SPACE AND AFFECT: Feminist Geographies Project

Janet Gray - Summer 2008

GOAL:

My goal is to prepare a scholarly essay to submit to the journal Emotion, Space, and Society, which adds the study of emotion to geography.

The topic of this essay is a nineteenth-century Englishwoman's account of living and mountaineering in the Himalayas--The Indian Alps and How We Crossed Them by a Lady Pioneer by Elizabeth Sarah Mazuchelli. I have written about this book before, and a few other scholars have written about it, but I believe there's much more to say. The conceptual framework of Emotion, Space, and Society seems exactly right for a new analysis of the book. I'm especially interested in the emotional force of the book, and in Mazuchelli's relationships with two local people: a young woman she befriends and a man who leads the group of porters who carry her into the high Himalayas.

Research assistants may develop their own goals. You may find, after reading the common texts, that you wish to apply the conceptual and methodological tools you gather to a topic of your choosing, or you may wish to work more closely with Mazuchelli's text.

RESEARCH ASSISTANCE:

Research assistants can help with this project primarily by joining me in gathering a working understanding of feminist geography and of the approach taken by editors and authors for Emotion, Space, and Society. Below are common and optional readings; other titles may be added as we proceed.

COMMON READINGS

Current and past issues of Emotion, Space, and Society (online)

Davidson, Bondi & Smith, eds., Emotional Geographies

Feminist Geography in Practice: Research and Methods (Paperback)
by Pamela J. Moss (Editor)

Blunt, Alison and Gillian Rose, ed. Writing Women and Space: Colonial and
Postcolonial Geographies.

OTHER POSSIBLE READINGS

A Journal of Feminist Geography.

Rose, Gillian. Feminism and Geography: The Limits of Geographical Knowledge.

Weisman, Leslie Kanes. Discrimination by Design: A Feminist Critique of the
Man-Made Environment.

Feminisms in Geography: Rethinking Space, Place, and Knowledges (Hardcover)
by Pamela Moss (Editor), Karen Falconer Al-Hindi (Editor)

Space, Place, and Gender (Paperback) by Doreen Massey (Author)

Linda McDowell, Gender, Identity and Place: Understanding Feminist Geographies

Damosh and Seager, Putting Women in Place: Feminist Geographers Make Sense of the World

Gender, Place and Culture Journal.

Sara Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion

Ghose, The Power of the Female Gaze:Women Travellers in Colonial India

Mills, Discourses of Difference: An Analysis of Women's Travel Writing and Colonialism

Elizabeth Sarah Mazuchelli, The Indian Alps and How We Crossed Them

[travel writing critiques related to Mazuchelli's text]

Further research on 19th-century Darjeeling

BASIC RESEARCH TASKS

Research assistants will keep reading journals on the shared texts and compile their notes in response to the following questions:

1. What are the theoretical premises of feminist geography, or of the theory of emotion? What theoretical fields do these premises draw from?

2. What methodologies do feminist geographers use to gather data and conduct analysis? What methods seem to you most useful?

3. What are the most important sources that the authors refer to--other books, articles, authors? What else do you think we--or I--should read?

RESEARCH OUTCOMES

Research assistants may choose to develop their own projects in feminist geography or to collaborate more fully as a co-author in the development of the essay for Emotion, Space, and Society. You may find that the work we do corresponds richly to work you are doing in other courses, or could become the basis of a senior capstone project. Both options will remain open at the beginning of the project, to be reassessed after we have gained some familiarity with the material.