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Travis Kelley
History/Theory II October 4, 2024 Sanitation Reading Response In her manifesto about maintenance as a form of art, Mierle Laderman Ukeles asserts that society privileges development systems – associated with progress and masculinity – over maintenance systems, which are associated with the domestic, often feminine-coded work of “preserv[ing] the new,” and how it “takes all…
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Feeling for the Weak Spots: Narrative Approaches to Providence’s Past
Outside the Providence Train Station with three members of the Snowtown Project Collective, walking on asphalt where there used to be water, we discussed the challenges of telling a place’s story when much of the evidence of its existence has been scrubbed from the record. Those who fall outside of the narrative of power and…
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Sanitation and Power
READINGS Ivan Illich, “The Dirt of the Cities, The Aura of Cities, The Smell of the Dead, and Utopia of an Odorless City”, in H2O and the Waters of Forgetfulness, (London: Marion Boyars, 1986). Link to book. Mierle Laderman Ukeles, “Manifesto for Maintenance Art, Proposal for an Exhibition,” (New York, 1969). Link to manifesto. Sara…
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Landscape Narratives
READINGS John McPhee, “Travels of the Rock” in The Princeton Anthology of Writing: Favorite Pieces by the Ferris/McGraw Writers at Princeton, University (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001). Link to Article. Patricia E. Rubertone., “Lippitt Hill: Homelands of the Hill and Hollows, Unholy Water, and Traditional Knowledge” in Native Providence: Memory, Community, and Survivance in the…
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Wasteland Reaction
Travis Kelley In her book, Wasteland: A History, Victoria di Palma describes how the term “wasteland” came to be. One anecdote that she relays describes the mid-17th century struggles of Gerrard Winstanley as he argued that all men had the right to work the land, and advocated for the unused lands on the outskirts of…
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Wastelands
READINGS Michael Holleran, “Filling the Providence Cove: Image in the Evolution of Urban Form” in Rhode Island History 48, no. 3 (August 1990). Link to article. Vittoria di Palma, Chapter 1 “Wasteland” in Wasteland: A History, (Yale University Press, 2014). Link to book. PROMPT Vittoria Di Palma describes the shifting use and multiple meanings of…
