Conclusion

With each additional city and Omeka assignment, we added a new framework and a layer of complexity adding to our hollistic understanding of urbanism. With Boston, we looked at a single physical space over time and saw it as a palimpsest. With Moscow, we created a tour of five sites in the city – adding the dimension of geography over time. With Istanbul, we thought of one site as a “lieu de memoire” – layering a symbolic meaning that may diverge with the site itself. And finally with Mumbai, we “closely read” maps of different periods of the city – seeing the history of the city through a primary source and reading it as one individual’s reality of a collective experience. In tandem to layering of frameworks, we are only able to see the diversity and complexity of the city through multi-media sources and a multi-disciplinary approach. Even as each student digests, analyzes, and writes (interpreting broadly as possible) our own understanding of the city, we make use of “digital humanities,” which is able to integrate as a diverse set of tools and mediums that we consumed beforehand. Personally, this course has introduced to me many new ways of thinking, of consuming, and of appreciating different sources of material.