Transfers

Scholar of mobility studies, what was your point of entry into our interdisciplinary field? Mine came relatively late, in graduate school. A course on cultural theory had supplied me with some tools to rotate the world on a different axis and see all kinds of phenomena anew. Another course, analyzing political economy, showed me how ideas shape how we work, live, and build. Inspired by these courses, all kinds of thoughts thrummed in my head as my college-town rock band hit the road for our first tour. Driving our van hundreds of miles every day across the country got me thinking: Where did this highway come from? (and, as David Byrne sang, Where does that highway go to?). Why, I wondered, did we build this machine that facilitates and compels our mobility? I returned from that summer tour with a half-baked plan for a doctoral dissertation on the ideological origins and effects of the US Interstate Highway System, a plan to which my somewhat skeptical faculty mentors ultimately agreed.

This is the second instalment of a special section exploring the pedagogies—classroom and otherwise—associated with mobilities scholarship. As we discussed in the previous introduction (Transfers 13.1/2), the collocation of mobility and pedagogy is by no means a one-way street when it comes to innovation since, in several instances, novel theories and methodologies have emerged directly out of classroom teaching rather than the other way around.¹ This dynamic was apparent in the discussions that took place at the first-ever conference dedicated to mobility pedagogy, which took place at Waterloo University, Canada, in 2018 (see Nicholson, 13.1), and is evidenced here in several articles across the two issues.² As we discussed previously, the field's reputation for innovative methodologies is often the link between research and teaching, and the variety of applications continues to grow. In this special section introduction, we have therefore taken the opportunity to reflect upon some possible new directions for mobilities and pedagogy that take account of not only topical theoretical and political debates but also the pedagogic practices that may, themselves, inspire new research and “real-world” applications. In particular, we share some reflections on the way in which the concept of mobility justice, as first advanced by Mimi Sheller in 2018, lends a new dimension to mobility pedagogies and connects with research and teaching on social justice more broadly.³

In this article, we take seriously where we teach mobilities from and why that matters. “Where from?” asks vital questions about how teaching and learning in mobilities are located in various traditions, spaces and bodies that shape knowledges co-produced in the classroom, application beyond it, and the future of the field more widely. Asking “where from?” helps identify how our mobilities pedagogies are situated and the perspectives they emphasize and those they overlook. In this article, we reflect on the creation and evolution of a mobilities course and confront its “where-ing” in four ways, exploring the disciplinary, institutional, positionality, and spatial influences on our pedagogies. We explore why these matter, strategies for negotiating them, and why asking “where from?” is key for anyone teaching mobilities.

As a pedagogical and ludic tool, the game Trayectopia¹ was designed to engage the complexities of everyday mobilities through storytelling. In this paper, we explain storytelling, games and ludic initiatives in urban planning processes, the conceptual basis for Trayectopia, and how to play the game. Trayectopia contributes to a more situated form of urban and design and planning by incorporating multiple knowledges—particularly those emerging from diverse mobility experiences—into the process. Including new stories is crucial to new forms of thinking to address complex and fast-changing urban planning challenges.Keywords

If we understand texts both as “spatial events” that take place otherwise in different spatio-temporal contexts but also as “mobile events” that activate mobilities of different kinds, how does this approach influence our teaching of literary geographies? This paper is inspired by the idea that a mobile approach to literary geography may move our pedagogical practices, mobilising creatively our didactics and activating new experimental and performative ways for teaching (with) texts. The article begins by discussing the opportunities and issues related to the teaching of literary geographies through a mobility-centred approach, inspired by mobility studies and creative pedagogies in the geohumanities. Then it discusses empirical examples of teaching activities set in the Italian contexts and imagined for “moving (with) texts” in and outside the classroom.

This article adopts an “engaged pedagogy” inspired by feminist thinking to revisit reflections concerning inquiries undertaken into mobilities that incorporate video-making. Moving from a human geographic perspective, the article focuses on several aspects developed in the course unit the author teaches on space, place, and mobility. In the proposed pedagogy, video-making allows learners to focus on mobilities as central to our understanding of contemporary social and spatial dynamics, as well as raising awareness of mobile spatial embodiments and their critical entanglement with ordinary encounters. Video-making engages students in deconstructing the inequalities that affect mobilities explicating issues of social class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and disability. In addition, it allows learners to experiment with strategies and tools that support communication on the move, which are increasingly ordinary. In conclusion, the article suggests that if a mobilities scholarship were to embrace the “engaged” pedagogic potential of video-making, this should be understood as a constituent within the wider politics of mobilities.

Emily Ruete, E. J. van Donzel, An Arabian Princess between Two Worlds: Memoirs, Letters Home, Sequels to the Memoirs: Syrian Customs and Usages (Brill, 1992), 549 pages, (€296.00)

Erich Kästner, Emil and the Detectives (Random House, 1995 [1959]), translated by Eileen Hall, p. 218, price $9.99)¹

Larissa Lai, Salt Fish Girl (Toronto: Thomas Allen Publishers, 2002), 1–269, $21.95

Sarah Howe, Loop of Jade (London: Penguin Random House, 2015), £10.00, 80pp.

Carlnita P. Greene (Ed.), Foodscapes: Food, Space, and Place in a Global Society (New York Peter Lang, 2019), 325 pages, £33.60 (paperback)

Suzanne Beech, The Geographies of International Student Mobility: Spaces Places and Decision-Making (Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 271 pp., 5 b/w illustrations, €59,49 (paperback)

As the hype cycles surrounding autonomous vehicles (AVs) continue to oscillate, it appears that the mobilities they entail are set to become more than a fleeting feature of our socio-spatial landscapes. How to understand these emerging mobilities, the range of issues they generate, and the regulatory approaches they demand? This article centers on a single incident that took place on October 2, 2023, in San Francisco, where a Cruise vehicle pinned a woman and dragged her several feet after she had been struck by a human-driven car. Examining the key facts of the case and tracing its aftermath illustrates some of the principal challenges posed by AV mobilities as well as possibilities for regulating them. The text offers four interlinked analytics as future avenues of research and policymaking surrounding autonomous mobilities: (1) rhetorical trickery, (2) new kinds of mistakes, (3) informational asymmetries, and (4) regulatory ambiguities.