Welcome!

"What the world needs now: one more blog."

Welcome to Place-Sense, which I'm beginning as an experiment in January 2011. My aim with this blog is to share (with the audiences listed below) some of the things I'm interested in. I hope that at least four other people will find them interesting as well.

Here's an introduction to the blog, which I suspect will undergo changes as the blog evolves:

What will you find here?

I'm writing this blog with the following audiences in mind:

1) Students in my geography classes at UW-Milwaukee

Currently, this blog is purely optional reading. Over time, I'm hoping to build up a collection of links, commentaries, and posts that students in my classes (including Introduction to Environmental Geography, Urban Environmental Change and Social Justice, Contemporary Geographic Approaches, and a forthcoming graduate seminar on cities and the environment) may find interesting or useful.

2) Colleagues and students in geography departments, at UWM and beyond

3) Anyone else who might be interested in what I'm up to: friends, strangers, family, kids, desperate gossip columnists, etc.

While I suspect topics germane to geography will dominate here, I also intend to use this blog as a venue for posting about other things that I'm interested in, which may include (for example):

- Music
- Parenting
- Books I'm reading for fun
- Food and beverages
- Fantasy house projects
- Travel (and fantasy travel plans)
- Academic life
- Marginal political movements of the early 20th century
- Etc.

What will you not find here?

Although I'm leaving myself the flexibility to post about a wide variety of topics, there are several things you won't find here, including the following:

- Hyperpartisan political content, manifestos, etc. (I may touch on controversial topics every now and then, but it's not my intent to use this as a political rag)
- Evangelizing
- Tantalizing gossip
- "Adults-only" material
- Scathing personal attacks
- Incitements to criminal activity
- Exciting commercial offers
- Deeply personal, confessional "over-shares"
- Spoilers
- Stuff that could get me fired
- Recaps of Dora the Explorer episodes

What's with "Place-Sense"?

I may change this name at some point, but here are some of the connotations I have in mind.

First, it's meant to evoke the geographic concept of "sense of place." This concept has more than one definition, but it's generally taken to refer to the way we experience, know, interpret, and invest meaning in particular locales. (Among geographers, Yi-Fu Tuan is probably the most famous developer of the concept, but others who have discussed the idea in interesting ways include John Agnew, who characterizes it as one of three primary dimensions of place - along with location and locale - and Doreen Massey, who has theorized the "progressive sense of place.") So one of the ideas here is that my posts will in some way or another discuss my own experiences and reflections about the place known as Milwaukee (where I live), as well as other places I might physically or virtually visit.

But I called it "place-sense" instead of "sense of place," because the content won't be limited to discussions of the geographic concept of "sense of place." The name "place-sense" conjures up other images and ideas for me as well.

One would be simply "making sense of places," which is one of the main activities of geographers, whether or not they use the concept of "sense of place." For instance, many of us analyze how things or people are distributed within a particular place, and how these distributions are related to each other. Others are interested in the processes, forces, and actors that come to create and maintain particular places. Still others are interested in how places are represented, and how these representations circulate (here's an example).

Another set of connotations would be the various phrases that end in "sense," like horse sense, common sense, sixth sense, nonsense, etc. I doubt I'll discuss parapsychology, but I suspect I'll be tempted to post something nonsensical now and then.

Finally, let's face it: the terms "place" and "sense" are both so vague, with so many different meanings, that I figure I can get away with posting just about anything and saying it's somehow related to "place-sense." Maybe I'm wrong, but we'll see how it goes.

In any case, I'll leave it there for now. Welcome to Place-Sense.