The course seeks to explore the city’s unique urban identity, shaped by cultural and historical hybridities that transcend reductive discourses. Rather than narrowing Karachi to its tumultuous past or its uncertain future, this course aims to delve into the multitude of experiences that have defined it as a melting pot. By engaging with literature, film, oral histories, we will reimagine the links between the self and the city, the past and the present, the physical and the imaginary. Through these explorations, the course will foreground micro-histories and oral narratives, tracing the lives that have unfolded in the city’s streets, homes, and public spaces. By listening closely to individual memories and everyday experiences, we will seek to restore fragments of a past that exists only in recollection, preserving the textures of Karachi’s history that official archives and research often overlook.
