you are here is a journal produced by the graduate students at U of Arizona.
See http://www.u.arizona.edu/~urhere/
v. worthy of support.
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Summer 2002: ?Displacement, Disorientation, & Reorientation:?
Exotic and Native; James Barilla takes in different views of Davis, California
Photographs by Miguel Luis Villarreal
Ordinary Man in Pinstripes; fiction from Lisa Selin Davis
Walter; snapshots from abroad by Jennifer Spiegel
Where is the Border? reflections from Henk van Houtum and Anke Struver
Poems from Dominic Corva and Gregory Byrd
And so much more!!!
Issues are available for $5.
send a check or money order to:
you are here, the journal of creative geography
Department of Geography
The University of Arizona
Harvill Building, Box 2
PO Box 210076
Tucson, Arizona 85721-0076
Tel. (520) 621-1652
FAX: (520) 621-2889
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Editor?s Note from Summer 2002 issue:
We are pleased to present you with this fifth issue of you are here. Last
fall, we asked for submissions responding to questions such as, how does
where we are affect who we are? What does it mean to be displaced? Disoriented?
Reoriented? What happens when we find ourselves in unfamiliar territory--be
it another country, or a stranger?s house? What impressions do we leave
on our new surroundings?
In keeping with previous themes we have suggested, we received a wide variety
of responses, not all of which relate directly to the questions we posed.
However, our policy is to not limit ourselves to a strict thematic recipe,
and in fact, half the fun of publishing this journal is the last-minute realization
that somehow all the ingredients go perfectly together, just as whoever created
the first tuna casserole must have felt.
In Ordinary Man in Pinstripes, we meet the clearly disoriented and confused
character of Kessel, who has chosen Tampa as the stadium for his place-based
mid-life crisis. As he attempts to rediscover his freedom in an anonymous
landscape of material pleasures, he realizes he has merely incarcerated himself
in a new kind of prison. But native Floridian Gregory Byrd sees what Kessel
and his ilk do not, and his poem ?Monk Parrots? evokes what every local in
a tourist destination must sometimes feel.
Jennifer Spiegel shows us snapshots from her collegiate European travels,
and somewhat wistfully reflects on how her life has evolved since those captured
moments of endless possibility, romance, and exploration. In the autobiographical
fiction In a Drowning Flash, Derek White explores what it would be like to
experience life from a different vantage point, and writes about one childhood
moment in which this altered state was achieved. On the flip side, James
Barilla takes at look at a single place, Davis, California, through the eyes
of three different characters, each of whom tells the story of how they came
there to make a new home.
Photographs by Miguel Villarreal also view similar landscapes from different
perspectives, sometimes leading us to question just exactly where we are
as we look on. Laressa Manning?s monoprints give us a bird?s eye view of
the southwestern urban landscape, revealing a stark contrast between the
clearly drawn lines of human development, and the blurry topography of the
desert.
And finally, Henk van Houtum and Anke Struver question traditional notions
of borders, asking us to blur the lines in our imagination. Dominic Corva
answers this call in his poem, which explores the borders and states within
our own consciousness.
And there you have it ? volume 4, numero uno.
While it is sometimes a challenge to keep this journal alive, with its shoestring
budget and volunteer staff, I believe it perseveres due to its merit as a
publication and the unquenchable demand for a forum of its kind (add to that
a cupful of passion, a dash of guilt). Because while we may not all consider
ourselves geographers (after all, don?t they just make maps?), place does
matter?to everyone! This is all the poor, misunderstood geographer is really
trying to illustrate, and the essays, stories, poems and images that found
their way to these pages reveal, perhaps more clearly than the latest conference
proceedings, just how universal a truth this is.
In a sense you are here is a becoming a well-established place of its own,
where, to borrow the eloquent words of founding editor Kimi Eisele, ?words
and pictures pull places off the map and re-cast them into full relief. Where
representation of space and place get personal, and landscape blurs into
memoir.? We hope you enjoy exploring it.
Jennifer Shepherd
Tucson, AZ
June, 2002, 109? F
Dr Simon Batterbury, Assistant Professor
Dept. of Geography and Regional Development
The University of Arizona
409 Harvill Building, Box #2
Tucson, AZ 85721-0076, USA
Phone: (520) 626-8054
Fax: (520) 621-2889
http://geog.arizona.edu/~web/faculty.htm
currently:
Visiting Research Fellow, Development Studies Institute, London School of
Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London, WC2A 2AE, United
Kingdom. Tel: +44 (020) 7955-7425
Fax: +44 (020) 7955-6844
from Sept:
Visiting Professor
International Development Studies/Geography
Roskilde University
Building 05.1, P.O. Box 260
DK-4000 Roskilde, Denmark
http://www.institut3.ruc.dk/iu/homepage.htm
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