Category Archives: Map

Inspiration: Mapping Chicago from Below

The history of cartography is often remembered as a legacy of white men.  With “imperial eyes” (Pratt, 1992), cartographers granted power to largely northern white nation-states through borders and names with the stroke of a pen. From the age of exploration to mid-twentieth century redlining, maps have shaped people, places, histories, and our identities.  Ultimately, maps visualizeContinue reading “Inspiration: Mapping Chicago from Below”

Teaching Spotlight: Maps of American Food

I’m in the throes of organizing a course for the American Studies program at Purdue on food studies – a class exploring the connections between food, identity, and place.  Today’s visual inspirations are maps I’ve found trying to embed certain recipes within US regions and cities.  What could you add to these maps?  How would yourContinue reading “Teaching Spotlight: Maps of American Food”

Research Spotlight: Dance Moves

Having recently read Kyra Gaunt‘s essay in Generations of Youth, “The Games Black Girls Play: Learning the Ropes from Double-Dutch to Hip Hop” as part of our unit on “youth and place” in the American Studies undergraduate course I am teaching this summer, I watched clips from a 1985 PBS documentary on double dutch called BlackContinue reading “Research Spotlight: Dance Moves”

Teaching Spotlight: Mapping Transnational Toy Routes

I’m teaching an American Studies course this summer on conformity and rebellion in youth culture.  A major component of youth culture in America over the past century has been the near constant creation of new toys. An assignment for the course was an investigation of America’s toy culture, and included two parts.  Part 1 askedContinue reading “Teaching Spotlight: Mapping Transnational Toy Routes”

Inspiration: Teen Brains

I teach an online undergraduate course in American Studies at Purdue University, and today we’re reading a chapter from Julie Elman’s book Chronic Youth on teen brains.  Elman argues that even though we’ve always talked about teen behavior craziness since about the 1890s when the concept of adolescence emerges, in the 1980s and 1990s aContinue reading “Inspiration: Teen Brains”

Inspiration: Middletown Caprese Salad

Inspired by my blog post on my farm-to-table version of a caprese salad, I explored how to visualize this recipe in a number of different ways to convey a variety of ideas, including: origin, components and hierarchy, and national meaning. First, in a Slow Food tactic of connecting with food production on a personal and meaningfulContinue reading “Inspiration: Middletown Caprese Salad”

Inspiration: Dubai’s World Expo, 2020

To begin, I want to start by connecting you with my other blog, Global Food Studies, in which I unpack my exploratory research trip to the 2015 World Expo in Milan, Italy where I analyzed transnational American food studies.  In this post, I include graphics just released that visualize Dubai’s plans for its own WorldContinue reading “Inspiration: Dubai’s World Expo, 2020”