Syllabus

Syllabus: Space and Place in the Humanities

The Humanities Center, Northeastern University, July 24-August 11, 2017

(pdf version)
RP= Renaissance Park
Snell= Snell Library

Week One: Understanding Space and Place in the Humanities

Monday July 24:
  • Session One (9:00am-11:30am, 310RP): Introduction to Institute and Boston Mapping Exercise (Cresswell, Dillon, Kanouse, Cordell)
    •  Readings:
      • Reynolds, Nedra. Geographies of Writing: Inhabiting Places and Encountering Difference. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 2004.
      • Wood, Denis. “A Map Is an Image Proclaiming Its Objective Neutrality: A Response to Denil.” Cartographic Perspectives, no. 56 (2007): 4-16.
  • Group Lunch (11:30am-1:00pm, 310RP)
  • Session Two (1:30pm-3:30pm, 909RP): Introducing Space and Place (Cresswell)
    • Welcoming Remarks, from Dean Uta Poiger, Dean of the College of Social Sciences and the Humanities
    •  Readings:
      • Cresswell, Tim. Place : An Introduction. Second Edition. ed. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley, Blackwell, 2015. (chapters 1, 2 and 5).
      • Tuan, Yi-Fu. “Space and Place: Humanistic Perspective” from Philosophy in Geography. NY: Springer, 1979: 387-427.
Tuesday July 25:
  • Session Three (9:00am-11:30am, 909RP): Race & Space (Brown, Petersen-Smith)
    • Readings:
      • Cheng, Wendy and Rashad Shabazz. “Introduction: Race, Space, and Scale in the Twenty-First Century.” Occasion 8 (August 2015): 1-7.
      • Gilmore, Ruth Wilson. “Fatal Couplings of Power and Difference: Notes on Racism and Geography.” Professional Geographer 54, no. 1 (2002): 15-24.
      • Shabazz, Rashad, Spatializing Blackness: Architectures of Confinement and Black Masculinity in Chicago (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2015). (Preface, Introduction, and Chapters 2-3)
  • Field Trip One (1:30pm-3:30pm): The Black Heritage Trail
    • Location: meet at the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial on Beacon Street, across from the Massachusetts State House.
    • Closest T-Stop near location: Park Street (Green and Red Line)
    • Approximate Uber/Lyft Fare: $8-$14
  • Film One (7:00pm-9:30pm, 90 Snell):  The Prison in Twelve Landscapes. 2016. (optional)
Wednesday July 26:
  • Session Four (9:00am-11:30am, 909RP): Philosophies of Places (Janz)
    • http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~janzb/NEH1/ (see also for Session 5)
    •  Readings:
      • Heidegger, Martin. “Building Dwelling Thinking” in Poetry, Language, Thought. Translated by Albert Hofstadter. Harper and Row, 1971: 145-161.
      • Janz, Bruce. “Walls and Borders: The Range of Place.” City & Community4, no. 1 (2005): 87-94.
      • Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Pure Reason, Unified Edition, Translated by Werner Pluhar. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co. First edition: 1781. Second edition: 1789. Translation: 1996: 76-84.
      • Locke, John, “Of Simple Modes of Space” from An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
  • Workshop One (1:00pm-3:30pm, 909RP): Creating a Research Project (Cresswell, Janz)
  • Group Dinner (6:30pm-8:30pm, Franklin Park, Shattuck Picnic Grove)
    • Location: Shattuck Picnic Grove, Boston, MA 02124
    • Closest T-Stop near location: Forest Hills Station (Orange Line, ~15 minute walk away)
    • Approximate Uber/Lyft Fare: $10-$14
Thursday July 27:
  • Session Five (9:00am-11:30am, 909RP): Critical Approaches to Space and Place (Cresswell, Janz)
    • Readings:
      • Cresswell, Tim. Place: An Introduction (Chapters 3 and 6)
      • Foucault, Michel. “Questions on Geography” and “The Eye of Power” from Power Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977. NY: Pantheon Books, 1980.
      • Foucault, Michel. “Of Other Spaces” in Diacritics 16 (Spring 1986), 22-27.
      • Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991: 26-53.
      • Massey, Doreen. “A Global Sense of Place” from Space, Place, and Gender. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994, 146-156. (Chapter 6)
      • Wise, J. Macgregor. “Home: Territory and Identity.” Cultural Studies 14, no. 2 (2000): 295-310.
  • Workshop Two (1:00pm-2:00pm, 909RP): Creating a Model Syllabus 1
  • Film Two (7:00pm-9:30pm, Behrakis 10):  Robinson in Space (optional)
Friday July 28:
  • Field Trip Two (10:00am-12:30am): A GeoHumanist tour of the Museum of Fine Arts (Cresswell)
  • Consultations (1:30pm-5:30pm, 450RP): Individual and Group consultations with Project Directors and Faculty.

Week Two: Topics in Space and Place: Doing GeoHumanities

Monday July 31:
  • Session Six (9:00am-11:30am, 909RP): Writing (not mapping) space (Harding)
    • Readings:
      • Harding, Wendy. The Myth of Emptiness and the New American Literature of Place.Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2014. (Chapter 1)
      • Short selections from works of fiction and non-fiction including:
        • Childs, Craig. The Way Out: A True Story of Ruin and Survival. NewYork: Little Brown, 2004. Pages 1-6 and 35-38.
        • Harjo, Jojo. “When the World as We Knew It Ended” (poem, 2002)
        • Komunyakaa, Yusef. “Facing it” (poem, 1988)
        • Lewis, Sinclair. Main Street. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1920. (Chapter 3)
        • Lowell, Robert. “For the Union Dead” (poem, 1960)
        • Meloy, Ellen. The Last Cheater’s Waltz: Beauty and Violence in the Desert Southwest. New York: Holt, 1999. Pages 1-27.
        • Morrison, Toni. Jazz. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992. Pages 30-34.
Tuesday August 1:
  • Session Seven (9:00am-11:30am, 909RP): Roundtable Discussion of Solnit’s Savage Dreams (Brown, Cresswell, Harding)
    • Readings:
      • Solnit, Rebecca. Savage Dreams: A Journey into the Hidden Wars of the American West. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014.
  • Session Eight (6:30pm-8:00pm, Proof Gallery): Topo-poetics, exhibition reception for “Nonstop Metropolis” and a reading and discussion of Fence (Cresswell)
    • Location: Proof Gallery @ The Distillery, 516 E 2nd Street, South Boston, A 02127
    • Closest T-Stop near Location: There is no convenient T-stop near this location, but the route 9 bus runs from Boylston St opposite Clarendon St to the East Broadway @ H Street stop (take the Green Line to Copley or Arlington stations to switch to the #9)
    • Approximate Uber/Lyft Fare: $12-$18
Wednesday August 2:
  • Session Nine (9:00am-11:30am, 909RP): Place and Memory (Brown, Cresswell, Harding, Kanouse)
    • Readings:
      • Brown, Nicholas and Kanouse, Sarah. Re-collecting Black Hawk: Landscape, Memory, and Power in the American Midwest. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015 (Introduction and select image-text pairings).
      • Hayden, Delores. The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997 (Chapters 1 and 2).
      • Savoy, Lauret, Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape, Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2015. (selections)
      • Till, Karen E., “Artistic and activist memory-work: Approaching place-based practice,” Memory Studies 1, no. 1 (2008): 99–113.
  • Workshop Three (1:00pm-3:30pm, 909RP): Creating a Research Project 2 (Cresswell, Dillon, Brown)
Thursday August 3:
  • Session Ten (9:30am-11:30am, City Hall Plaza, Government Center – meet in front of City Hall): Space & Place in the Creative Humanities: Boston Coastline Future Past
    • Performative presentation by Catherine D’Ignazio and Andi Sutton, discussion moderated by Sarah Kanouse
    • Readings:
      • D’Ignazio, Catherine and Lauren F. Klein, “Feminist Data Visualization,” VIS4DH: 2016 Workshop on Visualization for the Digital Humanities
      • Kanouse, Sarah, “Critical Daytrips,” in Emily Eliza Scott and Kirsten J. Swenson, eds. Critical Landscapes, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015, 43-56.
      • Kwon, Miwon. One Place After Another: Site Specific Art and Locational Identity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004 (Chapter 1).
Friday August 4:
  • Field Trip Three (9:00am-11:30am): Guided tour of Deer Island (Brown, Cresswell)
    •  Readings:
    • Meet outside RP around 8:30am (Buses leave for Deer Island at 9am)
  • Consultations (1:30pm-5:30pm, 450RP): Individual and Group consultations with Project Directors and Faculty.

Week Three: Space, Place, and the Digital Humanities

Monday August 7:
  • Field Trip Four (9:30am-12:00pm): The Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library (Cordell, Cresswell)
    • Closest T-Stop near Location: Copley Station (Green Line) or Back Bay Station (Orange Line)
  • Workshop Four (1:00pm-3:30pm, 909RP): Geo-rectification workshop (Cordell) 
Tuesday August 8:
  • Workshop Five: (9:00am-11:30am, 909RP): Digital Tools for Mapping and Remapping Space 1: Neatline (Cordell)
  • Workshop Five (continued) and Discussion: (1:30pm-3:30pm, 909RP): Continuation of morning workshop on Neatline (Cordell); Discussion of mapping needs of varied projects (Cordell and Knowles)
Wednesday August 9:
  • Session Eleven: (9:00am-11:30am , 909RP): Empirical Mapping and Geovisualization (Knowles)
    • Readings:
      • Bodenhamer, David J., “Narrating Space and Place,” in Bodenhamer, et al., eds., Deep Maps and Spatial Narratives (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015): 7-27.
      • Cooper, David and Ian N. Gregory, “Mapping the English Lake District: A Literary GIS,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, new series, 36 (2011): 89-108.
      • Knowles, Anne Kelly, Levi Westerveld, and Laura Strom. “Inductive Visualization: A Humanistic Alternative to GIS.” GeoHumanities, 2015, 1-33.
  • Consultations: (1:30pm-3:30pm, 450RP): Individual and group consultations with Project Directors and Faculty.
Thursday August 10:
  • Session Twelve (9:00am-11:30am, 909RP): Visualization, Displacement, Imagination (Dillon, Katz)
    • Readings:
      • Dillon, Elizabeth Maddock. “Constellating the Cartouche.” Unpublished manuscript.
      • Katz, Cindi. “Bad elements: Katrina and the scoured landscape of social reproduction.” Gender, Place & Culture, 15:1 (2008): 15-29.
      • Katz, Cindi. “Trace, Memory, Erasure.” Unpublished manuscript
      • McKittrick, Katherine and Clyde Wood, “No One Knows the Mysteries at the Bottom of the Ocean,” in Black Geographies and the Politics of Place, ed. Katherine McKittrick and Clyde Wood. Cambridge, Massachusetts: South End Press, 2007. 1-13.
      • Smallwood, Stephanie E. Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2007. (Selections)
  • Workshop Six (1:00pm-5:00pm, 909RP): Presentation/workshop of participants’ projects.
Friday August 11:
  • Session Thirteen (9:00am-11:30am, 909RP): GeoHumanities Roundtable (Cresswell, Dillon, Katz, Knowles).
    • Readings:
      • Massey, Doreen. For Space. London: Sage, 2005. (Especially parts 2 and 3)
  • Workshop Seven (1:00pm-5:00pm, 909RP): Presentation/workshop of participants’ projects.
  • Closing Group Dinner (6:30pm-8:00pm)
    • Location: 5 Danforth Street, Unit B, Jamaica Plain, MA (Driveway at 99 Wyman Street)
    • Closest T-Stop near Location: Stony Brook (Orange Line)
    • Approximate Uber/Lyft Fare: $7-$12