CopyLeft 2018 Elvin K. Wyly
Except where otherwise noted, this site is
My office is Room 132 in the Geography Building. I'm also often in the Urban Studies Commons, Room 126. And then you can find Zoom Office Hours links on the Canvas pages for my courses.
Office hours, Fall 2022: The best times to catch me are on Tuesday or Thursday mornings from 8:00 to 11:00 AM Pacific Time, either on Zoom or in person. I'll also be available most Monday mornings, from 8am to noon, on Zoom, or from noon to 3pm in person on Fridays.
I try to be available other times, but schedules are more unpredictable. Sometimes I'll be in a meeting, and other times I'll escape to dive into library archives or used bookstores or my ever-expanding collection of binders of old notes, articles, and to-do lists. If you're interested in seeing a small sample of the things that have occupied my mind lately, take a look at this, or this, this, or various items here.
But if you just happen to see me in the hall, or see me when you stop by my office or the Urban Studies Commons whenever you happen to be in the neighborhood, then ... stop me, let's chat about cities and urban life!
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On the days I venture to the University, below is my Daily Hägerstrand. Maybe we should call it the Elvinstrand. Track me down for Mobile Office Hours™, or this might help you in planning to maximize the likelihood of a Hagerstrand-style intersection in our daily schedules. [This is my pathetic substitute for FourSquare™ or Twitter®™ or iWhatevertheyCallitNow® and similar app frontiers of surveillance capitalism. Sheesh, this neoLuddite needs an intervention, doesn't they?]
If you're not familiar with the Hägerstrand references, then here's what you need to remember: he became famous for "time geography," which emphasized the fundamental importance of space and time together, and the significant role of very localized facets of the environment in shaping individual experiences and perceptions. Time-geography was deeply influential for a number of years, especially in the field of behavioral geography; its most common graphical expression was as a three-dimensional graph showing individuals' routine daily movements and activities: think of a fish-tank where the goldfish's path traces out a map from home to work over time. I never met Torsten Hagerstrand, but I was inspired by his work from my first very days in undergraduate study in geography. Roger Downs and Peter Gould worked in the behavioral tradition, and I took classes from them. Roger Miller did his doctoral dissertation applying time-geography to gender relations in the urban environment, and Roger was on my graduate committee at Minnesota. See
Roger Miller (1982). "Household Activity Patterns in Nineteenth-Century Suburbs: A Time-Geographic Exploration." Annals of the Association of American Geographers 72(3), 355-371.
The daily path is just one of many variations on a theme. You can imagine time-space graphs, and narratives, for weekly, monthly, seasonal/annual, or stage-of-life-course regularities. Or you can trace the spatial-temporal path of formative experiences over your entire career, making all sorts of sampling decisions on what to include and what to exclude. So see, for example, Peter Gould's approach in the seminar:
"One of the tried-and-true readings given quite early that first semester was Torsten Hagerstrand's delightful autobiographical essay that not only looked back to reflect on the sources of his own extraordinary geographic thinking, but that structured, over a vertical axis of time, the events, books, places, and people that had informed his professional life."
Peter Gould (2000). Becoming a Geographer. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, p. 2.
Note, for November 10, 2015. No Office Hours Today. Sorry! Here's why!
Sam Johns returns for a visit to UBC Urban Studies, July 2016
Reddit Famous!
September, 2017
Vancouver Office Hours!
'Symphony at Sunset,' Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, July 2018
Walking to Office Hours on a sunny October morning, 2018
But be careful, the 99, and indeed all TransLink buses, can be addictive!
Office Hours from Above!
Fraser River near Abbotsford and Chiliwack, looking East; photograph courtesy of Louisa-May Khoo, Ph.D. student in UBC's School of Community and Regional Planning.
Albina Gibadullina, Professor Noriko Ishiyama, Dr. Jun Kamata, and Jonas Pinzon Osorio, October 2019.
Covidized, Zoomable Office Hours
-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: Friday...!
Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2020 14:08:57 -0700
From: Elvin Wyly
To: [lots of brilliant students!]
Everyone,
I hope you are safe and well! No pressure at all, but join us if you're interested for conversations on Friday. To those new names I've added to the invitation list this time around: since the Covid-19 lockdowns began in March, a few of us have been meeting on Zoom just to talk and chat -- and, more importantly, to give those of you who are constantly teaching and mentoring me a chance to meet one another. Some of you are doing wise Master's, Doctoral, and post-Doctoral supervision on my poor little brain. Some of you are helping me write letters of recommendation by doing your brilliant work at undergrad and graduate levels. Under normal circumstances some of you would be walking down the hall in the Geography building and we'd stop and just fall into a long, rambling conversation; have I told you about the summer day several years ago when workers propped open the doors and then we wound up watching a bat fly back and forth near the ceiling of the long main hall on the first floor, and we tried to find a way to lure her out the front door? Or the squirrel that was sitting on my desk when I came into my office one day? And I'm sure you have many, many stories as well...!
Apologies in advance -- I know the time zones will be impossible for some of you, but I wanted at least to let you know I was thinking about you and your great work. And if you're interested I'd be happy to set up another chat at a time that might be better for you. In the meantime I'm struggling with writer's block through a mind-bending project with Micah (small tidbits attached) tracing the spread of conspiracy theories in the age of covid-19, building on a previous project brilliantly refined by Joe, Taz, and Christa, using a few software tricks that Albina taught us, channeling some of the theory and philosophy inspired by the brilliance of Rachel, Dustin, Louisa, Sherry, Emily, Woo-cheol ... I'm inspired by you all and miss you more than ever in our strange covidized world!
See you Friday if you're interested and not already zoomed out!
Elvin
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Elvin Wyly is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: Friday!
Time: Jun 19, 2020 03:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
https://ubc.zoom.us....
Our office is Room 132 in the Geography Building on the Musqueam Campus of the University of British Columbia. We're also often in the Urban Studies Commons, Room 126, and sometimes we might encounter one another wandering around this fascinating city!
Trevor Barnes' Geographical Writing Seminar, April 2022.
Office Hours on False Creek, May 2023
