cultural anthropologist || writer || professor
“This is a unique opportunity to preserve a large section of what was once a death strip. If you remove the sections, you're destroying the authenticity of this place," Guardian quotes Noir whose painted section of the wall is to be removed. "It's unbearable to see that the wall here is being so brutally torn …
Continue reading "Berlin: Protesters halt East Side Gallery demolition"
As I am preparing notes for my class' discussion of race, I am once again overwhelmed by the richness of the neighborhoods of Crown Heights and Bed-Stuy in Brooklyn as local sites for exploring how race and racism are inflected into the built environments and how much our home turfs - be they lush and …
Continue reading "Turf Wars: Race and Hipster Gentrification"
Sculpting Memory by Monica Patrice Barra ~ In his book Present Pasts Andreas Huyssen writes about a sculpture work by Colombian artist Dolores Salcedo, The Orphan’s Tunic (1997) as an example of a recent trend in cultural and artistic work he calls “memory sculptures.” Such works create a dimension of embodiment between the viewer, museum …
It's been far too long since Newark has graced the pages of this site despite its skyline gracing the banner of our homepage. Newark is a city that I adore and struggle with for so many reasons, and when I came across the city in the world of Fab.com - a site I often scan …
Continue reading "Fighting Gun Violence with Style in Newark"
In my recent adventures about New York with a collaborator from omnivorous geographies, we decided to take in the new film by Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing, "Detropia." The first thing that struck us - as several reviewers have mentioned - is the beauty of the film. Images of Detroit as well as other US …
Continue reading "“Detropia”: A look at the city of the future"
Monica Patrice Barra 