Writing the New City [Charles Mudede]

All Levels. In 1972, the American physicist P. W. Anderson published an influential paper titled “More Is Different.” What did he mean by this? Simply, there is a point when you have so much of something—so many cells, so many ants, so many people—that something new emerges. Moreover, that new thing could not be predicted by its constitutive elements. Nothing about an individual ant tells you anything about its colony. With this in mind, we turn to Seattle, a city that has gone through a lot of changes in recent years. What do these changes mean? And how can we write about them? Does a new Seattle demand a new language? This class will explore these questions and more with texts, writing workshops, and the general intellect/experiences of the participants.