London After the Millennium
November 18, 2006
In 1978, professor Ned Paynter began methodically taking film slides of London while teaching in Germany. After numerous visits over three decades, Dr. Paynter will share his love for the city through his slides and critical insights into “London After the Millennium.”
For the last three centuries, the path of London’s expansion was westward and northward, away from the city’s river. During the last three decades, however, that path has been dramatically reversed. The metropolis has embraced the Thames again, and expansion and renewal have been towards the south and east (Southwark, Docklands, Greenwich North, and Stratford, the terminus of the new Jubilee Line and site of the 2012 Olympics). At the same time, metro London has received an architectural makeover from Raymond Foster and Richard Rogers in particular on a scale to rival those achieved by John Nash in the early 19th century and Christopher Wren in the late 17th century.
Ned Paynter received a Ph.D. in American history at UC Berkeley and has taught American Studies and urban history at Berkeley; the University of East Anglia, Norwich, England; the University of Missouri-St. Louis; the Institut fur England- und Amerikastudien, Goethe University, Frankfurt; San Diego State; and now, in semi-retirement, at S.D. Mesa Community College.