Section Description:Just 200 years ago “less that 3 per cent of the world’s population lived in cities. Today, cities hold more than half of all people on earth….If [the] pace [of this migration continues], by 2050 over 70 percent of people will call cities home.” This shift in population has led to the growth of what’s known as the megacity. In the 1990s, a megacity held a population in excess of eight million people. Today’s megacity has a population in excess of ten million. Estimates are that there are 37 megacities across the globe. In this LitPA course, we will read short articles and non-fiction excerpts, stories, and poems; write brief response papers and think pieces about cities (and the cultures of those spaces). We will listen to music from each 8 megacities of the Americas—Bogota, Buenos Aires, Lima, Los Angeles, Mexico City, New York, Rio de Janiero, and Sao Paulo. We will look at images and film clips that center these cities. We will think through what these dynamic and “resilient” megacity-organisms tell us about mid-20th century histories of the Americas, and about the dangers and possibilities of the types of spaces where more and more of us gather to live and thrive. 

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