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ERIC Number: EJ1179912
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2018
Pages: 13
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0037-7996
EISSN: N/A
Engaging Geography at Every Street Corner: Using Place-Names as Critical Heuristic in Social Studies
Smith, Bryan
Social Studies, v109 n2 p112-124 2018
In this article I explore an often overlooked feature of everyday life that can serve as a powerful heuristic for students to engage history and geography critically: everyday place-names. Drawing on scholarship in critical toponymy, I explore how the city-text--the past as it is overlaid on top of the geography of the community through place-names--serves to commemorate particular histories that are often simultaneously exclusionary and taken-for-granted. Outlining three of the city-text's primary features--its unconventional narrative structure that emphasizes a worldview, its existence as a manifestation of state control over commemoration in the community, and its exclusive focus on heroism--I suggest that social studies classrooms be sites from which students critically engage the everyday city-texts of their own communities as a way of fostering critical thinking skills and commitments to historical and geographic critique.
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
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Australia
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A