Theories of Space, Place and Mobility: 2012

Week One (Jan 17) - Introductions & Overview

Questions for discussion

What does it mean to study space and place?
What is mobility and what is its relationship to human/cultural geography?
What is the relationship between cultural studies and cultural geography?
Chris Carlsson on 'Ghost Streets and Disembodied Workers' in San Francisco.

Week Two (Jan 24) - Thinking Space & Place

Rodolfo Edwards, Impossible Maps #14

Readings for today:

Yi-Fu Tuan, "Place: An Experiential Perspective," Geographical Review, Vol. 65, No. 2. (Apr., 1975), pp. 151-165.
David Harvey, “Space as a Keyword,” in David Harvey: A Critical Introduction, pp. 270-293 (originally published in Spaces of Global Capitalism).

For further reading and research:

Murray Foreman, "Space Matters: Hip Hop and the Spatial Perspective," in The 'Hood Comes First: Race, Space, and Place in Rap and Hip-Hop (Wesleyan University Press), pp. 1-35.
Doreen Massey, excerpt from For Space (pp. 1-15).
Andrew Merrifield, "Place and Space: A Lefebvrian Reconciliation," Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series, Vol. 18, No. 4 (1993), pp. 516-531.
Denise L. Lawrence and Setha M. Low, "The Built Environment And Spatial Form," Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 19 (1990): 453-505.

Week Three (Jan 31) - Urban Space, Part I: Becoming Modern

Assignments for today

Walter Benjamin, "Paris: Capital of the 19th Century," New Left Review, No. 48 (March-April 1968): 77-88.
David Pinder, "Modernist Calls to Order," Visions of the City, pp. 57-87.
Ryan Moore, "Style and the City: Urban Theorist Elizabeth Wilson on Fashion, Women, and Modernity," Re/Visionist (2011).
In class screening: The City (1939)

For further reading and research

Raymond Williams, "Metropolitan Perceptions and the Emergence of Modernism," in The Politics of Modernism: Against the New Conformists (New York: Verso, 2007), pp. 37-48.
Susan Buck-Morss, "The Flaneur, the Sandwichman and the Whore: The Politics of Loitering," New German Critique, No. 39, Second Special Issue on Walter Benjamin (Autumn, 1986), pp. 99-140.
Elizabeth Wilson, "The Invisible Flâneur," New Left Review, No. 191 (Jan/Feb, 1992): 90-110.
Phillip Mackintosh and Glen Norcliffe, "Flaneurie on Bicycles: Acquiescence to Women in Public in the 1890s," The Canadian Geographer / Le Geographe Canadien, Vol. 50, No 1 (2006): 17–37.
Heather Marcelle Crickenberger, "The Flaneur" The Arcades Project Project (an overview).
Peter Norton, "Street Rivals."
Le Corbusier, excerpt from The City of Tomorrow.
"Google Maps the Way Robert Moses Intended It," Curbed, March 18, 2009.

Week Four (Feb 7) Urban Space, Part II: Spectacles and Situationists

Le Corbusier, Ville Contemporaine 'A Contemporary City for Three Million Inhabitants' (1922)

Assignments for today

Ivan Chtcheglov, "Formulary for a New Urbanism," Internationale Situationniste #1 (October 1953).
David Pinder, "'Old Paris is No More': Geographies of Spectacle and Anti-Spectacle," Antipode, Vol. 32, No. 4 (2000): 357–386.
"Critique of Urbanism," Internationale Situationniste #6 (August 1961).
RESPONSE PAPER #1 DUE TODAY on any of the readings from Weeks 2-4.

For further reading and research

Constant, "Another City for Another Life," Internationale Situationniste #3 (December 1959).
Guy Debord, "Theory of the dérive" Les Lèvres Nues #9 (November 1956).
Situationist International, "Unitary Urbanism at the End of the 1950s," Internationale Situationniste #3 (December 1959).
Raoul Vaneigem, "Comments Against Urbanism," Internationale Situationniste #6 (August 1961).
Attila Kotanyi and Raoul Vaneigem, "Basic Program of the Bureau of Unitary Urbanism," Internationale Situationniste #6 (August 1961).
Thomas F. McDonough, “Situationist Space,” October, Vol. 67, (Winter, 1994), pp. 58-77.

Related media

Guy Debord, La Société du Spectacle (Society of the Spectacle)
Victor Nieuwenhuijs, Babylon de Constant (a film about Constant's 'New Babylon' project)

Week Five (Feb 14) - 'Home' and Domestic Space

Jessica Rodrigue, 'Family Photos' (2007)

Readings for today

Lynn Spigel "The Home Theater," in Make Room For TV: Television and the Family Ideal in Postwar America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
Setha M. Low, "The Edge and the Center: Gated Communities and the Discourse of Urban Fear," American Anthropologist, Vol. 103, No. 1 (2001): 45-58.
Samantha Barbas, "Just Like Home: 'Home Cooking' and the Domestication of the American Restaurant," Gastronomica, Vol 2, No. 4 (2002): 43-52.
Click HERE for a zip file of the above readings.

For further reading & research:

Dolores Hayden, "Two Utopian Feminists and Their Campaigns for Kitchenless Houses," Signs, Vol. 4, No. 2 (1978), pp. 274-290.
Kimberley W. Carrell, "The Industrial Revolution Comes to the Home: Kitchen Design Reform and Middle-Class Women," Journal of American Culture, Fall79, Vol. 2 Issue 3 (Fall 1979): 488-499.

Week Six (Feb 21) - Landscapes, 'Nature', and 'The Country'

Painting by Bob 'Afro' Ross

Readings for today

Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (excerpts)
David Nye, "Introduction" and "Constructing Nature: Niagara Falls and the GrandCanyon" in Narratives and Spaces: Technology and the Construction of American Culture (Columbia University Press, 1987), pp. 1-24.
Wolfgang Schivelbusch, "Panoramic Travel," in The Railway Journey: The Industrialization and Perception of Time and Space (University of California Press, 1987).

For further reading and research:

Wolfgang Schivelbusch, "Railroad Space and Railroad Time," in The Railway Journey: The Industrialization and Perception of Time and Space (University of California Press, 1987).
David Nye, "Technology, Nature, and American Origin Stories," Environmental History, Vol. 8, Issue 1.
William Rollins, "Reflections on the Spare Tire: SUVs and Postmodern Environmental Consciousness," Environmental History, Vol. 11, No. 4 (2006).
William Beinart and Katie McKeown, "Wildlife Media and Representations of Africa, 1950s to the 1970s," Environmental History, Vol. 14, No. 3 (2009).
Christy Rodgers, "Bugs as Cultural Icons," LiP Magazine, No. 7, pp. 16-21.
Finis Dunaway, "Seeing Global Warming: Contemporary Art and the Fate of the Planet," Environmental History, Vol. 14, No. 1 (2009).
Mark Stoll, "Milton in Yosemite: Paradise Lost and the National Parks Idea," Environmental History, Vol. 13, No. 2 (2008).
Joan M. Schwartz, "Photographic Reflections: Nature, Landscape, and the Environment," Environmental History, Vol. 12, No. 4 (2007).
Katherine Ledford, "'Singularly Place in Scenes So Cultivated': The Frontier, the Myth of Westward Progress, and a Backwoods in the Mountain South," ATQ: 19th Century American Literature and Culture, Vol. 18, No. 3 (2004), pp. 205-222.

Week Seven (Feb 28) - Tourism & Tourist Spaces

'South of the Border' photo by Rubén Ortiz Torres

Readings for today

Nicole King, chapters 2 & 3 in Sombreros and Motorcycles in a Newer South: The Politics of Aesthetics in South Carolina's Tourism Industry (University of Mississippi Press, 2012).
John Urry, chapter one in The Tourist Gaze (London: Sage, 2002).

For further reading and research

Dennis Judd, "Constructing the Tourist Bubble," in The Tourist City, eds. Judd and Fainstein, pp. 35-53.
Cotten Seiler, “‘So That We as a Race Might Have Something Authentic to Travel By’: African American Automobility and Cold-War Liberalism," American Quarterly, Vol. 58, No. 4 (2006), pp. 1091-1117.
Gary Allan Tobin, “The Bicycle Boom of the 1890’s: The Development of Private Transportation and the Birth of the Modern Tourist,” Popular Culture, 7, 1974.
Tim Edensor, "Performing Tourism, Staging Tourism: (Re)producing Tourist Space and Practice," Tourist Studies, Vol. 1 (2001), pp. 59-81.
Adrian Franklin, "The Tourist Gaze and beyond: An interview with John Urry," Tourist Studies, Vol. 1 (2001), pp. 115-131.
Gabrielle R Barnett, "Drive-By Viewing: Visual Consciousness and Forest Preservation in the Automobile Age," Technology and Culture, Vol 45, No 1, Jan 2004, pp. 30-54.
Julie A. Lacy and William A. Douglass, "Beyond Authenticity: The Meanings and Uses of Cultural Tourism," Tourist Studies, Vol. 2 (2002), pp. 5-21.
Xan Rice, "Kenya's Slums Attract Poverty Tourism," The Guardian (UK), September 25, 2009.

Week Eight (March 6) - NO CLASS

Cultural Studies Colloquium - Special Date & Time
Lawrence Grossberg, "Is There a Place for Intellectuals in the New Radicalism?"
Hokin Lecture Hall, 4pm

In recent essays, some notable left intellectuals (e.g. Latour, Ranciere, Hardt) have questioned the value of "critique." They seem to suggest that political acts of insurrection and experimentation displace the necessity for both analyses that might dis-cover "what's going on," and various projects of education. In this presentation, leading Cultural Studies scholar Larry Grossberg seeks to do three things: first, to engage with the logics of this internecine war; second, to place this event into a geneology of 20th century, anti-capitalist intellectual formations; and third, to put forth cultural studies as a unique formation that offers a vision of countercultural, counter-hegemonic politics.

Lawrence Grossberg is the Morris Davis Distinguished Professor of Communication Studies and Cultural Studies; Adjunct Distinguished Professor of Anthropology; and Director of the University Program in Cultural Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

This lecture is co-sponsored by a mini-grant from the Critical Encounters initiative at Columbia College Chicago.

Week Nine (March 13) - Public Space?

Assignments for today

Benjamin Shepard and Greg Smithsimon, The Beach Beneath the Streets, Part One: Repression (pp. 1-90).
CHICAGO ORGANIZATION REPORTS. Click here for a description of the assignment (it is also linked under 'Course Documents' in the menu above).

For further reading and research

Jeff Ferrell, "Remapping the City: Public Identity, Cultural Space, and Social Justice," Contemporary Justice Review, Vol. 4, No. 2 (2001): 161-180.
David Harvey, "Flexible Accumulation through Urbanization Reflections on 'Post-Modernism' in the American City," Perspecta, Vol. 26: Theater, Theatricality, and Architecture, 1990, pp. 251-272.
David Harvey, "The Political Economy of Public Space."
Jonathan Sterne, "Urban Media and the Politics of Sound Space," Open #9.
Henry Giroux, "War on Terror: The Militarising of Public Space and Culture in the United States," Third Text, Vol. 18, No. 4 (2004): 211-221.
Facts about homelessness from the National Coalition for the Homeless. Check out the first three documents (they are short).
Homelessness Estimates by State, 2007.
A documentary about housing in New Orleans called This is my Home.
A New York Times video on housing in New Orleans.

Week Ten (March 20) - Gentrification

Readings for today

Neil Smith, “Class Struggle on Avenue B: The Lower East Side as Wild Wild West,” in The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City
John Thompson, "Homo/genous Territories: Queer Youth and the Struggle for Public Space in Chicago’s Boystown," Cultural Landscapes, Vol. 1, No. 3 (2009): 1-25. *This is the senior capstone thesis of a Columbia College cultural studies major.
John J. Betancur, “The Politics of Gentrification .” Urban Affairs Review, 37: 780-814 (an article about West Town Chicago)

For further reading and research

Neil Smith, Chapter Two in The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City (recommended)
Sharon Zukin, "Gentrification: Culture and Capital in the Urban Core," Annual Review of Sociology, Vol 13 (1987), pp. 129-147.
Benjamin Shepard, "Defending Democracy, History, and Union Square."
Chicago Housing Authority, "Cabrini-Green Homes."
Ramsin Canon, "The Most Complicated Simple Issue," Gapers Block, 2003.
Deirdre Pfeiffer, "Displacement Through Discourse," Urban Anthropology, Spring 2006.
A culture jam of the Chicago Housing Authority's 'CHAnge' campaign, from 2005.
Voices of Cabrini: Remaking Chicago's Public Housing (a film by Ronit Bazalel)
Daniel Makagon, "Bring on the Shock Troops: Artists and Gentrification in the Popular Press," Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Vol. 7, No. 1 (2010): 26-52.

Week Eleven (March 27th) - NO CLASS / SPRING BREAK

Fig. 1: Americans

Week Twelve (April 3) - Appropriating Space/Forging Community

Readings for today:

Shepard and Smithsimon, The Beach Beneath the Streets, Part Two: Resistance.

In-class Screening:

The Garden, directed by Scott Hamilton Kennedy.

For further reading and research:

Mark Purcell, "Excavating Lefebvre: The Right to the City and its Urban Politics of the Inhabitant," GeoJournal, No. 58 (2002): 99–108.
Luis Aponte-Pares, “Casitas Place and Culture: Appropriating Place in Puerto Rican Barrios,” Places, Vol. 11, No. 1, 1997.
Chris Carlsson, "Vacant Lot Gardeners," Nowtopia, pp. 82-114.
Paul Chatterton and Stuart Hodkinson, "Why We Need Autonomous Spaces in the Fight Against Capitalism," in Do It Yourself: A Handbook for Changing Our World.
Chicago Community Gardens

Week Thirteen (April 10) - Carceral Spaces

Image by Andalusia Knoll

Readings for today

Angela Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete? (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2003). Try to read the whole thing, but at least read chapters 1, 2, 3, 5.
Rashad Shabazz, ‘‘'So High You Can’t Get Over it, So Low You Can’t Get Under it': Carceral Spatiality and Black Masculinities in the United States and South Africa," Souls, Vol. 11, No. 3 (2009): 276–294.
YOUR MAP PRESENTATION IS DUE NEXT WEEK. Click HERE for a description.

For further reading and research

Glen Ford, "Private Prison Corporations Are Modern Day Slave Traders," Black Agenda Report, April 25, 2012.
Emma Goldman, "Prisons: A Social Crime and Failure," in Anarchism and Other Essays (New York & London: Mother Earth Publishing Association, 1911), pp. 115-132.
Instead of Prisons: A Handbook for Abolitionists, 1976.
The Real Cost of Prisons Project
Mumia Abu Jamal: A Case of Reasonable Doubt (embedded below)

Week Fourteen (April 17) - Maps & The Politics of Cartography

Assignments for today

Michael Heffernan, "The Politics of the Map in the Early Twentieth Century,"Cartography and Geographic Information Science, Vol. 29, No. 3, 2002, pp. 207-226.
Erick Lyle, "The Hunt's Donuts Story,"On the Lower Frequencies: A Secret History of the City (New York: Soft Skull Press, 2008), pp. 81-101.
José Rasaba, "Allegories of Atlas," in The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, Chapter 63.
IN-CLASS PRESENTATION OF YOUR GROUP MAPS!

For further reading/research on maps & mapping

Cristina Grasseni, "Skilled landscapes: mapping practices of locality," Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 2004, Vol. 22, pp. 699-717.
Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City, Chapter 1.
Gaza Map from You Are Not Here.
New York Times, "In Italy, Creating Worlds Takes Precision, Yes, and Politics."

Week Fifteen (April 24) - Empires & Diasporas

Readings for today

Tiffany Ruby Patterson and Robin D. G. Kelley, "Unfinished Migrations: Reflections on the African Diaspora and the Making of the Modern World," African Studies Review, Vol. 43, No. 1, Special Issue on the Diaspora (Apr., 2000), pp. 11-45.
Adria Imada “Hawaiians on Tour: Hula Circuits through the American Empire,” American Quarterly, Vol. 56, No. 1 (2004): 111-149.

Media

For further reading and research

Doreen Massey, "A Global Sense of Place."
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (excerpt)
Richa Nagar, Victoria Lawson, Linda McDowell and Susan Hanson, "Locating Globalization: Feminist (Re)readings of the Subjects and Spaces of Globalization," Economic Geography, Vol. 78, No. 3 (2002): 257-284.
Paul Gilroy, "Route Work, the Black Atlantic, and the Politics of Exile," in The Post-Colonial Question (Chapter 2).
Adria Imada, “The Army Learns to Luau: Imperial Hospitality and Military Photography in Hawai'i,” Contemporary Pacific, Vol. 20, No. 2 (2008): 329-361.
Stuart Hall, "Culture, Community, Nation," Cultural Studies, Vol. 7, No. 3, October 1993, pp. 349-363.
Stuart Hall, "Thinking the Diaspora: Home-Thoughts from Abroad," Small Axe #6, 1999, pp. 1-18.
Stuart Hall, "Whose Heritage? Un-settling 'The Heritage', Re-imagining the Post-Nation," Third Text, Vol. 13, Issue 49, Winter 1999, pp. 3-13.
Saskia Sassen, "Spatialities and Temporalities of the Global: Elements for a Theorization," Public Culture, 12.1, 2000, 215-232.
Saskia Sassen, "Globalization or denationalization?," Review of International Political Economy, Feb 2003, Vol. 10, Issue 1, pp. 1-22.
Saskia Sassen, "Local Actors in Global Politics," Current Sociology, 2004, Vol. 52, Iss. 4, pp. 649-670.
An interview with Saskia Sassen from 2000.
John Urry, "Globalising the Tourist Gaze."
Arjun Appadurai, "Grassroots Globalization and the Research Imagination," Public Culture, 12.1, 2000, pp. 1-19.

Week Sixteen (May Day) - Last day of class

PRESENTATIONS ARE TODAY! Your presentation is part of your final paper grade, so make sure you prepare something that is informative, clear, concise (5-7 min), and well-rehearsed.
FINAL PAPERS ARE DUE SATURDAY, MAY 6

BONUS READINGS - Navigating Space(s)

Readings for today:

Michel DeCerteau "Walking in the City," from The Practice of Everyday Life.
Mimi Sheller and John Urry, "The City and the Car," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Vol. 24, No. 4 (2000): 737-757.
Peter D. Norton, "Street Rivals: Jaywalking and the Invention of the Motor Age Street," Technology and Culture, Vol. 48 (April 2007): 351-358.

For further reading and research:

A quick synopsis/commentary on DeCerteau's 'Walking'.
André Gorz, "The Social Ideology of the Motorcar."
Jason Henderson, "Secessionist Automobility: Racism, Anti-Urbanism, and the Politics of Automobility in Atlanta, Georgia," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Volume 30, No. 2 (June 2006): 293–307.
Iain Borden, "A Performative Critique of American Cities."
Chris Carlsson, "Bicycling Over the Rainbow."
Cotten Seiler, "So That We As a Race Might Have Something Authentic to Travel By: African American Automobility and Cold-War Liberalism," American Quarterly (2006), pp. 1091-1117.
Naomi Klein interview with Reclaim the Streets organizer, John Jordan.
Steffen Bohm (ed), Against Automobility (a great collection of essays)
Mimi Sheller, "Automotive Emotions: Feeling the Car." Lancaster University, 2003.
The Evolution of Reclaim the Streets.
PARK(ing) Day
Zack Furness, "Critical Mass, Urban Space, and Vélomobility," Mobilities, Vol. 2, No. 2 (2007): 299-319.
More shameless self-promotion: The introduction to my book, One Less Car: Bicycling and the Politics of Automobility, Temple University Press (2010).

BONUS READINGS - (Military) Occupied Palestine

Readings for today:

Derek Gregory, "Palestine Under Siege," Antipode, Volume 36 Issue 4, 2004, Pages 601 - 606.
Edward Said, "Invention, Memory and Place," Critical Inquiry, Vol. 26, No. 2. (Winter, 2000), pp. 175-192.
Eyal Weizman, "Lethal Theory"
Sharon Rotbard, "White City, Black City"

For further reading & research:

Juan Cole, "The Unmaking of the Palestinian Nation," Salon, February 16, 2010.
Background articles organized by topic through the Electronic Intifada's website (based in Chicago!)
Stephen Graham, "Lessons in Urbicide," New Left Review #19, January-February 2003, pp. 63-77.
Rafi Segal and Eyal Weizman "Occupation in space and time," Index on Censorship, 32:3 (2003), pp. 186-193.
Edward Said, "On Palestinian Identity: A Conversation with Salman Rushdie," New Left Review, #160, November-December 1986, pp. 63-80.
Eyal Weizman,"The Architecture of Ariel Sharon," Third Text, 20:3 (2006), 337-353