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Author Topic:   Placemaking at NASA (dissertation research)
HadleyRille
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Posts: 2
From: Albuquerque, New Mexico
Registered: Jul 2017

posted 08-24-2017 06:54 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for HadleyRille   Click Here to Email HadleyRille     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Hello collectSPACE community! I am a PhD student at the University of Oklahoma, currently working on my dissertation. My project is about the cultural process of "placemaking" in the American space program in the 1960s. NASA invested enormous amounts of money and expertise to build its ground facilities, but the creation of these sites as "space places" was a co-constructive effort between NASA, its contractors, local, regional and federal governments, historical institutions, private citizens and business owners, the local and national media and the actual physical characteristics of different NASA locations.

The project focuses on what are now known and Johnson and Kennedy Space Centers as the twin foci of national attention on the space program. I am utilizing archival records from both centers, but the heart of my project is media analysis, including NASA promotional materials, tourist materials and souvenirs, snapshot photography and NASA photographs, newspaper and magazine coverage of the space program, and film and television. I will also be including some architectural analysis and methods from the history of technology.

Many of the materials I'm hoping to use are not available in archival collections. Some are the personal collections of other researchers, and I am building my own small collection for analysis. I'm hoping to crowdsource some additional primary materials and help for my dissertation research. All I can offer in exchange is the labor of editing and publishing this material online (see below) for use by future researchers, and effusive thanks in the acknowledgements of my project. Please read the project descriptions below and consider participating! If you have any questions, please contact me at areser@ou.edu.

Space Places Map

I am creating a map of space places. By this I mean actual NASA facilities, of course, but also other places that were important to the space program of the 1960s.

You'll see in the Google map that I've marked places like the location of the old Shamrock Hilton in Houston, where the agency held an information seminar for local firms who wanted to contract with NASA to build MSC, and other events. I've also marked the locations of the various offices the agency leased before getting its permanent home in Clear Lake.

I'm interested in other places like this, that help us to see that NASA's centers are actually nodes in a much larger network of places that creates a kind of space program geography that touches much more of the country than we might otherwise realize. If you have the location of places like this, along with a couple of notes explaining its significance and/or links to more information or documents, you can add them to the map. You can also add to the annotation of places already marked on the map if you have more information.

Please pay attention to and use the categories I've already created, along with the correct color marker. Please email me before making new categories. This map will be made public as a tool for other researchers and interested folk.

NASA Centers Vacation Snapshots Collection

I would like to create a collection of vacation snapshots from Houston and the Cape. I am most interested in photos taken in the 60s and 70s, but feel free to contribute images from other periods. I can accept digital images in any file format, and I am happy to accept hard copies as well. I can scan them for you and return them. If you're interested in sending physical copies, please email me to work out the details. I'm happy to pay for the shipping both ways, including insurance for your special memories.

I'll publish the snapshot collection on Flickr, with complete attribution for each image, and any notes, metadata, and special permissions information you would like me to include. I hope this collection will become a useful and enjoyable archive of personal impressions of the space centers.

If you would like to send images, in digital or hard copy, please include the following information:

  • Your name (and whether you wish to have your name published in the Flickr collection and/or in the acknowledgements of my dissertation)
  • A return address (if sending hard copies)
  • The date each image was taken, as far as you know. Even just the year is extremely helpful.
  • Any restrictions on use you would like me to observe in publishing your photos to Flickr and/or in my dissertation project. (for example, if you would like your images to have a Creative Commons license, please include that information so I can attach it to the image)
  • A written statement of permission for me to use your images in my dissertation. Include any and all restrictions you wish for me to observe.

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