"A Home Away From home": The Hotel and the Modern Experience (in English)

In this course we will examine the hotel as a quintessentially modern social and cultural space. Sex and love, death and crime, money and leisure, and architecture and commerce find a special "home away from home" in the hotel, a quality that has inspired the cultural imagination for generations. Theories by G. Simmel, S. Kracauer, and Th. Veblen will help explain the complex dynamics between time, space, and money underlying the hotel's special aura. By “reading" real and fictional hotels in the arts and media (E. Hopper, Th. Mann, A. Hailey, St. Zweig), we will show the hotel's complex significance as a symbol of modern life. 3 hrs sem.