Ash, James. 2017. “Visceral Methodologies, Bodily Style and the Non-Human.” Geoforum 82:206–7. 

Ash discusses how visceral methodologies allow researchers to see how human bodies can be used as a medium to study the interaction between non-human objects and humans. This will bring into focus how we use our bodies to understand non-human objects that shape human situations and interests. He explains “comportment” is influenced by social factors like age, class, or gender. He uses vignette of a musician playing a guitar to explain the musician uses the guitar to express his emotions. My research focuses on sensory ethnography so it’s important to see what methodologies are connected to this area of study. 

Blackwell, Rebecca, Alessandra Rosa, and Elizabeth Aranda. 2021. “‘¿Nuestro Nuevo Hogar?’ [Our New Home?]: Examining Puerto Rican Migration and Conceptions of Home, Place-Making, and Belonging.” Women, Gender, and Families of Color 9(2):208–29.

Blackwell et. al conducted a qualitative research study with Puerto-Ricans who migrations to Central Florida to examine how Puerto Ricans conceptualize home and belonging. They focused on place-making and belonging in relation to emotions and migration. They first chart the cognitive and emotional aspects of the participant’s experience with migrations. They examined the five classifications of meaning-making of home— home as family, identity, pleasure, community, and plausibility. They then explore “the processed by which people build the meaning of home and the management of emotions in relation to belonging and identity”. They state that meaning behind space and place-making is interdependent to emotions and connections to community. For my research study, I am analyzing how the Highlandtown, as a community and space, is made into a home for the Latine community. This research article helps me to see that placemaking can be attached to the people who live in the spaces which create meaning within the space. 

Chawla, Devika and Ahmet Atay. 2017. “Introduction: Decolonizing Autoethnography.” Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies 18(1):3–8. 

Chawla and Atay provide examples of how to decolonize autoethnography. They explain that autoethnography, as a field, is used as a scholarly space to give BIPOC and immigrant groups voices to their own stories. Autoethnography through its practice is going against colonialism however it is impossible to be live in a world that is precolonial as the world has already been colonized. They speak of self-reflectivity for future auto ethnographers to see how to write their stories while pondering the thought of how they can be colonized and the colonizer. My research study is an autoethnography. For some of the articles, I focused on finding ways to practice autoethnography without reproducing harmful literature. 

Cresswell, T. (2009). Place. In N. Thrift, & R. Kitchen (Eds.), International Encyclopedia of Human Geography (Vol. 8, pp. 169-177). Elsevier.

Cresswell explains what is a place and how it produces meaning. Places are a combination of meanings that are practiced through the people in the place. He  states there are places that are mobile, non places, and constructed based on people. This article helps me situate my interest in seeing Highlandtown as an area that is produced by the people within the neighborhood. 

Hayes-Conroy, Allison. 2017. “Critical Visceral Methods and Methodologies Debate Title: Better than Text? Critical Reflections on the Practices of Visceral Methodologies in Human Geography.” Geoforum 82:51–52. 

Hayes-Conroy writes a critical review on visceral methods. He states visceral realm is the state/feeling of bodies in interrelation with environments/spaces. In order to not fuse the individuals and the spaces together it is important to contextualize the spaces. Time is also considered as a factor that impacts mean-making in a space. The article remind me to not conflate the Highlandtown with the people. They are two separate entities that interact with each to create meaning. 

Öztürk, Salim Aykut. 2022. “Going a Little Slower to Belong: Sensory Explorations of Time- and Place-Making Among Armenians in Contemporary Istanbul.” Narodna Umjetnost 59(2):39–59.

Öztürk conducts a sound ethnography research study to see how everyday practices like taking boats to the island display Armenians sense of identity and displays the political, economic, and physical structure of mobility (related to everyday practices). He uses his ethnographic data to explain the physical environment, sounds, and people he interacts with through taking boats to the island. He argues that the particular climatic context creates a particular context of temporality. The participants in the research study create the distinction between locals and tourists. The research addresses the political climate attached to taking a boat through what is not said during the boat rides. The article helps to see how everyday interactions like taking a boat or in my case walking through Highlandtown can provide information about the locals and space they live in. 

Pink, Sarah. 2015. “Situating Sensory Ethnography from Academia to Intervention .” Pp. 3–24 in Doing sensory ethnography. Los Angeles, Ca: Sage. 

Pink first describes what is sensory ethnography then state there is no clear way to conduct sensory ethnography. She explains ethnographies are not trying to capture the ‘truth’ but their interpretation of what they observed in their fieldwork. In the chapter, she explains the debates on what is sensory ethnography by referring Ingold and his interpretation of the cultural models. The chapter helps me to understand the academic history of sensory ethnography and the scholars in the field. I hope to review some of the scholars’ work to see if I can incorporate their form of sensory ethnography in my research study. 

Pink, Sarah. 2011. “Multimodality, Multisensoriality and Ethnographic Knowing: Social Semiotics and the Phenomenology of Perception.” Qualitative Research 11(3):261–76. 

In the article, Pink focuses on the comparison of anthropological and multimodality approaches to the sense, the relationships between images and words, and ethnography. She explains that anthropologists understand multisensoriality through modes. She states understanding multisensoriality is necessary to understand society and culture. She states two scholars Kress and Theo van Leeuwen who have differing perspectives on what is culture and how it should be understood based on the senes. One point I took from the article I will consider when conducting my auto ethnography is how some anthropologists recognize the five senses— hearing, sight, taste, smell, and touch—are Western constructs. This allows me to expand on how to interpret the environment and how I understand it. 

Sexton, Alexandra E., Allison Hayes-Conroy, Elizabeth L. Sweet, Mara Miele, and James Ash. 2017. “Better than Text? Critical Reflections on the Practices of Visceral Methodologies in Human Geography.” Geoforum 82:200–201. 

Sexton et. al states visceral is “relating to, and emerging from, bodily, emotional and effective interactions with the material and discursive environment”. For scholars who use visceral methods there is a tendency to create “‘very wordy worlds’” which drowns what the experiences mean, how it felt to be in your body as you conducted your research. I hope to describe my experiences so the reader can envision themselves in the space I researched however this article reminded that creating an environment as a new world is dangerous. I interpreted it as the reader will be lost in the world and lose sight of what the message is in the research project. 

Taylor, Diana. 2007. The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas. Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press. 

Taylor discusses how cultural memory is passed, reproduced, and shaped through performances. From the chapters 1 & 3 she explained the performances provide a snippet of the cultural values the community members want to present to the audience however the audience cannot know the community through the performances. For my research, I am looking into the space of Highlandtown and its meaning for people within the space. I want to see  how people interact with the space to produce meaning. As I read the chapters, I see interactions among people as a type of performance that expresses and produces new forms of memory. 

Tuan, Y.-F. (1975). Place: An Experiential Perspective. American Geographical Society,  65(2), 151–165. https://doi.org/http://www.jstor.org/stable/213970 

In the book, Tuan explains how space becomes a place. The people within the space constantly interact with the space to produce meaning into the space which changes into a place. The place holds meaning but it is contingent in the people within the space so it is always shifting. The interactions within the space is the experiential perspective because people in the place begin to place meaning and create a connection with the place. I will use the theory of experiential perspective to see how spaces becomes places.