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Columbia University

On the Shores of Education: Urban Bodies, Architectural Repetitions, and the Mythic Space of End Times

Abstract

dc:description

Orienting around Plato's allegory of the cave, this dissertation looks back to earlier mythological and historical roots and forward to the spatial aesthetics of "occupation" and "No Child Left Behind," to trace the enduring connection between philosophies and practices of education and sacrificial journeys of descent and emergence. This thematic work of repetition, birth and death, is not so much knowable as it is the privileged way in which we enact and recognize knowing itself. Education, as a spatial practice and a narrative rehearsal, is a way of situating ourselves and organizing our places. Urban Education, rather than being a beleaguered branch of Education proper, cleaves to the very project of Education, emerging as it does out of cities. This is an examination of the philosophical, architectural, urban, aesthetic, and embodied conditions and strategies by which we learn to remember and forget ourselves.

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Moffett, Christopher

Subjects

dc:subject × 6

Rights

Language dc:language
English

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:academiccommons.columbia.edu:10.7916/D8T44151

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
Columbia University
Base URL
academiccommons.columbia.edu/oai
Last updated
2026-07-24
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Moffett, Christopher. On the Shores of Education: Urban Bodies, Architectural Repetitions, and the Mythic Space of End Times. 2012. https://doi.org/10.7916/D8T44151