Radio Mapping DTLA: Urban Humanities X MLA Experiential Session
Saturday, January 9, 2027 10:00 AM-12:30PM
RSVP ForthcomingListen, and map, DTLA in this 2.5 hour special experiential session co-hosted by the MLA and Global Urban Humanities Network (UHN), as co-producers of pilot “season” of a new radio show, The Ramble. In guided teams, participants explore DTLA in dialogue with selected texts (poetry, fiction, on-fiction), collecting recordings that emplace the text onto the city, and vice versa. Foregrounding the urban humanities method of sound scavenging, that is, sensing, interpreting and speculating urban space through creative reuse of field recordings and other forms of found sound, the session introduces MLA attendees to the interdisciplinary toolkit of the urban humanities, an approach to spatial study fusing architecture, planning and the humanities, through a field-based application of one its “fused practices” (for example, thick mapping, filmic sensing, emplaced reading, to name a few).

Initiatives + Projects

The Inaugural Global Urban Humanities (Un)Conference (Spring 2023)
Held in Tucson, the event presented attendees with an immersive three-day itinerary that featured the “micro -field studio” at Biosphere 2, the largest enclosed environment in the planet located in Oracle, Arizona, public roundtables, a salon of lightning talks, workshops and experiential site visits, musical performances, and opening and closing evening receptions at local venues throughout the city.The Global Urban Humanities (Un)Conference 2 (Fall 2025) Held in St. Louis, (Un)Conference 2 was organized in partnership with the award-winning Engaged City Initiative, jointly-run by WashU’s Center for the Humanities, Sam Fox School's Office for Socially Engaged Practice, and the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Equity. The program included: eight off-site experiential sessions and micro -workshops that traveled out into various parts of St. Louis; a kick-off evening TED-talk-style of eight lighting presentations; nine workshops for hands-on activities or discussions of pre-circulated papers; four plenary roundtables on topics such as urban sound, religion in the urban landscape, and alternative archives; a poster exhibition featuring 17 projects, a keynote from Adrienne Brown, Professor in English and Race, Diaspora and Indigeneity, and director of Arts + Public Life at the University of Chicago.Urban Humanities 2: An (Un)Volume on Place, Pedagogy, and Practice (Forthcoming 2026)
Edited byJonathan Banfill, Jacqueline Barrios, Matthew Bernstine, Jonathan Jae-an Crisman, Aaron Shkuda, Jonathan Stitelman, Gus Wendel, and Kenny H. Wong, the book’s innovative design features four contribution types: micro field studio — short interludes about the experimental methods field tested at the Biosphere 2; scholarly articles; essays — primarily of a more experimental nature, such as interviews, poetry, thought pieces and project spreads.

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