Amy Lavender Harris's Blog
February 21, 2015
Archiving Imagining Toronto
Imagining Toronto is now an archive(d) site. Please click on Library for a detailed (and occasionally updated) list of books engaging with the city.
For information about Amy Lavender Harris’ current projects, please visit her author website at www.amylavenderharris.com .
Contact is always welcomed at alharris [at] imaginingtoronto [dot] com.
May 7, 2013
GEOG 4280, Summer 2013 Edition
The Imagining Toronto course (GEOG 4280 3.0) will be offered in the Department of Geography at York University in the Summer of 2013.
The course syllabus may be accessed here.
This term, slides, handouts and links will be distributed through York University’s Moodle interface (log-in required).
April 13, 2013
The Naked City: Film, Fiction and the Represented Urban Landscape | 2013 Willowbank Lectures
On Saturday 13 April 2013 I’ll be doing a talk called “The Naked City: Film, Fiction and the Represented Urban Landscape” as part of the 2013 Willowbank Lectures at the Willowbank Centre for Cultural Landscape in Queenston, Ontario.
The 2013 Willowbank Lectures have “Urban Dwelling” as their organizing theme, a rubric meant to convey some of the ways understandings of “heritage” are broadening to include contemporary, cultural and especially urban themes.
Beginning with a short clip of the iconic, Academy Award winning noir film The Naked City (1948), my talk will focus on imaginative representations of the lived urban landscape. Descending from the seemingly omniscient gaze of the pilot, director — and urban designer — to the lived settings of city spaces, it will engage with literary representations of particular urban spaces in order to focus on what literary scholar Sidney Bremer calls “life at street level.”
Links
The Naked City (film, 1948; opening sequence, via Youtube)
Weegee’s World: Life, Death and the Human Drama
Stephanie Snyder, “The City, Naked.” Art/Lies, Number 58.
May 17, 2012
Imagining Toronto the Wild at the Toronto Botanical Garden
I’ll be the inaugural speaker at the Toronto Botanical Garden‘s HortiCULTURE Salon Series tonight, 17 May 2012 from 7:00 to 8:30 pm.
My talk, titled “Imagining Toronto the Wild,” will explore Toronto’s culture-nature nexus. Here’s the official description:
“Crack open the concrete city and you’ll encounter landscapes shaped by ravines and buried watercourses, their contours home to creatures much more interesting than humans. Join Imagining Toronto author Amy Lavender Harris on a literary voyage into Toronto the wild.”
Some of the questions tonight’s talk will pose include: How (and where) do culture and nature intersect in the imagined city? Are raccoons our urban avatars? What underlies our ambivalence about feral cats? How serious a threat are raccoons, bears, opossums another the other ‘invaders’ who’ve made their way (back) into the city? And finally, what do imaginative representations of urban animals tell us about wildlife, ourselves and the urban spaces we share?
Recommended Reading / Viewing
Armstrong, Kelley, 2001. Bitten. Toronto: Random House Canada. [novel, set partly in Toronto, about a pack of urban werewolves.]
Cat City. Justine Pimlott/ Red Queen Productions. 2009. Documentary about feral cat populations in Toronto. [Trailer, via Youtube.]
Grady, Wayne. 1995. Toronto the Wild: Field Notes of an Urban Naturalist. Toronto : Macfarlane Walter & Ross.
Harris, Amy Lavender, 2010. Imagining Toronto. Toronto: Mansfield Press. [see especially "Ravine City," "Toronto the Wild" and "The Liminal City"]
Kuitenbrouwer, Kathryn, 2012. “Corpse.” In The Walrus. January 2012: 50-57. [short story about teeanged boys who hunt a deer in Toronto's High Park.]
MacEwen, Gwendolyn, 1985. “The Demon of Thursday.” In Noman’s Land. Toronto: Coach House. [a tragic short story about buffalo who escape from the High Park Zoo.]
Raccoon Nation. The Nature of Things with David Suzuki. 2011. Documentary about urban raccoons.
Seton, Ernest Thompson, 1989. Wild Animals I Have Known. New York: Grosset & Dunlap. See, for example, “Redruff, the Story of the Don Valley Partridge.”
York, Alyssa, 2010. Fauna. Toronto: Random House of Canada. (author’s website; Globe & Mail review)
Media Reportage of Urban Wildlife
Urban feral cat population booming (Toronto Star, 23 November 2008)
Beach coyote ‘brazen,’ dog owner warns(Toronto Star, 24 February 2009)
Fur flies over Bluffers Park cat colony(Toronto Star, 19 June 2009)
Coyote fears grow in GTA (Toronto Star, 11 November 2009)
Cats now housebound in Oakville–or owners face fine (Toronto Star, 17 January 2011).
Coyotes dining on Bluffers feral cats (Toronto Star, 8 February 2011)
‘They’re destroying my garden’ says man charged with attacking raccoons (Toronto Star, 1 June 2011)
March 30, 2012
Representing Toronto: Mapping the Role of the Artist in the City
Just a quick update to let people know I'll be contributing to an upcoming panel discussion called "Representing Toronto: Mapping the Role of the Artist in the City" at the Koffler Gallery Off-site (80 Spadina Avenue, Suite 503) on this coming Monday 2 April 2012.
The discussion, whose participants will include literary me, theatre director Jacob Zimmer, architect-turned-artist Flavio Trevisan and urbanist John Lorinc, is motivated by Trevisan's remarkable Museum of the Represented City, a "museum of the present" that uses maps and other urban artifacts to suggest alternate ways of navigating the city's cultural and cartographic history.
Here's the official event description:
How does a city form its character and unique personality? To become a livable reality, a city needs to be imagined and grow as a representation in the minds of its inhabitants. Beyond the buildings, the roads, and the landmarks, artists have a critical role in shaping the idea and identity of the city. Through their artistic practice they indirectly give form to the real physical and cultural landscape.
This panel discussion among creative urban thinkers and civically-minded creators examines the essential role of art in the city's continuous evolution. Moderated by journalist/author John Lorinc (Spacing, The Globe and Mail, The Walrus, Atlantic Cities) and featuring Amy Lavender Harris (author of Imagining Toronto), Jacob Zimmer (Director/Performer/Collaborator at Small Wooden Shoe theatre company), and artist Flavio Trevisan.
Exhibition tours will start at 6:00 pm and the panel discussion will begin at 7:00. This event, presented by the Koffler Centre of the Arts in partnership with Diaspora Dialogues, is free and open to the public. All are welcome to attend.
March 21, 2012
Week 12: Desire Lines
Lecture slides for today are available here: 2011-2012 Week 12 slides GEOG 4280 Desire Lines
March 14, 2012
Week 11: City Limits
This week in the Imagining Toronto course we'll discuss representations of suburbia, beginning with stereotypical notions of suburbs as middle-class bastions of white-flight and going on to discuss how suburbs have shaped (and been shaped by) shifting experiences of gender, race and class.
Literary works discussed will include Phyllis Brett Young's The Torontonians (1960; 2007), Hugh Garner's Death in Don Mills (1975), M.G. Vassanji's No New Land (1991), Rabindranath Maharaj's Homer in Flight (1997), David Chariandy's Soucouyant (2007) and V.V. Ganeshananthan's Love Marriage (2008), among other works.
Lecture slides for today's class are accessible here: 2011-2012 Week 11 slides Geog 4280 City Limits
Additional links:
Link: "Welcome to the Suburbs" (1950s film; Youtube)
Link: "Sin in the Suburbs" (film, 1964; via Youtube)
Link: "Subdivisions" by Rush (via Youtube)
Link: "Suburbia" by the Pet Shop Boys (via Youtube)
Link: "Lovers in a Dangerous Time" by the Barenaked Ladies (via Youtube)
Link: "Jesus of Suburbia" by Green Day (via Youtube)
Link: "Rockin' the Suburbs" by Ben Folds (via Youtube)
Link: "The Suburbs" by Arcade Fire (via Youtube)
Link: "Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)" by Arcade Fire (via Youtube)
Link: "Shaikhing Up the Hood: Suburban Placemaking in Scarborough" (Aslam Shaikh, via Youtube)
Link: "The Microcosm of Markham" (The Agenda with Steve Paikin, via Youtube)
Link: The Leona Drive Project
Link: Vertical Poverty: Rexdale (United Way, Poverty by Postal Code 2)
March 7, 2012
February 8, 2012
GEOG 4280 Week 6: The Myth of the Multicultural City Part II: The Place of Our Meeting with the Other
While politicians and ideologues declare multiculturalism at an end, people in Toronto go about our everyday lives, thrown together by collisions of culture, conflict and circumstance. This week in the Imagining Toronto course we'll explore lived experiences of multiculturalism, considering whether the language of tolerance — as a minimum standard for civility in an era of cultural conflict — helps us in our efforts to live together or figure out whether we can do so at all.
Today's class will concentrate on the conversations across culture invoked by Dionne Brand's What We All Long For (2005), Rabindranath Maharaj's The Amazing Absorbing Boy (2010) and Farzana Doctor's Six Metres of Pavement (2011).
Slides for today's class are available here: 2011-2012 Week 6 slides GEOG 4280 Myth of the Multicultural City Part II
