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Reflections on The Digital Image of the City: Hartford 2015

As the new semester is upon us–how did that happen so quickly?–I wanted to reflect back on my courses from last semester. I had a beautiful first semester at Trinity College, thanks mostly to those incredible faculty, staff, and students with whom I spend my days.

My senior seminar, The Digital Image of the City, which was a huge success–or so said the students on the final day, all smiley as they were on the last day (and as you can see on the image in the left)! I share a short explanation about the Community Learning Initiative course, describe the in-the-field and critical GIS research methods students used and applied, and then share their final presentations for apps, websites, or technological infrastructure to improve the City of Hartford for the common good. I also share the Trinity College Communications write-up regarding the course–thanks to them we also …

New Publication: Crossing Over into Territories of the Body (Area)

I am pleased to report that my new article in Area, “Crossing Over into Territories of the Body: Urban Territories, Borders, and Lesbian-Queer Bodies in New York City,” is available via preview! As I am unable to pay the $3k-$5k fee to make this article open access (per the Wiley-Blackwell requirement to do so), you can (legally) download a pre-print version of the article for free by clicking here are on the image to the left. Enjoy! The abstract is also below. Many thanks to Sara H. Smith and her student colleagues who brought to life the AAG 2012 sessions on bodies, borders, and territories together and this following special issue.

2015. Gieseking, J. Crossing Over into Territories of the Body: Urban Territories, Borders, and Lesbian-Queer Bodies in New York City. Area. doi: 10.1111/area.12147.

Abstract: The geopolitical focus on territory as a fixed and cohesive nation-state simultaneously conceals …

Assistant Professor Gieseking Has Arrived

I am delighted to share that I am Assistant Professor of Public Humanities in the American Studies Program at Trinity College as of yesterday. Hurrah! I will be blogging soon about how I imagine and enact public humanities in my research, and how I frame it as part of my teaching. I applied for an received a competitive Community Learning Initiative grant to support my development of “The Digital Image of the City” course at Trinity with a focus on Hartford. I will also be teaching “Conflicts & Cultures American Society: the 1980s” through the lens of gender and sexuality in that period, from the Barnard conference to AIDS, from Reagan’s cowboy past to the neutered but vibrant Saturday morning cartoon characters. I am honored and excited to be a part of the Trinity faculty and community.

I am forever thankful to my colleagues at Bowdoin College for an incredible …

Why LGBTQ People Need to Care about the Gender Pay Gap

Today is Equal Pay Day, a day I much admire because it is 1/365th of the reminder we need as a society in the US that women are paid $.78 on the $1. My research and a great deal of other research on lesbian, bisexual, and queer urban spaces indicates that the limited number and limited tenure of these spaces with ever increasing property values–such as the likes of NYC–is greatly affected if not driven by women’s lesser income.

The constant conversation about the ever closing lesbian bar is a case in point, which younger LGBTQ people do now see as linked to patterns of gentrification as well as, I suggest, financialization. Yet this isn’t anything new. Research also shows that women drink less, go out less, and socialize less outdoors. WI suggest this is not only because of predatory behaviors against women in public spaces, but also because …

Teaching the Geographic Political Economies of Ferguson

My esteemed and inspiring colleague, Kate Driscoll Derickson at UMN, sent around an email of her favorite teaching resources. There are so many of these resources out there but I thought a list with an explanation of what each of these resources affords the student or instructor was worth sharing. I found all of these sources incredibly helpful for prepping my own brief lecture on #Ferguson at Bowdoin today.
Updated 12/4/14: My equally esteemed and inspiring colleague, Josh Inwood at UTN, co-wrote an incredible political, economic, and cultural geographic analysis, “Remembering the Real Violence in Ferguson.” As Inwood and his colleagues write, “More specifically we highlight how the broader media focus on the “rioting” and “looting” in the aftermath of the police shooting deflects attention from the actually existing structures of violence that permit such killings.  This deflection is indicative of the ongoing legacies of traditional (mis)understandings of
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People, Place, and Space Reader is Top Selling Routledge Planning & Urban Design Book of 2014!

We are pleased to announce that The People, Place, and Space Reader is the bestselling Planning & Urban Design title of 2014! While we are second on this list, our editor at Routledge shared that we just moved to the #1 spot!

The People, Place, and Space Reader brings together the writings of scholars from a variety of fields to make sense of the ways we shape and inhabit our world. The included texts help us to understand the relationships between people and place at all scales, and to consider the active roles individuals, groups, and social structures play in a range of environments. These readings highlight the ways in which space and place are produced through social, political, and economic practices, and take into account differences in perception, experience, and practice. The People, Place, and Space Reader includes both classic writings and contemporary research, connecting scholarship across disciplines, periods, …

Queer(ing) New York Course Videos Now on YouTube

image-CLAGS-Syllabus-for-Queering-New-York-finalIn May 2013, I taught Queer(ing) New York (CLAGSqNY) at the Center for Lesbian and Lesbian Studies (CLAGS) at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. With over 50 in-person students and over 230 students online, the course provoked exciting conversations with students around the world about the shfiting production of and political economies within lgbtq spaces in the 20th and 21st centuries. The course was and is free and open to the public. No prior knowledge on this topic is required; only an open mind is necessary.

Now I am pleased to share that the course videos have been archived on YouTube and I am posting them below as well as on the CLAGSqNY website. While the course was held in May 2013, you can still take the course via the readings and watching the videos via the CLAGSqNY website as participation in …

Spring 2014 Reflections upon the Start of a New Semester

It’s surely the beginning of the semester at Bowdoin College this week but I am grabbing some time to reflect on the spring semester of 2014. I am starting my second year of my postdoc as a member of the Digital and Computational Studies Initiative (DCSI)–how did that wondrous year go? I share it here so that I do not forget.

Teaching Data Driven Societies with the most excellent mathematician and my dear colleague Eric Gaze was absolute bliss. In this course, we explored the possibilities, limitations, and implications of using digital and computational methods and analytics to study issues that affect our everyday lives from a social scientific approach. This course tackled a number of cutting-edge issues and questions that confront society today such as what sorts of questions can be asked and answered using digital and computational methods to rethink our relationships to data and what can …

Talk Today at EuroPride Oslo: Where Does Queer Life Go after the Gayborhood?

Today I am speaking at EuroPride in Oslo: “Where Does Queer Life Go after the Gayborhood?” If you happen to be in the land of the midnight sun, join in!

Here is the abstract and info:

Reflections from Queer Spaces in New York City, 1983-2013: Scholars, activists, and journalists have recently proclaimed the end of the radical and welcoming lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans*, and queer (lgbtq) neighborhood or “gayborhood,” both in North America and Europe. The affordable and marginal qualities of these spaces that helped to bring together diverse socioeconomic groups of lgbtq people have been eroded by global processes of intensified gentrification and the objectification of lgbtq bodies and experiences. Where does queer life go after the end of radical gayborhoods? Drawing on interviews with 47 lesbians and queer women who came out between 1983 and 2008 and archival research from that period, I trace the processes of gentrification …

Publication: Queering the Meaning of Neighborhood

Some time ago now, my chapter “Queering the Meaning of ‘Neighborhood’: Reinterpreting the Lesbian-Queer Experience of Park Slope, Brooklyn, 1983-2008” came out in Michelle Addison and Yvette Taylor’s edited volume, Queer Presences and Absences. After I recently posted about my recent chapter, “Dyked New York: The Space between Geographical Imagination and Materialization of Lesbian–Queer Bars and Neighbourhoods,” being out, I realized that I had never mentioned that my earlier chapter! Oof. I am making note of it now.

As I mentioned, I have put out four neighborhood-related chapters and articles. I also have two recent book reviews out on books examining lgbtq neighborhoods, which I include in this list below. Enjoy!

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