Selected Readings

The readings below were selected to supplement the current FI 111/112 custom textbook, Space & Place.

Intro to Focused Inquiry

• Johnson – “Welcome”
• Forugh – “What is Focused Inquiry?“

The City

• Kimmelman – Hudson Yards is Manhattan’s Biggest, Newest, Slickest Gated Community. Is This the Neighborhood New York Deserves?
• Mondry – “Understanding Gentrification Block by Block in Detroit“
• Oliver – “Changing Appetites“
• Smith – “Initiatives Underway to Combat Richmond’s Food Deserts“
• Streever – “Inside the Heating Crisis at Richmond’s Courts“
• Williams – “Henrico Should Expand Mass Transit to Short Pump, and Here’s Why”

Defining Space & Place

• Kimmelman – “Dear Architects: Sound Matters“
• Logan – “Scents and the City“
• Solnit, Cadogan & Jelly-Schapiro – “26 Maps Reveal a New York City Hiding in Plain Sight“
• Wilkie & Roberson – “Sense of Place“

History & Memory

• American Civil War Museum – “Said and Unsaid on Monument Avenue: A Blog Series” 
• Goldhammer – “Berlin: 1963“
• Palmer & Wessler – “The Costs of the Confederacy”
• Philips – “Aliens, Archaeology, and the Atomic Bomb: A Road Trip through the Ruins of the American West“

Home

• Badger & Bui – “In 83 Million Eviction Records, a Sweeping and Intimate New Look at Housing in America”
• Sante – “Richard McGuire’s ‘Here’” (book review)

Identity

• Forrest – W.E.B. Du Bois’ Staggering Data Visualizations Are As Powerful Today As They Were in 1900
• MacLellan – “Science Confirms Rich People Don’t Really Notice You–Or Your Problems”

Travel, Border-Crossing, Migration and Colonization

• Chibber – “The ‘Berlin Walls’ That are Still Standing“
• Faris – “Homelands“
• Gjelten – “Should Immigration Require Assimilation?”
• Mieville – “Notes on Walls“
• Torbati – “Separated by Travel Ban, Iranian Families Reunite at Border Library” 
• Yahm – “The U.S.-Canada Border Runs Through This Tiny Library”

The United States

• Turner – “America’s Schools are ‘Profoundly Unequal,’ Says U.S. Civil Rights Commission“

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Other Reading Resources

• VCU’s Common Book
• VCU Library Research Guide for the Common Book
• VCU Library Research Guide for We Have Always Lived in the Castle, our 2020-2023 theme read