"New Urban Chic: The Semiotic Landscape of Gentrification in U.S. Cities" with Gabriella Modan, professor in the Department of English
City streets are texts that are written in words, images, and architectural features. Urban residents and visitors alike make judgments about city spaces based on the ideological frameworks they bring to interpreting the particular conglomeration of signs and symbols in a given space. In this talk I discuss the semiotic landscape of Washington, D.C., a city undergoing rapid gentrification. Focusing on name signs containing the work urban, I examine how, as the city gentrifies, the semiotic landscape contributes to a physical and symbolic reconfiguration of urban space as well as a shift in the meaning of the word urban itself.
