Cities, Signs, and Pandemics (BA Syllabus Fall 2021)

This is the reading list for an undergrad humanities-oriented course on Cities, Signs, and Pandemics. Taught by Matt Soar in the Department of Communication Studies, Concordia University, in Fall 2021. Based on his earlier course Signs & Public Lettering.

From the syllabus intro: This edition of the studies course COMS324 Communication Analysis of Environment will have a unique focus on the visual iconography of cities under the strain of global health emergencies.

Urban surfaces such as store fronts, walls, streets, sidewalks, rooftops, and monuments are littered with logos, words, letters, and numbers. Public lettering, civic signs, and commercial signs vie for our attention, comprehension, and action: street names, apartment numbers, store and restaurant signs, traffic directions, parking information, ‘wayfinding’ systems for subway systems and malls, but also building names, foundation stones, epitaphs on memorials and grave markers, drain covers, mailboxes, and so forth.

By drawing on the foundational work already done in this area, and the instructor’s own research and research-creation eg the Logo Cities symposium, The Montréal Signs Project, the documentary Les Enseignistes de Montréal, this course offers a timely investigation into the extra layer (palimpsest) of temporary signs and lettering made necessary by global health emergencies such as COVID-19.

We’ll begin by getting to know and appreciate ‘lettered cities’, especially Tiohtiá:ke / Montréal, by learning about the historical development of signs and public lettering in the West, as the best way to understand the present; developing our observational and analytical skills; familiarizing ourselves with, and using, the specialized vocabularies of design, craft and manufacture; appreciating the relationships between purpose, audience, materials, colours, letters, type, location, visibility, illumination, and ‘voice’; accurately applying stylistic terms such as modern, retro, and kitsch.

We will then critically analyze the lettered city in extraordinary times such as the COVID pandemic: the design, placement, and meanings of official notices intended to re-shape public behaviour (social distancing, masks, hand-washing, curfews), and to direct human and vehicular traffic (testing stations, vaccination centres, hospital ERs). We will also examine dramatic representations of these phenomena in movies and TV series about crime, pandemics and related disasters, eg Children of Men, Contagion, District 9, 28 Days Later, World War Z, Chernobyl, but also parodies such as Angie Tribeca, Touch of Cloth.

We will encounter historical precedents (going back to Roman times) and read contemporary analyses, explore the origins and purposes of these taken-for-granted forms of communication, potentially undertake a visual and cartographic survey of ‘urban epigraphy’ in our home cities, and discuss unsanctioned responses to official public lettering.

NB This is a studies course, but students will also have the opportunity to propose research-creation (production) projects for their final assignment. With its emphasis on under-explored aspects of signs and public lettering in urban culture, this course expressly excludes graffiti, tagging, ads and billboards. Registration is open to all eligible undergrads in the Department of Communication Studies.

Keywords: signs, public lettering, graphic design, typography, fonts, visual culture, urban culture, material culture, communication, cultural and media studies, urban history, urban geography, mapping, emergency preparedness.