My current research is going in a few directions.

• • In a very vague stage at this point is another book project, on critical spatial practices.  I’d like it to be collaborative, and perhaps an edited volume, but we’ll see. As a beginning, I am coordinating a roundtable discussion at the Society of Architectural Historians meeting in 2010 in Chicago, called "In Between: Histories Informed by Contemporary Art and Architecture." Here are some questions that I would like my invited discussants to address.
    
  • With Sarah Ross and Ryan Griffis, I am excited to be involved in the Regional Inquiry Studio. This effort is spearheaded by Sarah. Her first topic is the Global Rural. We traveled in late June to Beardstown, Illinois, for an initial view of the multi-lingual, multi-cultural area of rural Cass and Schuyler Counties, with scholar Faranak Miraftab. There's also a prison at Mount Sterling, as well as a prison at Jacksonville, both nearby. Beardstown has some documentation as a sundown town.
    
  • I am thinking quite a lot about "imperfect" communities. How we work with what is given, as difficult and slow as it may be. I'm reading Henri Nouwen, Maurice Blanchot, Jean-Luc Nancy and Giorgio Agamben for starters.
    

• With urban historian Wendy Plotkin, I did an interview in July of 2008 about the history of H-Urban , and other online humanities efforts, for the Digital Humanities Quarterly. It should come out soon.

• Josue Pellot , a Chicago-based artist who has done some interventions in public spaces that are both powerful and funny commentaries on identity, was kind enough to talk with me in July of 2008. Reading about the Puerto Rican community in Chicago, and Paseo Boricua in particular, has informed an article on Pellot’s work.  The Journal of Arts and Communities is going to publish it.