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So Mark and I got together (in person) twice this week, to compare his spatialized thinking process (= colored post-it notes on a large sheet of paper) w/ my much more linear form...I'm hoping he'll put up some of his rich notes-towards...in the interim, here are some of mine....

* Imagining Philadelphia: Travelers' Views of the City from 1800 to the Present looks like a great resource for us!
--as does the too-similarly named Imagining Philadelphia: Edmund Bacon and the Future of the City

* a neat project might be to assign students to look @ different newspapers,
to capture different representations of the city (what does Philly look like,
as seen by the Philadelphia Inquirer? City News, etc.?)

* the students' last foray should be taken alone

* the penultimate one might be in pairs or triplets,
w/ an intentionality re: forms of transportation-->a bus down Lancaster Avenue?
the Norristown High Speed Line --> Market/Frankford Line?
the Paoli/Thorndale line?
a car? or: what about biking the River Walk??
--thinking about the paths we make through the grid—
and then could we plot them on a grid?

* what is the city? where are its limits? will we define them?
place certain neighborhoods off-limits?

consider Bacon’s metallic orb in the middle of city hall
consider the rivers/watershed as the "first play on the grid"
(or: as play prior to the grid....?)

We played a parlor game, naming what we might be offering in this course:
1. Varieties of ways to read: not just texts/various objects
incl. images (which we can interpret on a more even footing?)
exploring the mystery of "where it was…"
street views can be read, for instance,
as pictures, as made (the contextual apparatus), as art projects
consider close reading, vs. strategies for thin reading,
zooming in or out, shifting lenses: changing it up, with different perspectives,
finding the edge—Zagar couldn’t frame his paintings/the mosaics just keep going….
(there's a new documentary re: Lily Yeh's work in the Village of Arts and Humanities)

2. Writing
our basic structure/secret hope is that each student will (repeatedly!)
have an experience, then write a thoughtful essay responding to it/
then we will stage conversations, challenging and expanding those experiences,
by placing them in play w/ essays others (in class and out) have written,
encouraging students to re-see them from point of view of their own experience,
but also from outside….
some helps here might be "The Loss of the Creature" and "Reading the World"-->
how to "trick yourself into freshness"?
rather than asking, "what do you like/not like,"
ask/answer "Where’s the heat? What do you notice? What does it stir?"
can we get to the "pre-categorical," the experiential?
it can be difficult to name what we are really curious about;
students may come "wanting to stop the verb of knowing…"
but this is never possible!  there is heat to search for...
also the "crack" in what it is we think we know...
despite being taught that we should bury anything that disagrees w/ our thesis...
can we help 'em learn to hold, simultaneously, two points of view that are not the same?

3. Talking
how to be in conflict in a conversation?
how to fight without being snarky?
how to be in productive difference?
how to build a tower?
what's the role of critical thinking? of making fun?
the importance of having multiple points of view;
see Elbow's essay on the Believing Game and the Doubting Game-->
test your perceptions/ make your own point of view untenable,
to see how strong your perspective is…

4. Reading/Writing/Talking-->
these are all forms of Seeing/Perceiving...
Acts of Perception….
travelers see what they will (from "Imagining Philadelphia")
see also Cynthia Ozick's "Shock of the Teapot"
“Visit to a Strange Planet”: what are the rules/the people like….?
shifting back and forth: making the stragne familiar, the familiar strange…
the structure of the course is dialectical…
let's be alert to that…
but not announce it ahead of time…?
being able to understand our intellectual work as an investigation…
that goes where it goes….

for sure (?) we'll do, together:
1) Live Arts Festival
2) Leger/Modernism/Metropolis @ the Art Museum (though "unpacking the Barnes could be fascinating!)
3) The Magic Garden (do we want a tour? or to wander in search of the street murals?)
4) grid of the city: City Hall and four squares?
or a square and three heights (Christ Church, City Hall and the Comcast Center)?
and then the students will do in small groups
5)
6)
and alone...
7)

each visit could be a cluster of experiences…w/ some optional…
though 30 pp., training in and out 7x, plus tickets to one/several events
could get very expensive....