Space, Place, and American Studies

To me, American Studies is a very broad term for a diverse mix of topics that range from human sexuality to geography to arts and music to “place”-all in the context of how these things interact with one another to form the texture of American culture. It is the study of how a very dynamic culture assimilates and creates different types of people, places, ideals, values, and subcultures.

The concept of “place” is equally complex, its definition broad. While Cresswell defines place as “a meaningful location,” (Cresswell, 7), political geographer John Agnew defines it in three parts: physical location, locale, and the emotional attachment or “sense of place” that people assign to a space (Cresswell, 7). From this, I conclude that the difference between “space” and “place” is a matter of assigning emotional value to an area, be it through personalization, memories of events that have taken place there, or hope for future events to occur in that space. This closely follows Yi-Fu Tuan’s definition that “what begins as undifferentiated space becomes place as we get to know it better and endow it with value…The ideas ‘space’ and ‘place’ require each other for definition” (Cresswell, 8).

The idea of landscape in relation to place is interesting, because it is created by the different viewpoints and meanings assigned to a space by people that inhabit its surrounding place. Landscape “combines what we see with the way it can be seen” (Cresswell, 10). I think of it like this: I have never been to Venice, but when I view Joseph Mallord William Turner’s “Venice The Rialto,” I am overcome with feelings of romance, excitement, and kinship with the gondola passengers. I can feel the breeze, smell the water, and hear the paddles cutting through the canal. Obviously, these feelings are fantasy, and stem from the way Mallord sees and subsequently portrays the landscape of Venice in his work. Still, it invokes an emotional reaction to a space I have never visited; by the definition I explained earlier, this makes it a “place.” However, it is important to note that the context and meaning of this “place” can and likely would change were I to visit myself, as I would assign different meanings and develop different memories from my visit than those portrayed by Mallord in his painting. From this I conclude that the concept of “place” is also dynamic; as events occur and memories are made, so shape the definition of that particular “place,” and different places can take on different meanings to others, so the definition of a specific space likely has several different “place” distinctions.