This academic year is a strange beast for me. I am officially on sabbatical, a concept that non-academic types find hard to understand. Suffice to say, after a long period of testing, my department and the college have judged me worthy for tenure. Tenure is defined as"status granted to an employee, usually after a probationary period, indicating that the position or employment is permanent." In practice, popular culture has defined tenure as "you can't be fired, so now you can goof off." It is part of the whole, "ivory tower as bad cultural motif." In practically terms, after review I was awarded tenure and took the opportunity to go on sabbatical for the academic year. This means I do not teach any classes, not that I don't do any work. Since my work is kinda intellectual in nature (keep your jeering down to a low roar) outside observers don't necessarily see me breaking my back digging ditches--so to them I'm lounging in coffee shops...goofing off.
Skeptics aside, I have been pushing my particular lines of urban inquiry forward. Yeah, I'm a urban historian, so I study the city. I do so through some exotic lens (comics), but I do it through structural lens (city planning) as well. I am currently working hard at both the comic and planning lens. Comics are interesting in part because they allow me to consider basic questions about American urban history using popular culture. Comics, as I have spoken about, tell us about how U.S. citizens perceive the urban experience. My musing on this subject are freely accessible in academic and non-academic forums, so I'm not going to repeat myself here. Still, comics touch on the powerful impact of visual culture.
Visual culture also has links to city planning in my complicated mind. Recently, an article I wrote on J. Horace McFarland, a somewhat overlooked Progressive Era planning and conservation advocate was published by Pennsylvania History. McFarland is, at a very basic level, a human Swiss army knife(you groan, but you won't forget). He did so much, reformer, photographer, rosier, writer, lobbyist, speaker, proto-feminist, and the list go on and on.
As president of the American Civic Association (ACA) McFarland championed planning and conservation throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe between 1904 and 1924. I am currently working on a manuscript on Progressive Era planning in Atlanta. This research grows out of my dissertation, but it has evolved a bit because as I have continued to find information linking Atlanta to the broader debate going on in the United States about planning in the Progressive Era. McFarland is one point of intersection between Atlanta and broader world. McFarland's experience in Atlanta, similar to his experience in other cities, was to emphasize, through visual means, the consequences of rapid, unchecked urbanization. McFarland photographed cities across the United States, combined those photos into lantern slides (think powerpoint slide) and showed them to local residents. The goal was to allow the community to see the damage created by their actions and galvanize them to support reform. This kind of documentary as activism continues today. Still, we owe a debt to photographers like Jacob Riis, Lewis Hine, and McFarland for their efforts.
Recently, Rebecca Ross, made me aware of a new web based project called Picturing Place. Picturing Place is an academic research project housed primarily by two universities [U.C.L_Urban Laboratory, Bartlett School of Architecture Research Fund and Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design], both accredited by the UK Higher Education Council For England (HEFCE). The goal of the project is to critically explores the role of images and image-production in processes of urban change. The project incorporates multiple forms and images of cities. Urban renderings: maps, plans, and project descriptions are all open for inclusion. Added to that, actual depictions of the city: pictures, murals, billboards and other representation that shape our perceptions of urban space are also included. The project's goal is to encourage discussion about the role that visual languages has in the production of the built environment. I understood immediately that the problems facing reformers in Progressive Era United States fit within this project's framework. So, I went through the process to get an image from McFarland's collection included on the project. It is strangely apropos that the image I contributed to Picturing Place was taken in 1911. Now in 2011, this interdisciplinary project is bringing together scholars to create an interactive relationship between images and cities. I suspect Picturing Place will grow as the opportunity to communicate the impact of urbanization visually through the web-base platform offers opportunities to promote global discussion. I can already see other images I would like to contribute the website. If you have opportunity, you should contact them to submit images as well.
I'm thinking while on sabbatical. I'm doing as well. There is more to come on Atlanta, McFarland, visual culture, and space as it relates to the urban experience.
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