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
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