Meaning & Measurement Mini-Conference

William Holt — Connecticut College william.holt@yale.edu My research focuses on culture as it relates to urban and place issues. In my dissertation, Monumental Changes: Urban Images, Landscapes, and Collective Memory in the Post-Civil Rights American South, I utilized three research methods including personal interviews, focus groups, and cognitive mapping exercises. This study looks at elite and working class blacks and whites attitudes towards uses of cultural history in their urban landscapes. An essay I’ve co-authored for Contexts examines uses of photography by the New Haven Urban Renewal Agency in the 1950’s to portray a neighborhood as a “slum”. At the Emory Conference, I’m interested in discussing ways visual culture may be measured as well as combining various research methods.