Urban Humanities

Original, action-oriented humanist practices for interpreting and intervening in the city: a new methodology at the intersection of the humanities, design, and urban studies. Urban humanities is an emerging field at the intersection of the humanities, urban planning, and design. It offers a new approach not only for understanding cities in a global context but for intervening in them, interpreting their histories, engaging with them in the present, and speculating about their futures. This book introduces both the theory and practice of urban humanities, tracing the evolution of the concept, presenting methods and practices with a wide range of research applications, describing changes in teaching and curricula, and offering case studies of urban humanities practices in the field. Urban humanities views the city through a lens of spatial justice, and its inquiries are centered on the microsettings of everyday life. The book's case studies report on real-world projects in mega-cities in the Pacific Rim—Tokyo, Shanghai, Mexico City, and Los Angeles—with several projects described in detail, including playful spaces for children in car-oriented Mexico City, a commons in a Tokyo neighborhood, and a rolling story-telling box to promote “literary justice” in Los Angeles.

Across humanities disciplines, public scholarship brings academics and community members and organizations together in mutually-beneficial partnership for research, teaching, and programming. While the field of publicly engaged humanities scholarship has been growing for some time, there are few volumes that have attempted to define and represent its scope. The Routledge Companion to Public Humanities Scholarship brings together wide-ranging case studies sharing perspectives on this work, grounded in its practice in the United States. The collection begins with chapters reflecting on theories and practices of public humanities scholarship. The case studies that follow are organized around six areas of particular impact in public humanities scholarship: Informing contemporary debates; amplifying community voices and histories; helping individuals and communities navigate difficult experiences; preserving culture in times of crisis and change; expanding educational access; and building and supporting public scholarship. The Companion concludes with a glossary, introducing select concepts. Taken together, these resources offer an overview for students and practitioners of public humanities scholarship, creating an accessible vocabulary rooted in the practices that have so advanced academic and community life. Although drawing on case studies from the US, these examples offer perspectives and insights relevant to public humanities around the world. This book will be of interest to anyone working within the public humanities or wanting to make their work public and engage with wider communities.

Toward an Urban Cultural Studies is a call for a new interdisciplinary area of research and teaching. Blending Urban Studies and Cultural Studies, this book grounds readers in the extensive theory of the prolific French philosopher Henri Lefebvre.

Case studies from cities on five continents demonstrate the advantages of thinking comparatively about urban environments. The global discourse around urban ecology tends to homogenize and universalize, relying on such terms as “smart cities,” “eco-cities,” and “resilience,” and proposing a “science of cities” based largely on information from the Global North. Grounding Urban Natures makes the case for the importance of place and time in understanding urban environments. Rather than imposing a unified framework on the ecology of cities, the contributors use a variety of approaches across a range of of locales and timespans to examine how urban natures are part of—and are shaped by—cities and urbanization. Grounding Urban Natures offers case studies from cities on five continents that demonstrate the advantages of thinking comparatively about urban environments. The contributors consider the diversity of urban natures, analyzing urban ecologies that range from the coastal delta of New Orleans to real estate practices of the urban poor in Lagos. They examine the effect of popular movements on the meanings of urban nature in cities including San Francisco, Delhi, and Berlin. Finally, they explore abstract urban planning models and their global mobility, examining real-world applications in such cities as Cape Town, Baltimore, and the Chinese “eco-city” Yixing. Contributors Martín Ávila, Amita Baviskar, Jia-Ching Chen, Henrik Ernstson, James Evans, Lisa M. Hoffman, Jens Lachmund, Joshua Lewis, Lindsay Sawyer, Sverker Sörlin, Anne Whiston Spirn, Lance van Sittert, Richard A. Walker

Quick Hits for Teaching with Digital Humanities: Successful Strategies from Award-Winning Teachers is an edited collection of 24 articles that aims to introduce faculty, administrators, and staff to ways in which digital techniques from the arts, humanities, and social sciences can be incorporated in the classroom. These techniques can enhance learning and professional development experiences for undergraduate and graduate students and faculty alike. This essential handbook illustrates the breadth of digital humanities across the disciplines with rich examples that bring best practices to life. Anyone who teaches at an institution of higher learning will find entry into new digital paradigms. As the authors share simple and complex ways to introduce digital humanities into the classroom, they expand understandings of what constitutes these current technologies for learning.

Public art is on the urban agenda. Given recent claims about the importance of creativity to urban prosperity, opportunities for installing or performing art in the city have multiplied. As cities strive to appear culturally dynamic, the stakes of artistic production rise higher than ever. Exploring the interaction between art and the public in Canadian cities, Urban Encounters features writing by artists, architects, curators, anthropologists, geographers, and urban studies specialists. They show how people and places affect the structure and content of public artworks, what kinds of urban spaces and socialities are generated through art, and how to investigate and interpret encounters between art and its viewers in the city. Discussing a variety of art forms, including mobile cinemas, street improvisation, audiovisual investigations, and assembled objects, the contributors treat public artworks not just as aesthetic installations, but as agents that participate in the social and cultural evolution of cities. Using original, hands-on approaches, Urban Encounters reveals how art in the urban public space generates encounters that can transform both the city itself and the ways that people relate to it. Contributors include Alison Bain (York University), Robert Bean (NSCAD University), Lawrence Bird (architect, artist), Alexandrine Boudreault-Fournier (University of Victoria), Brenden Harvey (Dalhousie University), Wes Johnston (artist, curator), Léola Le Blanc (media artist), Brian Lilley (Dalhousie University), Barbara Lounder (NSCAD University), Mary Elizabeth Luka (York University), Sebastian Matthias (HafenCityUniversity), Christof Migone (Western University), Ellen Moffat (media artist), Kim Morgan (NSCAD University), Solomon Nagler (NSCAD University), Martha Radice (Dalhousie University), Nicole Rallis (McMaster University), Susanne Shawyer (Elon University), Shannon Turner (Aarhus University), Laurent Vernet (INRS Urbanisation Culture Société), and Nick Wees (University of Victoria).

This book highlights an interdisciplinary terrain where the humanities and social sciences combine with digital methods. It argues that while disciplinary frictions still condition the potential of digital projects, the nature of the urban phenomenon pushes us toward an interdisciplinary and digital future where the primacy of cities is assured.

Layered SPURA -- Walking the neighborhood -- In practice #1: crisis and teaching -- Three words: community, collaboration, and public -- In practice #2: alternative space -- The next fifty