'Is 'This' the City of Beauty?': Facilitating Critical Student Subjectivities through a Creative Place-Based Urban Geography Workshop in Florence, Italy
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| Title: | 'Is 'This' the City of Beauty?': Facilitating Critical Student Subjectivities through a Creative Place-Based Urban Geography Workshop in Florence, Italy |
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| Language: | English |
| Authors: | Panos Bourlessas, Matteo Puttilli |
| Source: | Journal of Geography in Higher Education. 2025 49(1):18-35. |
| Availability: | Routledge. Available from: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 530 Walnut Street Suite 850, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 800-354-1420; Tel: 215-625-8900; Fax: 215-207-0050; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals |
| Peer Reviewed: | Y |
| Page Count: | 18 |
| Publication Date: | 2025 |
| Document Type: | Journal Articles Reports - Descriptive |
| Education Level: | Higher Education Postsecondary Education |
| Descriptors: | Foreign Countries, Human Geography, Urban Areas, Graduate Students, Masters Programs, Geography Instruction, Place Based Education, Alienation, Sense of Belonging, Tourism, Workshops, Films, Creative Thinking, Biographies, Critical Thinking, Affective Objectives, Attitude Change |
| Geographic Terms: | Italy |
| DOI: | 10.1080/03098265.2024.2403064 |
| ISSN: | 0309-8265 1466-1845 |
| Abstract: | The way that the relationship between university students and the city is conceptualised in geographic literature is strongly determined by the studentification debate, which risks subjectifying students in redundant and unilateral ways. This paper suggests that geographic education and its spatialities can inform this debate with an alternative subjectification, by emphasising the students' capacity to construct their own criticism on the urban phenomena that they experience. It draws empirically from a place-based workshop conducted within a master's programme at the University of Florence, which aimed at exploring the students' sense of place through creative methods. Life charts, mental maps, urban diaries and short films, analysed together with textual material, showcase the complexity of sense of place: for students, visuality and affect contribute significantly to their feeling of alienation and its expression, but at the same time become instrumental to negotiating it by seeking a sense of belonging in the touristified and spectacularized city. When approached as "revealed" and "claimed" space, the spatialities creatively produced through the films prove that geographic education is capable of fostering the shaping of students as critical subjectivities, thus restoring the problematic subjectification performed by the studentification debate. |
| Abstractor: | As Provided |
| Entry Date: | 2025 |
| Accession Number: | EJ1465888 |
| Database: | ERIC |
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| Abstract: | The way that the relationship between university students and the city is conceptualised in geographic literature is strongly determined by the studentification debate, which risks subjectifying students in redundant and unilateral ways. This paper suggests that geographic education and its spatialities can inform this debate with an alternative subjectification, by emphasising the students' capacity to construct their own criticism on the urban phenomena that they experience. It draws empirically from a place-based workshop conducted within a master's programme at the University of Florence, which aimed at exploring the students' sense of place through creative methods. Life charts, mental maps, urban diaries and short films, analysed together with textual material, showcase the complexity of sense of place: for students, visuality and affect contribute significantly to their feeling of alienation and its expression, but at the same time become instrumental to negotiating it by seeking a sense of belonging in the touristified and spectacularized city. When approached as "revealed" and "claimed" space, the spatialities creatively produced through the films prove that geographic education is capable of fostering the shaping of students as critical subjectivities, thus restoring the problematic subjectification performed by the studentification debate. |
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| ISSN: | 0309-8265 1466-1845 |
| DOI: | 10.1080/03098265.2024.2403064 |
