Lecture Exhibition Virtual
Le Style Métro: Guimard, Subways, and the Modern City
Thursday, September 14 6:00-7:00 pm CDT (VIRTUAL) Buy Tickets General Admission: $20|| Members: $15 || Student: $10
What makes subways so important to modern cities, what did they mean to the people that used them, and how did Hector Guimard’s famous entrances for the Paris Métro help create those meanings? In this illustrated lecture, scholar and author David Pike will take you on a virtual tour of subway culture, with Guimard as our guide. We’ll explore what Parisians thought about his édicules and how they pictured them on postcards, on film, and in magazines. We’ll investigate their influence on social movements and working-class identity. We’ll trace how they ended up in cities from Lisbon to Chicago. And, we’ll survey their influence on subway design and city culture around the world.
This program will be recorded, and, once we disseminate the link, registrants will have access to the recording for two weeks following.
About the Speaker:
David L. Pike is an award-winning scholar of urban culture and Professor of Literature at American University. Among his books are Subterranean Cities: The World beneath Paris and London, Metropolis on the Styx: The Underworlds of Modern Urban Culture, and, most recently, Corruption Plots: Stories, Ethics, and Publics of the Late Capitalist City. He has published articles on medieval literature, modernism, film, neo-Victorianism, subterranea, urban fantasy, global urban culture, and Paris and London, and writes regularly on movies and music online at Bright Lights Film Journal and PopMatters.