Constellations of Un-Matter(ing) & Matter(ing) Through Atlanta’s Black Spaces: Anthropological Perspectives on Housing and Relationality Restricted; Files Only

Abstract

This thesis frames the experiences of unhoused people in Atlanta and the absence of affordable housing as a crisis in need of an imaginative intervention that expands upon and addresses the issue of housing. More importantly, the thesis utilizes interdisciplinary and experimental poetic methods to expand the understanding of unhoused people’s lived experiences and approaches to better support them. This approach to the housing crisis, I argue, illuminates the social and material dimensions of housing and unhoused as informed by the place-making practices of Black women organizers within Atlanta’s unhoused community. This exploratory case study project thus asks us: How can the knowledge of place-making practices of Black women reformulate policy and public understandings of housing and unhoused people in Atlanta? 

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Introduction 

Researcher’s Positionality

Chapter 1. A Review of Scholarly Literature     

1.1 Black Feminism & Geographic Frameworks 

1.2 Blackness, Anarchy, & Matter 

1.3 Whiteness, Worlding & Relation:

1.4 Care, Galaxies & Beyond 

Chapter 2. Methodology 

Chapter 3: A History of Non-Matter(ing): The Collapse of Public Housing in Atlanta 

3.1 Destroying Public Housing in the Mid-Late 20th Century

3.2 Re-imagining Desirability: Atlanta’s 1996 Olympics

3.3 Critical Fabulation, or Re-Narrating Atlanta’s Urban Renewal History 

 Chapter 4 Non-poetic Intervention:

4.1 Octavia Butler's Earth Seed

4.2 Celeste’s Non-Poetics 

Chapter 5: Ethnographic Intervention & Planting the Seeds of Healing: 

5.1 Hidden Matter 

5.2 Health, Wellness, & Food 

5.3 White Spaces & Matter(ing)

5.4 Moments of Laughter 

5. 5 Pedagogy of Love 

Concluding Afterthoughts 

About this Honors Thesis

Rights statement

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School	Emory College
Department	Anthropology
Degree	B.A.
Submission	Honors Thesis
Language	English
Research Field	African American Studies Anthropology, Cultural Religion, General
Keyword	Care Matter Imagination
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Kristin Phillips, Emory University Yamileth Rodriguez , Emory University
Committee Members	David Nugent, Emory University

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