Original, action-oriented humanist practices for interpreting and intervening in the city: a new methodology at the intersection of the humanities, design, and urban studies. Urban humanities is an emerging field at the intersection of the humanities, urban planning, and design. It offers a new approach not only for understanding cities in a global context but for intervening in them, interpreting their histories, engaging with them in the present, and speculating about their futures. This book introduces both the theory and practice of urban humanities, tracing the evolution of the concept, presenting methods and practices with a wide range of research applications, describing changes in teaching and curricula, and offering case studies of urban humanities practices in the field. Urban humanities views the city through a lens of spatial justice, and its inquiries are centered on the microsettings of everyday life. The book's case studies report on real-world projects in mega-cities in the Pacific Rim-Tokyo, Shanghai, Mexico City, and Los Angeles-with several projects described in detail, including playful spaces for children in car-oriented Mexico City, a commons in a Tokyo neighborhood, and a rolling story-telling box to promote "literary justice" in Los Angeles.

La Regenta, by Leopoldo Alas (Clarin), is considered a (if not the) great masterpiece of Spanish Realist and Naturalist fiction, comparable only to Benito Perez Galdos' Fortunata y Jacinta. Staged in Oviedo (Vetusta, in the novel), La Regenta's main character is the beautiful and sensitive Ana Ozores, newlywed to the mature Victor Quintanar, former regent of the Audiencia. Harassed by the local seducer, Alvaro Mesia, and by the local cathedral's Dean, don Fermin de Pas, Ana finally rejects the priest and falls for Alvaro. Don Victor discovers the treason and, pushed by don Fermin, challenges Alvaro to a duel, where he is deadly wounded and finally dies. The novel is exquisite in its careful and detailed depiction of the provincial background, and the complex interweaving of the different social classes, an approach covered in depth by the traditional literary critique in the numerous forewords to the various editions. The present edition, however, proposes a different approach. With the help of gender studies and feminist theory, it concentrates on the main character, Ana Ozores, to unearth the complexity of her personality, from her supposed hysteria and her mystical bouts to her thirst for freedom and agency. The introduction to this critical edition carefully looks at the semantics underlying Ana Ozores's circumstances and actions, and decodes them as solid proofs of an early feminism. La Regenta belongs to the illustrious European cycle of novels centered on feminine adultery, as Leon Tolstoi's Ana Karenina, Theodor Fontane's Effi Briest, Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Emile Zola's La conquete de Plassans, (to which it resembles most) and Eca de Queiroz's O Primo Basilio. However, the second and innovative objective of this edition is to highlight the clear connections of La Regenta, not so much with the foreign novels abovementioned, but with the Spanish novel El Cura. Caso de Incesto by Eduardo Lopez Bago, a contemporary writer with whom Clarin also shared the taste for radical naturalism. Both novels share common ground, and elaborate on the cultural stereotype of (male) ecclesiastical sin coupled with (female) hysteria. La Regenta, however, adds complexity and nuance to El cura. Caso de incesto's more straightforward approach to sexual repression, mental illness and celibate. Ana Ozores, certainly, is much more than a "nerviosilla" ("a nervous little thing"), as Perez Galdos chooses to call her in his famous foreword to La Regenta"s second edition.

El Cura. (Caso de Incesto) Novela medico social (The Priest. Case of Incest. Medical-Social Novel) (1885) constitutes, together with La Regenta (1884-1885) by Leopoldo Alas, a.k.a. Clarin, one of the best Spanish examples of anti-clerical literature, and yet another example of Spain's increasing move towards secularization during the second half of the XIX Century. El Cura (Caso de Incesto) is the first novel of a trilogy -integrated also by El Confesionario (Satiriasis) (The Confessional - Satyriasis) (1885) and La Monja (The Nun) (1886)- that contests Christian sexual moral authority and demands its suppression based on the laws of Nature. More than a mere attack against the Catholic religion, El Cura highlights the misuse, on the part of the Church, of certain religious beliefs, to the detriment of the sexual (and mental) health of priests. Lopez Bago's anti-clericalism, thus, is rather physiological than political. As the author states, El Cura inaugurates a new series of studies aimed at fighting ecclesiastic celibacy and its dangerous consequences, seen from a socio-medical perspective. El Cura tells the story of the relationship between Roman, a handsome young priest, and his beautiful sister Gracia. The incest will not take place until the end, but the whole plot is geared towards it. Fermin, a fellow priest who lives with Ana, his concubine, cogently symbolizes the decay of ecclesiastical ethics. According to El Cura's clear-cut message, only the implementation of celibacy can save the Catholic Church. For, as Lopez Bago puts it, celibate priests live among us hiding their appetites, and do not starve to death for the sole reason that they feast in secrecy. This edition brings back to print an author and a novel that became a true best seller during a particularly agitated period of Spanish history, and in a time when sexuality fell under careful scrutiny both in its social and scientific aspects. The foreword by prof. Maite Zubiaurre highlights the common aspects shared by El Cura and Clarin's La Regenta (1884-1885), one of the great literary masterpieces of Spanish Realism and Naturalism. Both novels fall prey to controversy and take a skeptical look at ecclesiastical celibacy. More important, in both novels, female sexuality takes center stage, and unavoidably degenerates into pathology and hysteria.

Alvaro Retana (1890-1970), who many consider The Spanish Petronius, belongs to that lighthearted erotic literature trend popular during the early twentieth Century, that became known in Spain as Sicalipsis (from ancient Greek sykon -fig, or vulva- and aleiptikos -to stimulate). In open opposition to the somber and solemn Spanish '98 generation, and other representatives of the so called high culture, Retana's popular erotic novelettes showcased the smiling and playful face of a country that during the 1920s and 1930s openly embraced European modernity and stood up to its challenges, among them the sexual revolution and explicit eroticism. Alvaro Retana, a flamboyant and openly homosexual artist, illustrator, fashion designer, and renowned composer of cuples (a cuple is a risque popular song usually sung in variety shows), is also the successful author of many sicaliptic novelettes, among them, the four short novels included in this volume. Retana is one of the first writers who, in Las locas de postin and other openly queer and sexually explicit novels, dare to depict the uninhibited sensuality of a free and happy-go-lucky Spain, soon to die at the hands of the Franco dictatorship. Retana's smiling and festive homoeroticism, clearly a forerunner of Almodovar's and Mendicutti's gay aesthetics, stands in stark contrast to the apocalyptic and pessimistic vision of homosexuality in Alfonso Hernandez-Cata's novel El Angel de Sodoma (Stockcero 2011), a novel, like Retana's fictions, meant to depict the gay underground world of early twentieth century Spain. Retana openly celebrates queer love, as well as the sexuality of women, both homosexual and straight. Novelettes such as Los ambiguos, Lolita buscadora de emociones, and El tonto amply instruct the unabashed tobillera, or Spanish flapper, in the pleasures of Venus. This volume comprises four of Retana's most successful novels, and with the critical foreword and footnotes by Maite Zubiaurre and Audrey Harris gives a clearer view of what the Spanish society was really reading while the high literature obtained all the academic applause.