Center Theme for 2003-2005: Geographies of Difference

In 2003-2005, the Center's research focuses on human difference as manifested in relationships of and movements through space. The scope of the project encompasses the core demographic processes long studied by social scientists, such as migration, population shifts, and the formation of communities as well as their attendant political, cultural, and economic formations - exile, diaspora, exchange - and particular processes of contact, from exploration to colonialism in various forms. The Center project intervenes in what is already a rich and dynamic field of inquiry by scrutinizing the dynamics, terms, and artifacts of the mapping of difference. Our understanding of difference encompasses all the categories that have emerged in recent scholarship, such as gender, sexual orientation, age, and (dis)ability. We will, however, emphasize those involving race, class, or ethnicity, as well as orders of difference that themselves employ geographical terms (Southerner, tourist, settler, nomad).

Topics that fall within the scope of the project include zones of contact and encounter, for example borders, ports, and trade routes; legal and social practices of differentiation, such as segregation, purdah, internment, apartheid, and confinement to reservations; and the structures and domains that, intentionally or not, keep populations divided: neighborhoods, ghettoes, walls, freeways, to name only a few. The broad range of representational practices that construct difference in space, from map-making to ethnography and travel writing, museum exhibitions to performances, letters to novels, including artistic work, also figure in the theme. In addition, some Center programs may examine attempts to bridge geosocial divides, whether locally, regionally, nationally, or transnationally. As always, the Center seeks to promote dialogue that extends to the theoretical and philosophical implications of its own terms of inquiry.

The Center plans on devoting two years (2003-2005) to the theme "Geographies of Difference." We anticipate that the Center's public programs in the second year of the two-year cycle will emerge from and build on discussions in the first year. For further information on Center programs, contact the Center at (414) 229-4141.

Center for 21st Century Studies

Daniel J. Sherman, Director