Spaces & Flows: Ninth International Conference on Urban and ExtraUrban Studies

Abstract

During the spring and summer 2018 two colleagues from history and philosophy teamed up to teach a class on Oxford University and the meaning of place. Participants came from the urban campus of the college, located in Brooklyn, New York City and the suburban campus out on Long Island. Throughout the spring the course took place via online readings and discussion, face-to-face meetings as well as meeting via a remote classroom (video hookup). The topic of the readings was the concept of place as well as the rich and varied history of Oxford University. During the summer the group traveled to Oxford University and spent three weeks exploring Oxford and other locations around England as an immersive experience. These plural experiential modes, online, in person, text-based, and lived encounter with a new place, offered participants an opportunity to weave connections and find distinctions about the meaning of place in their personal lives as well as the life of Oxford itself as a place flowing through time. This paper shares the collective outcomes from faculty and student reflections on how space/place shapes us and is shaped by us, centering around the Oxford experience, but also as phenomenologically lived throughout the duration of the course itself.