The concept of place is a deceptively simple idea. A place may refer to a location, a set of relationships, or an orientation. Places may be constructed as in the naming of streets or may emerge organically through shared associations and impressions, including memories, dialects, sights, sounds, and atmospheres. Place can channel the experience of the world into language or artistic expression. Yet it can also describe the material properties of land, soil, and water. In thinking about place, we must also address displacement, or the expulsion of people from a place they call home, or the movement of an idea or object into a new social context. The two terms go hand-in-hand. To create a new place—to found a nation, for example—is to displace what was there before. Both place and displacement are political terms. They ground ideas of belonging and unbelonging, and reveal how power and resistance operate in our lives.Foundations in Critical Studies introduces critical thinking skills essential to college-level work in the humanities and sciences. Students develop their critical capacities through close reading and active response to cultural texts and phenomena drawn from multiple disciplines and reflecting diverse perspectives on major themes or topics in contemporary life.

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