Welcome to the Critical Geography Reading Group at UW-Milwaukee

Welcome, fellow geographers--

I'm creating a blog for us to post notes & thoughts related to the reading group. Our notes from our discussions on the readings, suggestions for further reading, comments on the reading post-discussion, etc.

My first thoughts are, following last night's discussion: what is unique, place-specific, to Milwaukee's narrative of urban decline? We discussed how part of the current narrative is, "water will save us," and how the narrative involves depictions of African American child care providers as 'cheats' and tied to 'crime families' without going into the whole economy of child care for working- and poverty-class families (http://www.jsonline.com/watchdog/watchdogreports/48010777.html). I think that reporting on infant mortality has a slightly different tenor, but mapping the city's segregated black neighborhoods as zones of high infant mortality is somewhat problematic (http://www.jsonline.com/features/health/39650287.html). We also talked about the change in racial formation with the increase in Latino population, and how African Americans are moving into the South Side as Latinos move to the suburbs. What else is part of the narrative?

And what else do we want to read?

Kristin

ps. I'm open to any suggestions regarding the format of this blog!