Introducing Celluloid City: Film and the Metropolis

Editor’s note: The theme for February 2025, “Celluloid City,” explores the interplay between cities and film. This overview kicks off the month with subsequent pieces by contributors to follow. You can see all posts from the theme here. Nearly five years ago, The Metropole spent the month of April 2020 thinking about “The Visual City.” […]

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Diyarbakır: Contested City in Turkey’s Kurdish heartland

By William Gourlay If you present a map of Turkey to a traveler and ask them to pinpoint key cities, chances are they will immediately identify İstanbul, the great metropolis on the Bosphorus. Some would also be able to highlight Ankara, the capital, but beyond that choices may be limited. Few cities in Turkey’s Anatolian […]

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Soundscapes: The Music that Created New York

Launched in 2024, Soundscapes N.Y.C. is a podcast about how music created in New York has shaped the history of the city and how throughout its history the city itself has been an incubator for new music. It is a bi-monthly podcast series in which Sarah Lawrence College historian Ryan Purcell, talks with artists, music […]

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Call for Papers: Metropole Theme Months 2025

With 2024 just about in the rear view mirror, The Metropole’s editorial staff wanted to let our readers know that we have three theme months planned for the first half of 2025. Check out our calls below and drop us a line at  themetropole@urbanhistory.org if you have a pitch for us! The City and Film […]

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Congratulations to Our 2024 Graduate Student Blogging Contest Winner!

Once again, we had a record number of entries in our graduate student blogging contest! Our 2024 theme, “Connection,” inspired submission by twelve students whose work intersects with urban history. Online publications such as The Metropole can provide an outlet for writing that allows for creativity and experimentation, both in content and how information is […]

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Magical and Exiled Urbanisms in Miami

Editors note: This is our final entry in our theme month on The Latinx City. You can see all other entries for the theme month here. Additionally, readers interested in more on Miami can see other posts on the city published at The Metropole here. By Daniel Richter In 1987, Joan Didion published her book […]

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Latinx Entrepreneurs in Philadelphia – A Legacy of Resilience and Growth

Editor’s note: This is the fourth post in our theme for November, The Latinx City. By Stephanie Rivera-Kumar Philadelphia, one of the oldest cities in the United States, has a vibrant history shaped by immigrant contributions that continue to affect its neighborhoods and economy. In recent years, Latinx immigrants from countries such as the Dominican […]

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The “World City” at Work: How Street Vendors Transformed Global L.A.

Editor’s note: This is the third post in our theme for November, The Latinx City. By David Helps Jorge Cruz Cortes was still a teenager when the Los Angeles Police Department arrested him for selling household goods without a license in 1989. The eighteen-year-old from Oaxaca, Mexico had been in L.A. long enough to know […]

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Chicago Americans: The City of the Second Generation

Editor’s note: This is the second post in our theme for November, The Latinx City. By Andres Villatoro A friend from graduate school recently visited Chicago for the first time ever to present at a large annual academic conference. As an international student from Santiago, Chile and a lover of cities, I was excited for […]

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