Spacial Considerations
Change of Landscape: Urbanization in Early Modern English Dramas
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session I-Chun Wang
To Keith Thomas, human civilization was synonymous with the conquest of nature (25). Thomas’s statement is true since the construction of the cities and towns in human civilizations mostly suggests economic growth and the decrease of nature’s territory. Although the culmination of the cultural significance of pastoral poems is seen in England’s "Helicon," an anthology compiled by John Flasket, yet seventeenth-century England witnessed urbanization which eventually resulted in the draining of the fens, materialization of gardens, and the change of landscapes. These early modern experiences of urbanization connote an epoch of merchandization and privatization of the land and the modification of class and identity among the common people. Seventeen-century dramas represent a serious concern about the change of the landscape and subsequent concern of ethics. Quite a few of them provide not merely social criticism on the rapid changes of the community, but also identity formation that involves urbanization and the monetary and bodily desire. This paper is a study on the change of landscapes as represented in three early modern plays. The first part of the discussion refers to the concern with land as related to the peasants in the pastoral and landscape writing before the Renaissance period while the second and the third parts cover the discussion on two plays, "Sparagus Garden and the Covent Garden Weeded," by Richard Brome and "A New Way to Pay Old Debts" by Philip Massinger.
Multi-discipline, Site-specific Installation: Dead Trees
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Larry Mitnick
This collaborative installation titled "Dead Trees" will present a poem by Ken Fifer within an outdoor site-specific installation by architect/artist Larry Mitnick. Our attempt is to move poetry off the page and into a corresponding three-dimensional physical experience, to give the poem spatial presence. Words meet and intersect the environment, the installation creating “rooms” for thought. The installation will provide an entry to an existing promenade/arts walk at the Abington Art Center in Abington, Pennsylvania, which already contains several architectural and landscape elements. “Dead Trees” will provide an entrance to this established sequence of objects, landscapes, and spaces encouraging their exploration by visitors. The pedestrian Arts Walk moves along this sequence, passing sculptures followed by a passage between two berms and through a stone arch ending in a stone tower. The sequence, however, lacks a defined entrance. By combining ars and techne we attempt, as in your conference focus,"an artfulness that can only be human, in the fullness of our species being."
Socio-spatiality and the Urban Dynamic: A Critical Examination of Geographical Justice
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Colleen Kenney
With society currently in the midst of contemporary capitalism, there has become an increasingly evident socio-spatial problematic. The geography of class, gender, and race in urban settings has capitulated itself to rigid boundaries, indicating that spaces of injustice are to be separate from those of justice. It is important to note, that while the intersection of space, society, and justice may seem new to the modern inquirer, in actuality, the dialectic of socio-spatiality has always been a part of the canon of theory. Henri Lefebvre, a preeminent French Marxist philosopher and sociologist is known for his critique of the “everyday life.” Within his book, "The Production of Space," Lefebvre argues that, “The world of commodities would have no 'reality' without such [spatial] moorings or points of insertion, or without their existing as an ensemble." Which is to say, that the significance of the material world would be obliterated without the establishment and subsequent understanding of space. This paper will review Henri Lefebvre’s theory of space in relation to urbanity. Moreover, this paper will question the significance of space in creating boundaries of class, gender, and race within an urban setting. Building upon the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, this paper will explore the false consciousness of space in the urban dynamic, with the goal of understanding how space produces, imposes, and reinforces a socio-spatial problematic.
