In this 2000 level course, we will study the genre of the literary “walk” as a departure point for broader questions about the poetics of space. Considering both urban and rural topographies, we will read and analyze fiction, film, poetry and theory to discuss the psyche’s complex relationship to environment and place. We will consider a range of related literary movements and writers, from the fin-de-siecle figure of the flaneur or flaneuse in Paris and London, to the Situationists and more recent psychogeography experiments in NYC and beyond. Reading and films may include works by: Agnes Varda, Virginia Woolf, Cole Swensen, Lisa Robertson, Harryette Mullen, Frank O’Hara, Henry Thoreau, W.G. Sebald, James Baldwin, and Michel de Certeau, among others. Students will have the opportunity to complete both creative and critical assignments and will be expected to compose their own “dérive” in New York City.