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Place Initiatives |
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Thomas Dean founded Midland Roots Regional Culture Initiative, an Iowa nonprofit organization, in 2006, and he serves as its Director. Midland Roots nurtures creative expressions of place in the Midwest by any and all, from beginning amateur to established professional. Midland Roots is founded on the following ideas: * Local and regional senses of place are fundamental to a healthy society by cultivating respectful and affectionate relationships with community and nature. *Creative expressions, in all forms, are fundamental to a sense of place. *“Place” comprises the human relationship with an interdependent web of environments - natural, built, cultural, and social. Projects have included co-sponsorship of The Second Iowa Conference on the Wild: “Live Well, Live Wild: A Community Concourse on Undomesticating and Rewilding” and “Good Placemaking in Iowa City,” a community workshop. Projects in the planning stages include a neighborhood stories project, publications, and programs. |
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Thomas Dean founded the Iowa Project on Place Studies at The University of Iowa in 2002 and serves as its Director. IPOPS fosters teaching and research in the concept of place, the interconnections between places across the globe, and local, state, and regional studies. IPOPS also engages in community partnership activities that promote place. Projects have included university and general public symposia and conferences, a statewide writing contest, and a local history program series in partnership with the Iowa City Public Library. You are invited to subscribe to an email list that announces IPOPS activities. |
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Discussion Lists |
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Thomas Dean created or co-created and edits several discussion lists related to place. The Place Studies Discussion List promotes conversation and information-sharing amongst and between those interested in teaching, learning, cultural programming, and research, scholarly, and creative activities around the idea of “place.” We take a broad view of “place” and are interested in exploring ways in which the natural, built, social, and cultural worlds (or “environments”) interact and interrelate to create “place.” To that end, we hope to bring together through this list not only individuals seeking a discussion community, but also organizations throughout the country (and across the world) that are dedicated to place, in large ways or small, and that wish to provide mutual support and shared information. These could be scholarly, educational, nonprofit, or cultural organizations focused on such areas as regional studies, environmental studies or activism, or place-based education, and they could be at any educational level or emphasis: K-12, college or university, community education, etc. To subscribe, visit http://interversity.org/lists/placestudies/subscribe.html. H-Iowa is an H-Net list whose primary mission is to foster discussion about the history and culture of the state of Iowa and, relatedly, the history and culture of the Midwest, as well as provide a forum for information exchange. To subscribe, visit http://www.h-net.org/~iowa/. H-NILAS is an H-Net list sponsored by Nature in Legend and Story (NILAS). NILAS is a group of people dedicated to understanding relationships between human beings and the natural world, through the mediation of stories, poems, legends, pictures, and other cultural products. NILAS regards interactions of people with fauna and flora as a subject that is sufficiently significant, complex, and interesting to merit the most serious attention of both poets and scholars. They view literature and the arts as inheritors of the tradition of old mythologies, which were less concerned with interpersonal relationships than with the orientation of the human race with respect to other beings. NILAS calls the writing that focuses on specific animals and plants, together with their relationship to human beings, "totemic literature." To subscribe, visit http://www.h-net.org/~nilas/. |
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