This is the website for Dr. Robert C. Thomas’ course San Francisco: Biography of a City. This course studies the cultural life of the city from its days as a Spanish settlement named Yurba Buena to the present. This particular version of the SF course treats the historical and cultural life of the city as coextensive with modernity (modern capitalist development, including so-called “progress” and its ideologies, which we generally refer to today as globalization). Because the City of SF is bound-up with modernity, “it” is also something that is still happening, something that we are all participating in and working through. This is why my versions of the course are often subtitled A History of the Present.

This is a fun class where we learn about the cultural life of the city, including all the dirty stories from the 19th century, the gossip, and the unique characters of this place. We will, also, think seriously about place and exclusion, the genocide of native peoples, and the history of race in the city, particularly with regard to  Chinatown and the Chinese Exclusion Act. We will study gender and its construction, sexuality, nature, commodification, and image (including spectacle) as they relate to everyday life in SF modernities. Significant cultural works, places, and events, will be studied in relation to the city.

There are three pages linked below that serve as a User’s Guide to the course: Invisible Cities, Modern Times, and Everyday Life.