Ann Marie Murnaghan | York University (original) (raw)

Historical Geographies by Ann Marie Murnaghan

In this article, we examine depictions of race, nature, and childhood in Harlan Ingersoll Smith’... more In this article, we examine depictions of race, nature,
and childhood in Harlan Ingersoll Smith’s early ethnographic films
at the National Museum of Canada. Created in the 1920s for a children’s
education programme, Smith’s films construct ethnographic
portraits of different Indigenous peoples in Western Canada. We
demonstrate how museum education appropriated Indigeneity as a
discursive resource to immerse viewing children in particular narratives
of Canadian national heritage and development. The films
worked through a complex double movement, bringing children
in the Ottawa museum audience into association with Indigenous
children based on shared experience as children while simultaneously
differentiating Indigenous peoples as Other. The films inculcated
white youth at the museum in a romanticized connection to
Canada’s prehistory through knowledge of the nation’s Indigenous
peoples as well as nature. In the films, the position of Indigeneity
within the future remained ambiguous (traditional practices sometimes
disappearing, sometimes enduring). Yet, despite Smith’s uncertainty
about colonial beliefs in the disappearance of Indigeneity,
his films nonetheless presented the teleological development of the
settler nation as certain. Our article highlights how thinking about
children, as audience for and thematic focus of these films, extends
discussions of the geographies of film, of children, and of settler colonial
nationalism.

This paper examines how adults used playgrounds to discipline children in early twentieth-century... more This paper examines how adults used playgrounds to discipline children in early twentieth-century Toronto. Using a close reading of playground texts from the period, the argument supports and elaborates upon Elisabeth Young-Bruehl’s discussion of childism and Michel Foucault’s arguments about the control of activity and the art of distributions in the discipline of children. Adult reformers used time and space in order to produce particular gender identities and also to fulfill their own narcissistic needs. The Toronto case illustrates the depth of social power that often resides in seemingly benign urban spaces and the ways in which the prejudice against children can control their micromobilities and geographies.

There are certain structures in cities that exemplify the grandiose designs of the city builders ... more There are certain structures in cities that exemplify the grandiose designs of the city builders at the turn of the twentieth century. The Prince Edward or Bloor Viaduct is one of these structures crossing Toronto’s key landform, the Don Valley, immortalized in Michael Ondaatje’s In the Skin of a Lion. Plans to build the bridge emerged as early as 1897, although the construction did not begin until 1913. The Bloor Viaduct can help us consider the progressive era by examining how discussions of nature/culture and country/city were incorporated into the discourses of its planning and construction. Technically, the bridge was an engineering feat spanning three valleys, making east-west travel in the growing city more efficient, improving the transportation of food and lumber. Symbolically, this monument highlighted the ability to overcome nature with a bridge and bring an aestheticized nature to the city. This contradiction between overcoming and improving access to nature is built into the bridge’s planning and construction history. By exploring the symbolic and material aspects of this bridge, the contradictions of nature in the process of nation building appear more striking.

In this article the author examines how gender, class, and race are important factors in the cons... more In this article the author examines how gender, class, and race are important factors in the construction of historical discourses
of nature. Using a close reading of the diary of a government official’s wife at the turn of the nineteenth century, three themes
of colonialism appear. The contradictions of rationalizing the landscape through cartography, counting nature using botany and
natural history, and romanticizing the landscape through painting and nature writing, highlight how the colonial project was
a complex weave of ideas about nature, as commodity, scientific fact, and moral instruction. By exploring the diverse media
in Elizabeth Posthuma Simcoe’s Diary – maps, paintings, and writings – a nuanced picture of an upper-class, white woman’s
role in the Upper Canadian colonial project is drawn in relief. The article explores the ways that historic discourses of nature
remain in cities and are easily (and often uncritically) incorporated in current day geographies. The author argues that the
colonial past must be thoroughly interrogated in order to understand how discourses of nature have been constructed to serve
certain interests, disguise the processes of colonialism, and reinforce certain ideas about gender and nature in the present.

Children's Geographies by Ann Marie Murnaghan

Children's Geographies, 2019

This article explores the geographies of education at the National Museum of Canada in the first ... more This article explores the geographies of education at the National Museum of Canada in the first half of the twentieth century. Through an analysis of the spatialization of children’s museum education, we highlight how the museum sought to inculcate in young Canadians knowledges about their country, its people, and natural resources. We situate children’s museum education within the broader context of Canadian nationalism, other museum activities, and public education in the capital. Focusing on the design and material organization of the museum, we highlight how the space of the museum, from the objects on display to the imposing grandeur of the building, sought to impress upon students the importance of the knowledge it conveyed. Finally, we illustrate how the museum’s programming aimed to provide children with knowledge of their national heritage, building citizenship through claims of development as destiny.

Establishing Geographies of Children and Young People, Geographies of Children and Young People, 2019

Research on play and playgrounds covers a huge swath of literature in children’s geographies. Stu... more Research on play and playgrounds covers a huge swath of literature in children’s geographies. Studies on play can be both abstract and material and range from the well-debated differentiation between work and play to the essential nature of children and childhood. Playgrounds on the other hand are concrete, historically public, spaces. Some of the earliest research in the geography of children explored the role of the playground in children’s lives, and their playful activities in the city and country. This chapter will explore theoretical and empirical research on play and playgrounds in children’s geographies. As a review of the field, this chapter will highlight the foundational and current literature on play and playgrounds, including the origins of the Playground Movement, and will integrate the literature that the student of play and playgrounds in children’s geographies should know.

This article focuses on the material and discursive constructions of nature and chil dren in the ... more This article focuses on the material and discursive constructions of nature and chil dren in the city. While dominant representations and idealizations of nature and child hood depend on the binary logic of the nature/culture and rural/urban divide, there is also a simplification and romanticization of nature in children's geographies and a lack of chil dren and their spaces in urban political ecology. We argue that children and nature in cities need to be removed from a binary model of being and attended to in more nuanced ways in urban political ecology and children's geographies. In this regard, we suggest that both nature and children in cities need to be queered. We need to ask how the production of urban spaces (re)creates particular romantic and idealized relations with natures that reify the binaries between nature/culture, and male/female through a heteronormative framework. The purpose of this article is to bring the critical nature–society theories of urban political ecology into conversation with work in children's geographies that explores the 'nature' of childhood, and in doing so queer the relationship between children and nature. Drawing on research on queer ecologies, and queered childhoods, we aim to provide a framework to rethink and queer both nature and children in cities.

The multiple dimensions of urbanity can be examined and understood through the creative agency of... more The multiple dimensions of urbanity can be examined and understood through the creative agency of children who redefine and mold cities. Despite the many barriers that children face in negotiating city spaces, particularly those in vulnerable and marginal situations, we argue that children express an active citizenship through their playful everyday lives. Framing children’s geographies within a governmentality framework, we demonstrate through two case studies that children are able to renegotiate power relationships within city spaces in exciting new ways. The multiple, layered, and textured dynamics of a city are brought into full view that often escapes rational planning exercises. By means of the case studies of New York newspaper sellers at the turn of the twentieth century and child panhandlers in Fatehpur Sikri, we argue and theorize for a new city–child-scape that is less formidable and democratically engaging. This new landscape bridges the difference through the sameness of humanity, emotion, and possibilities.

International Journal of Play, Jun 9, 2013

This article examines how a regime of knowledge was enacted on the bodies of children in Toronto... more This article examines how a regime of knowledge was enacted on the bodies of children in
Toronto playgrounds at the turn of the twentieth century. Using Foucault’s description of
biopower, or the ‘power over life’, I explore how performances of the body (visibilities)
were integral in creating citizens in a colonial context (identities). I conduct a detailed
reading of one part of Foucault’s ‘great bipolar technology’, the biopolitical regulation of
children as part of a population in order to highlight the importance of playground
discourses and applications in the construction of subjects and a future nation.

Canadian Geographer / Le Géographe canadien, 2011

Immigration Research by Ann Marie Murnaghan

Social & Cultural Geography, 2011

The emergence of a significant transnational community of immigrants from Hong Kong to Canada, an... more The emergence of a significant transnational community of immigrants from Hong Kong to Canada, and their Canadian-born children, during the 1990s can be understood through the experience of the affect of place, which gives meaning to the emotional experiences of community members. In contrast to theories that treat affect as a preconscious attribute, we treat affect as an emergent, socially constructed, and contextual capacity for individual emotional experiences in place. Affect is a discursive product of, and is produced by, the experiences of people situated in place. The affects of suburban residential communities of concentrated Hong Kong immigrants and their children in Vancouver and Toronto are expressed through a narrative of a ‘natural’ and wholesome Canadian lifestyle that is situated in spacious suburban houses that contain close-knit family relations. For these participants, the wholesome suburban lifestyle contrasts with the unwholesome, and unnatural, urban lifestyle of Hong Kong.Un « affect de lieu » nous aide à comprendre l'émergence d'une communauté transnationale importante pendant les années 1990 composée des immigrés provenant du Hong Kong au Canada ainsi que leurs enfants nés au Canada en donnant du sens aux expériences émotionnelles des membres de la communauté. Contrairement aux théories qui considèrent l'affect comme attribut préconscient, nous considérons l'affect comme capacité d'exprimer les émotions situées dans un lieu précis et qui se marque comme procès émergent, contextuel, et socialement déterminé. Les affects des communautés résidentielles de banlieue composées des immigrés originaires de Hong Kong et leurs enfants sont exprimés à travers une narrative dite « naturelle » et « bien propre » du style de vie canadien qui se situe dans les spacieuses maisons de banlieue contenant des relations familiales proches. Du point de vue de ces participants, le style de vie bien propre de la banlieue contraste avec le style de vie nuisible et malsain de Hong Kong.La emergencia de una comunidad transnacional de inmigrantes de Hong Kong a Canadá, y sus hijos nacidos de Canadá, durante los 1990s puede ser entendido a través la experiencia del afecto de lugar, del cual da sentido a las experiencias emocionales de miembros de la comunidad. A diferencia de teorías que se tratan el afecto como una capacidad emergente, socialmente construido, y contextual para experiencias emocionales en lugar. Afecto es un producto discursivo de, y está producido por, las experiencias de personas situadas en lugar. Los afectos de comunidades suburbanos de inmigrantes de Hong Kong y sus hijos en Vancouver y Toronto están expresados a través una narrativa de un estilo de vida “natural” y sano Canadiense que está situado en casa espaciosos suburbanos que contienen relaciones familiares unidas. Para estos participantes, el estilo de vida suburbano y sano está a diferencia de el estilo de vida urbano, poco natural y poco sano de Hong Kong.