Ashley McKenzie

McKenzie 1

Professor Jan Rieman

UWRT 1103
October 12, 2014
The Forgetting Machine Reading Response
1. Herron, Jerry. "The Forgetting Machine: A History of Detroit." Forgetting Machine: Notes
Toward a History of Detroit. Places Journal, Jan. 2012. Web. 11 Oct. 2014. Jerry Herron is
Professor of English and American Studies and Founding Dean of the Irvin D. Reid Honors
College at Wayne State University. Places Journal publishes essays, criticism, photography,
and narrative journalism about contemporary architecture, landscape, and urbanism. Detroit
is used as an example of destroying history undetected or history transformed to be included
in present day. Capturing the past and comparing to the future.
2. As I read this piece I became interested in knowing about other places experiencing this type
of rapid transformation and how far into it they have grown. Im also curious about the
feelings of the people living in Detroit and other regions decaying and how they feel about
the documenting and viewpoints of their cities.
3.
a) Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 3 (New York:
Washington Square Press, 1972), 1142.
b) Ruin Porn is a term coined, maybe, by James Griffioen. See Thomas
Morton, Something Something, Something, Detroit, VICE, August 2009. Full disclosure:
I want to note my participation in a large-format volume of photographs of Detroit. See
Julia Reyes Taubman,Detroit: 138 Square Miles (Detroit: Museum of Contemporary Art,
2011). Here I provided an introductory essay. If ruin porn has an opposite, Id say Julia
Taubmans photographs are it, many of them populated with humans, just like this
heartbreakingly representative city of mine.
c) See the website The History of Department Stores.
4. I would further explore cities that are reaching their aging point such as Detroit to see what
measures to preserve the history the inhabitants are taking. I would also search for details of
all the important history that is contained in those cities and how people react to being a part
of that history.
5. Rubin, Jon, and Dawn Weleski. "Conflict Kitchen." Conflict Kitchen. Block Club, 2014.
Web. 6 Oct. 2014. This website is intended to inform customers of the Conflict Kitchen of
their mission to provide foods from across the globe, specifically from regions in which the
USA is currently in conflict with. Conflict Kitchen allows for people to become more
involved in knowing of current global issues by bringing people together with exotic food.