OLD ITINERARY; SCRAPPED OR ON INDEFINITE HIATUS

Which, to be honest, it already was. Given, I mean, that I hadn't updated it for a couple months.

So, in the interest of ultimately getting a master's degree in teaching, here is a new itinerary connected to my Holes and Goals project for my Content Investigations class. There is some overlap with the previous itinerary.

100% official new reading itinerary:

1) The Invention of the White Race: Racial Oppression and Social Control -- Ted Allen
2) The Invention of the White Race: The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo America -- Ted Allen
3) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism -- Benedict Anderson
4) Planet of Slums -- Mike Davis
5) We are the Poors: Community Struggles in Post-Apartheid South Africa -- Ashwin Desai
6) Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream -- Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck
7) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison -- Michel Foucault
8) Lost People: Magic and the Legacy of Slavery in Madagascar -- David Graeber
9) The Death and Life of Great American Cities -- Jane Jacobs
10) The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution -- C.L.R. James
11) The Image of the City-- Kevin Lynch
12) Township Politics: Civic Struggles for a New South Africa -- Mzwanele Mayekiso
13) Dialectical Urbanism: Social Struggles in the Capitalist City -- Andrew Merrifield
14) Culture and Imperialism -- Edward Said
15) Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed -- James C. Scott
16) Gender and the Politics of History -- Joan Wallach Scott
17) The ANC Underground in South Africa, 1950-1976 -- Raymond Suttner
18) Shamanism, Colonialism and the Wild Man: A Study in Terror and Healing -- Michael Taussig
19) The Making of the English Working Class -- E.P. Thompson
20) The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces -- W. H. Whyte


Currently, I've read a few of the books on this list, and hope to continue to make plodding progress toward reading them all. The selection might seem arbitrary; why are these books different from all other books? Several of them relate to my growing interest in urban theory: an interest in how urban spaces work both from a spacial/personal perspective and a political/economic perspective. Others are about South Africa: I have not studied African history very extensively, and South Africa seemed like a good place to start. Others are classic historical works which I either have not read or could stand to be more familiar with. There are continuities (which I will elaborate on) between these books and those I read over the summer.

On another level, I generally find a broad and eclectic survey of books more fun than a focused study of a single topic. In reading such a jumble of books, intersections and commonalities inevitably emerge that would not have been immediately apparent. It is precisely these sorts of intersections that are the most intellectually rewarding.

Next Entry: "Why these books?" continued