A Pop-Up Cosmography of the New Haven Green: A Walking Workshop

Attention, people of New Haven—all you old-comers and you newcomers, you passers-through and you here-to-stay, all you fixed and wandering stars: Have you ever wanted to write your own description of the universe, starting out with the micro-landmarks that shape your every day? Have you ever wanted to use the tools of poetry, flash fiction, and micro-memoir to uncover the hidden, secret, dreamt up, half-forgotten, utopic and cataclysmic pasts-and-futures of our shared and vivid cosmos, starting with the New Haven Green? Then join us at 1:15 PM at the College Street Tent. We'll walk the Green together, notebooks in hand. Architectural historian Elihu Rubin will be our tour guide, sharing the lore and secret histories of each point of interest, and poet Joyelle McSweeney will lead a series of specially-designed writing prompts, inviting us to remember, reveal, dream or imagine what's behind, what's before, what's above, what's below, what came before, and what's coming next for each of stop along the way. At the end of our tour, we'll read our pieces in tandem, creating a symphonic, collaborative, pop-up cosmography of the New Haven Green—and thereby, of the universe itself.

Please note that this event begins at the College Street Tent.

Elihu Rubin is the Henry Hart Rice Associate Professor of Architecture and Urban Studies at Yale where he teaches urban design, architectural history, and directs the undergraduate major in Urban Studies.  Elihu is the Director of Advocacy and Planning of the Yale Urban Design Workshop, a community design center affiliated with the Yale School of Architecture.  Elihu has established a public scholarship initiative that connects students and faculty with citizens and non-profit organizations in New Haven called the Yale Urban Media Project - aka YUMP! – creating publications, websites, videos, public art, and events that address issues around architecture and urban change.  He is the author of Insuring the City: The Prudential Center and the Postwar Urban Landscape which won Best Book awards from the Urban History Association and the Society of American City and Regional Planning History.  He has a Master of City Planning and a PhD in Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley, and a BA in Ethics, Politics, and Economics from Yale.