Optional Reading and Seminar with the Faculty (Friday, Feb 20, 9:30am)

The faculty will seminar with each other and any interested, available students on Edward Casey's essay, "Body, Self, and Landscape," in the Lab2 third floor fishbowl (room 3270), next Friday at 9:30am. Whether you're here or not, we encourage you to read the piece if the topic appeals to you, and to comment on it in the General Discussion Forum if you're moved to. The article is posted underneath the General Discussion Forum. Here is Matt's introduction, and his take on its usefulness for our inquiry:

This piece by Edward Casey comes from an anthology of
articles by geographers and folks interested in place in honor of Yi-Fu Tuan.
This article is very abstract and since it is written by an obsessive
philosopher, philosophical.  So it is a bit of a struggle to read, but you can
do it and the rewards of reading this piece are that it does three very
interesting things.  First, it makes a very important if controversial distinction
between place and space, arguing that they do not constitute a continuum or
modification of space by experience, but that they are rather distinct and
different realities.  Second, the bulk of the text deals with the question of how
place and self are co-constitutive, in other words that place is an essential part of self and that self is an essential part of place.  Finally, he does some very interesting things with the idea of the extension of place and places in the creation of the idea or phenomena of landscape. So if you are feeling in need of some mental exercise give this a look.      -- Matt