FYS 27 Los Angeles Cultures and Subcultures
This course explores LA urban cultures and subcultures in the last 150 years in defining, elaborating, and staging an alternative to the region’s sociological and cultural norms. We emphasize urban neighborhoods as crucibles of a bold and controversial multiculturalism as the course takes us from the railroad era and Arroyo Culture through the mid-20th century freeway era to more recent trends in downtown redevelopment and gentrification. We examine a series of bohemian revolts against increasingly oppressive and conformist norms and the development of a counter-hegemonic political aesthetics particularly expressed through music and the visual arts that have informed and inspired movements for liberation and expression by African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans. Open only to first year frosh.