Tuesday, February 9th

Landscapes are palimpsests: urban, rural, or social panoramas overwrite and efface but also reveal traces of the past. This seminar engages with this layered vision from the perspectives of environmental history, queer cultural studies, and literature. We conceptualize landscape not as static but as spatially and temporally dynamic, staging a conversation across (inter)disciplines about the diverse landscapes we study and the different reading practices we deploy.

Suggested Readings:

Andrew Newman
The suggested readings present a selection from Washington Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle” (1819) as a case study, along with recent short articles from Early American Literature on “Colonialism” and “Settler Postcolonialism.” 
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Donna J. Rilling
Rilling’s suggested reading for the seminar highlights ways that spatial remaking has promoted inequality, and we will consider the article’s arguments in light of the Philadelphia case.
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Liz Montegary
Suggested readings include Juana María Rodríguez’s chapter “Who’s Your Daddy?: Queer Kinship and Perverse Domesticity” from Sexual Futures, Queer Gestures, and Other Latina Longings (NYU Press 2015). *Feel free to focus on the opening of the chapter, pages 29-41.
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