Category Archives: urban studies

The Humanities Truck

How do we transform the landscape around us through stories, images, memories, and experiences? In this discussion, Professor Dan Kerr introduces an innovative project for truly mobilizing the humanities!


The Humanities Truck 

Dan Kerr, Nina Shapiro-Perl, Juliana Martinez
Wednesday April 8, 2014, 1 p.m.
Battelle-Tompkins 228

 

 

How do we mobilize the humanities, and connect with the community in ways that are innovative, uncharted, and truly on the move? Functioning as a mobile workshop, recording studio, and exhibit space, the Humanities Truck will document experiences, start conversations, and share the stories of diverse, underserved communities in the Washington, DC, region. For this lunchtime roundtable discussion, the interdisciplinary team of faculty behind this exciting project will present their first projects and aims. As an experimental mobile platform for collecting, preserving, and expanding dialogue around the humanities, the Humanities Truck will work with specific micro-communities throughout the region, in order to recognize and enhance the existing cultural creativity in communities that are typically devalued, and foster imaginative new ways of addressing community challenges in the midst of rapid urban change.

 

Update, 2018: The Humanities Truck Project began as an idea that was cultivated by one of the Humanities Lab’s very first working groups.  Today the Lab and the Truck work closely together to mobilize the humanities at American University and throughout Washington, DC.  To find out more about the current initiatives and projects related to the Humanities Truck  please visit their new website:

http://humanitiestruck.com/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Geocaching

How do we transform the landscape around us through stories, images, memories, and experiences? Join us for a lecture by David Pike on new urban geographies.


Geocaching: An Interdisciplinary Community Project

Wednesday, February 11th, 2014

12 p.m.
Battelle-Tompkins 228

 

 

 

 

For this project Professor Pike is introducing the AU community to geocaching, a collaborative project that connects physical and virtual space. Using mobile apps and maps, students from participating classes will “seed” the American University campus and other locations in the DC area with geocaches, and invite the community to find and respond to these hidden treasure troves. In addition to physical artifacts, historical materials, and clues for more interaction, geocaches will include stories, poems, and artwork, and elements that are real, imaginary, past, or lost. After the introductory lecture and workshop, follow-up events will extend this project throughout the semester— with the participation of graduate and undergraduate students and faculty from multiple departments and programs including literature, public history, world languages and cultures, art history, creative writing, arts management, college writing, film and visual media, philosophy and religion, graphic design, and computer science.

 

 


About our speaker:

 Geocachingtalk2Feb2015300x3003David Pike is a professor of literature at American University, and the author of major books in urban studies, modernism, cinema, and comparative literature.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pike_slide 3 Pike_Slide1 Pike_slide2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Responding to Homelessness in DC

In this presentation, Jay Melder discusses the challenges of responding to homelessness in DC, a city that has been radically transformed in recent years by new urban developments and changing demographics.


Responding to Homelessness in DC

Wednesday April 13, 2016, 1 pm, at 228 Battelle-Tompkins Hall

Responding to Homelessness in DC AU Slider

Jay Melder, Chief of Staff, DC Department of Human Services, discusses the challenge of homelessness for the future of DC. Our city has experienced incredible change and growth in the last decades, but still struggles with poverty, gentrification, the displacement of long-time residents, and urban homelessness. Find out more about how city agencies, organizations, and officials take on the challenges of chronic homelessness in this engaging and timely conversation.


 

About our speaker

Screen Shot 2016-03-14 at 12.40.59 PM

Jay Melder is Chief of Staff  of the District of Columbia Department of Human Services. He has served as Director of Communications and External Affairs on the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, and has also worked for the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2010-2011 he was Poet in Residence at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.  He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from American University.
Jay Melder was part of a conversation on ending homelessness aired on NBC, February 19, 2016, hosted by Aaron Gilchrist. The guests — Jan-Michael Sacharko, director of Development of New Hope Housing; Renee Pope, assistant director, Community Services, Prince George’s County Department of Social Services; and Jay Melder, chief of staff, DC Department of Human Services — offer different insights into homelessness in the Washington Metropolitan Region.

Click on the image below to view this segment.

On NBC


Find out more about these organizations:

United States Interagency Council on Homelessness

https://www.usich.gov/

District of Columbia Interagency Council on Homelessness

http://ich.dc.gov/

DC Coalition for the Homeless

http://www.dccfh.org/

 

Find out more about recent developments in how the DC City Government responds to homelessness:

“D.C. Claims Huge Progress Moving Homeless Families Into Housing”

Washington City Paper, April 10, 2015

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/housingcomplex/2015/04/10/d-c-claims-huge-progress-moving-homeless-families-into-housing/

“Mayor Bowser Releases Plan To Close D.C. General With Shelters In Each Ward”

DCist, February 9, 2016

http://dcist.com/2016/02/mayor_bowser_releases_plan_to_close.php

 

The Humanities Truck

The Humanities Truck

Collect        Reflect         Exhibit         Preserve

The Humanities Truck is a fully customized delivery truck that serves as an experimental mobile platform for collecting, exhibiting, preserving, and expanding dialogue around the humanities.  Using the truck, we seek to mobilize the humanities and democratize the sharing and production of knowledge by bringing together scholars at American University with community residents across Washington, D.C.  Together we  can collect, create, interpret, and curate stories that can return to the communities they originated from and circulate throughout the metropolitan region.

The Humanities Truck Project began as an idea that was cultivated by one of the Humanities Lab’s very first working groups.  Today the Lab and the Truck work closely together to mobilize the humanities at American University and throughout Washington, DC.

 

Find out more on the new website for this project:

http://humanitiestruck.com/