Course Syllabus

Type Course Description

IDS2935, "This Must Be The Place": Place-Based Narratives and Community Identity, fulfills the UF Quest 1 Requirement and 3 credits of the general education requirement in the Humanities. 

• Quest 1 courses address the history, key themes, principles, terminologies, theories, or methodologies of various arts and humanities disciplines that enable us to ask essential questions about the human condition. Students will learn to identify and analyze the distinctive elements of different arts and humanities disciplines, along with their biases and influences on essential questions about the human condition. These courses emphasize clear and effective analysis and evaluation of essential questions about the human condition from multiple perspectives. Students will consider the role arts and humanities play in the lives of individuals and societies and the role they might play in students’ undergraduate degree programs and lives after college.

• Humanities courses provide instruction in the history, key themes, principles, terminology, and theory or methodologies used within a humanities discipline or the humanities in general. Students will learn to identify and to analyze the key elements, biases and influences that shape thought. These courses emphasize clear and effective analysis and approach issues and problems from multiple perspectives.

  These Quest and general education objectives will be accomplished through:

• Examination of the visual, literary, and musical representations of place, identity, and narrative.
• Evaluation and analysis of analyze and evaluate critical questions of culture, place, inequities, and memory.
• Communication of concepts, expressions, and representations of the good life clearly and effectively in written and oral form as stated in the rubrics of the course.

At the end of the course, students will be expected to have achieved the following learning outcomes in content, critical thinking, communication, and connection:

• Content: Students identify, describe, and explain the history, underlying theory, and methodologies used. Students identify the ways in which individual and community identities are influenced by place and expressed through narrative.
• Critical Thinking: Students identify and analyze key elements, biases and influences that shape thought within the subject area. They approach issues and problems within the discipline from multiple perspectives. Students analyze and evaluate concepts of rootedness, belonging, identity, and place through analytical writing, theoretical application, descriptive study, art, and creativity.
• Communication: Students communicate knowledge, thoughts and reasoning clearly and effectively. Students communicate responses to essential course questions in written, graphic, and oral forms
• Connection (Unique to UF Quest): Students connect course content with critical reflection on their intellectual, personal, and professional development at UF and beyond. Students connect course content on identity, place, and narrative with their past, present, and future experiences.

Required course reading material will be made available through Canvas, or through ARES Course Reserves. Students do not need to purchase any texts for the course.

You can find the required readings by going to the weekly modules. For your convenience, a complete list of course readings and works is also provided below.

“This Must Be The Place [Naïve Melody]” The Talking Heads.

Natter, W. and J.P. Jones III, “Identity, space, and other uncertainties,” in Space and Social Theory, edited by G. Benko and U. Strohmayer (Oxford: Blackwell), pp. 140-61.

Sebba, R. 1991. "The landscapes of childhood: the reflection of childhood's environment in adult memories and in children's attitudes". Environment and Behavior, 23 (4): 395–422. 

Linde, C. 1993. Life Stories: The Creation of Coherence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Overview (p. 3-19), Chapter 2 (p. 20-50) , Conclusions (p. 219-224)

Hester, R. 2006. “Sacredness” in Design for Ecological Democracy. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. p. 117-135.

Vidal, T; Valera, S; Peró, M. 2010. "Place attachment, place identity and residential mobility in undergraduate students". Psychology, 1 (3): 291–307

Cresswell, T. 2015. “Place in a Mobile World” in Place: a short introduction. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell. p. 62-87.

Certeau, M. 1984. “Walking in the City” in The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 91 – 110.

Lynch, K. 1981. A Theory of Good City Form. Chapter 13 City Size and the Idea of Neighborhood (p. 239-250); Chapter 17 A Place Utopia (p. 293-319)

Chimamanda Adichie, "The Danger of the Single Story", TED, 7/09 found at: http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.html [18 min.]

Lake, R.W., & Zitcer, A.W. 2012. Who says? Authority, voice, and authorship in narratives of planning research. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 32(4), 389-399.

Finnegan, R. 1998. Tales of the city. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chapter 1 Story: ‘the orders by which we live our lives’ (p. 1-13); Chapter 7 Whose stories of the city? (p. 165-180).

Dedenbach, L., K. Frank, K. Larsen, T. Redden. 2020. Building the foundation for Arnstein’s ladder: community empowerment through a Participatory Neighborhood Narrative process. In Learning from Arnstein's Ladder: From Citizen Participation to Public Engagement, Eds. Lauria and Slotterback. Routledge Press: RTPI Library Series. p. 284-300.

David Newman and A. Paasi, “Fences and neighbors in the postmodern world: boundary narratives in political geography,” Progress in Human Geography, vol. 22, no. 2 (1998): 186 – 207.

Ganz, M. 2009. “Why Stories Matter: The Art and Craft of Social Change”. Sojourners, pp. 18-19.

Inman, M. 2017. The Backfire Effect. https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe Links to an external site.

Clair, R.P. 2006. Narratives in the old neighborhood: an ethnographic study of an urban neighborhood’s stories. Qualitative Inquiry, 12(6). 1244-1261

Spacks, P.M. 1982. In praise of gossip. The Hudson Review, 35(1), 19-38.

hooks, b. 2009. Belonging: a culture of place. New York: Routledge. p. 1-33.

Sandercock, L. 2000. When strangers become neighbors: managing cities of difference. Planning Theory and Practice, 1(1): 13-30.

Keen, S. 2006. A Theory of Narrative Empathy, Narrative, (14)3: 207-236.

Hayden, D. 1997. The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Chapter 1 Contested Terrain (p. 2-12); Chapter 2 The Sense of Place and Politics of Space (p.14-43).

Episode 207: Soul City. 99% Invisible Podcast.  2016.

Strain, C. 2004. Soul City, North Carolina: black power, utopia, and the African American dream, The Journal of African American History, 89(1). p. 57-74.

Buckley, J.M & Graves, D. 2016. Tangible benefits from intangible resources: Using social and cultural history to plan neighborhood futures. Journal of the American Planning Association, 82(2), 152-166.

Gates, Theaser. 2015. How to Revive a Neighborhood: with imagination, beauty, and art. TEDTalk.

Kwon, M. 2004. One Place After Another: Site Specific Art and Locational Identity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Chapter 4 From Site to Community in New Genre Public Art: The Case (p. 96-113).  

Sandercock, L. and Attili, G. 2014. Changing the lens: film as action research and therapeutic planning practice. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 34(1), 19-29.

Hamilton, T., & Curran, W. 2013. From “Five Angry Women” to “Kick-ass Community”: Gentrification and environmental activism in Brooklyn and beyond. Urban Studies, 50(8), 1557-1574.

Permentier, M., Van Ham, M., & Bolt, G. 2008. Same neighbourhood...different views? A confrontation of internal and external neighbourhood reputations. Housing Studies, 23(6), 833-855.

Goldstein, B.E., Wessells, A.T., Lejano, R., & Butler, W. (2015). Narrating resilience: Transforming urban systems through collaborative storytelling. Urban Studies, 52(7), 1285-1303.

Home: A Story of the Porter’s Community in Gainesville, FL

Umemoto, K. (2001). Walking in another’s shoes: Epistemological challenges in participatory planning. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 21(1), 17–31.