Recommended Reads from our Faculty

Each semesterly newsletter features a top three readings list recommended by a staff or faculty member. For Fall 2021, that faculty member will be adjunct professor Jonathan Bratt, M.A. (Indiana University) East Asian Studies.

1. Cities for People by Jan Gehl

   • Gehl's book is an accessible introduction to the topic of human-centered urban design, which counters planning's emphasis on automobile travel and focuses instead on creating built environments that engender qualities such as liveliness, safety, and health for the people who reside in and move through them.

2. Atmospheric Things: On the Allure of Elemental Envelopment by Derek McCormack

   • McCormack is a fascinating and creative geographer, and here he collects a series of densely written but insightful essays on his research using a deceptively simple object - the balloon - to explore topics such as mobility, politics, and knowledge making.

3. Mind and Body in Early China: Beyond Orientalism and the Myth of Holism by Edward Slingerland

   • The specific topic of Slingerland's book, early Chinese philosophy, is interesting in its own right, but what is most interesting is his pointed criticism of the way scholars have tended to do 'cross-cultural' inquiry and his alternative vision emphasizing the commonality of something shared by all: bodies and minds.

Bibliography

Gehl, Jan. 2010. Cities for People. Washington: Island Press.

McCormack, Derek. 2018. Atmospheric Things: On the Allure of Elemental Envelopment. Durham: Duke University Press.

Slingerland, Edward. 2019. Mind and Body in Early China: Beyond Orientalism and the Myth of Holism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.