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Walking the city : developing critical spatial competences through literature
Author
Chew, Angela Mary Chi Ai
Supervisor
Loh, Chin Ee
Poon, Angelia
Abstract
Despite an established ‘spatial turn’ in the humanities, relatively little attention has been paid either to the socio-spatial dimensions of literary set texts or to the systematic development of spatial competences at pre- tertiary levels. The present paper demonstrates that this is a lacuna worth filling, given the potential of judiciously selected readings to facilitate the development of spatial competences of knowledge, perception and practice among youth.
Eschewing conceptualising generalisation in favour of affective-critical engagement, this paper provides brief but thematically rich readings of possible set texts from a broad range of genres and levels of difficulty. It thus shows how Literature can promote knowledge of person- space relations and the institutional structures governing space, so provoking critical thought and responsible engagement with issues of human well-being and urban spatial justice. At the same time, pedagogies and readings are designed to ‘scout’ a network of trajectories across specified locales, illustrating the power of approaches grounded in perceptual and practical capabilities to provoke insights in immediately relevant or operationalisable forms.
With a particular focus on Singapore as a ‘new Asian City’ confronted with unique practices of aesthetic hegemony and vexed issues of identity and heritage, alongside more common problematics of speed, compression and seriality, this paper adopts a transdisciplinary approach drawing on geography, semiotics and environmental psychology in addition to the critical spatial theories of Henri Lefebvre and Michel de Certeau. A geo-semiotic reading of Singapore in §2 demonstrates the importance of developing critical spatial awareness in Singapore students, while the selection and discussion of ‘local’ texts in §4 demonstrates the possibility of achieving this through Literature teaching in age-appropriate ways. At the same time, the readings of existing foreign set texts in §3 show that culturally relevant spatial readings can often be developed even without large changes of curriculum.
The potential reach of culturally relevant spatial approaches beyond Singapore is established through the treatment of American texts in §3. More generally, this paper serves as an invitation to academics and practitioners further to explore the potential of various spatial reading lenses and pedagogies for a variety of contexts, types of students and texts in their own areas of specialism and practice.
Eschewing conceptualising generalisation in favour of affective-critical engagement, this paper provides brief but thematically rich readings of possible set texts from a broad range of genres and levels of difficulty. It thus shows how Literature can promote knowledge of person- space relations and the institutional structures governing space, so provoking critical thought and responsible engagement with issues of human well-being and urban spatial justice. At the same time, pedagogies and readings are designed to ‘scout’ a network of trajectories across specified locales, illustrating the power of approaches grounded in perceptual and practical capabilities to provoke insights in immediately relevant or operationalisable forms.
With a particular focus on Singapore as a ‘new Asian City’ confronted with unique practices of aesthetic hegemony and vexed issues of identity and heritage, alongside more common problematics of speed, compression and seriality, this paper adopts a transdisciplinary approach drawing on geography, semiotics and environmental psychology in addition to the critical spatial theories of Henri Lefebvre and Michel de Certeau. A geo-semiotic reading of Singapore in §2 demonstrates the importance of developing critical spatial awareness in Singapore students, while the selection and discussion of ‘local’ texts in §4 demonstrates the possibility of achieving this through Literature teaching in age-appropriate ways. At the same time, the readings of existing foreign set texts in §3 show that culturally relevant spatial readings can often be developed even without large changes of curriculum.
The potential reach of culturally relevant spatial approaches beyond Singapore is established through the treatment of American texts in §3. More generally, this paper serves as an invitation to academics and practitioners further to explore the potential of various spatial reading lenses and pedagogies for a variety of contexts, types of students and texts in their own areas of specialism and practice.
Date Issued
2018
Call Number
PN56.S667 Che
Date Submitted
2018