conflict In Catalonia: Images Of An Urban Society (Florida, 1986) and co-author of Twelve Walks Through The History Of Barcelona (Ajuntament de Barcelona, 1993) as well as numerous articles in Spanish, French, Catalan and English. His primary focus remains the nature of class conflict and divisions within the city, from 19th-century capitalist expansion to the issues of contemporary third-world migration. He also spent a decade working in Savannah, Georgia, where he produced the monograph Black And Catholic In Savannah, Georgia (Tennessee, 1993). Here, he was especially concerned to untangle relations of race, class and religion in a deeply divided society, listening to narratives, resistance and adaptations that African-Americans created in relation to the sacred and secular power structures around them. More recently, his work has also taken him to Hong Kong. As part of the Fulbright lectureship in 1996-1997, McDonogh worked with the American Studies program at Hong Kong University, where he taught and collaborated on courses on the American city, culture and society. The resulting exchanges he had with his students, colleagues and friends there help underpin his research on Hong Kong citizenship, mass media, and transnationalism.

Another area of McDonogh's work focuses on how to grapple with the visual cultures and reproductions of complex cities – architecture and film, television and landscape, as well as the different readings that people bring to these sights. He and his wife/collaborator Cindy Wong have a paper in American Anthropologist, for example, comparing the development of movie theaters in Hong Kong from film palace to multiplex as a reflection of urban development there since the 1960s and the intersection of broadcast and narrowcast films on Philadelphia, part of a book project they are currently working on dealing with film and the city.

Finally, in 2000, he turned to Buenos Aires, Argentina, to examine concepts of nature, land and identity with regard to planning and European transnationalism. This urban experience, like the others cited, also raises important comparative questions with Barcelona, especially as the latter provides models for global urban redevelopment. This interest has also reflected the Cities program's growing involvement with the Environmental Studies Concentration.

All of these cities and issues continually come up in classes and interactions with student research. The broad overview of the introductory course, City 185 – Urban Culture and Society, – where students read about Tokyo, Hong Kong, Barcelona, Rio de Janeiro and Accra, as well as many North American cities, is complemented by students' field research in Greater Philadelphia. City 229, Comparative Urbanism, focuses on a few key cities for in-depth research on topics like colonialism and post-colonialism, environmental issues or race and migration. Here, students can work with the college's rich collections on Barcelona, Hong Kong, Los Angeles and other cities.

Advanced classes may focus on issues like the city and film or questions of public space and public citizenship. McDonogh also works closely with senior thesis students and will inaugurate a new senior colloquium for post-thesis discussions and the incorporation of internships into the Cities curriculum.

Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University

Curriculum Vitae

Office: 237 Thomas
Telephone: 610-526-5051
Email: gmcdonog@brynmawr.edu