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Sarah Riegel
Professor Jan Rieman
UWRT 1103
October 13, 2014
Reading Response to The Forgetting Machine
1. Create an annotation for The Forgetting Machine: Notes Toward a History of Detroit.
Write your own gist.
Herron, Jerry. The Forgetting Machine: Notes Toward a History of Detroit. Places
Journal, January 2012. Web. 14 Oct. 2014.
Jerry Herron is an English and American Studies professor at Wayne State University. He
has written two historical books and has had various publications concerning historical
subjects published in scholarly journals and newspapers. He has lived in downtown
Detroit since 1982, making his account of the city first-hand and extensive. Places
Journal is a scholarly publisher with the mission of promoting texts responding to urban
and architectural challenges. However, Places Journal also promotes bias in that it is so
concerned with ecological and social challenges of our time. The intended audience is
the general public, particularly those concerned with urban changes and challenges. This
also reveals bias in that only those who typically read Places Journal, and are therefore
aligned with the publishers mission and views, will be the ones to read this article.
Much of the city of Detroit has been abandoned for the suburbs. People have forgotten
these buildings through nostalgia and mystification, as demonstrated by photography
publications and Hudsons department store. The theory of eternal return is demonstrated
through the Michigan Theater. Automobiles drive the demolition of the city.
2. What questions arose for you as you read this piece?
What other urban areas have experienced this kind of abandonment? Have rural
communities experienced this as well, or has there been a backlash of rural immigration?
I am left with the original question Herron poses: who understands better what the place
really means: the person who tries to remember it, or the one who lets it go? Does the
changing nature of the city or its industrial past contribute more to the sense of identity its
people hold? How do the individual, specific components of place reveal culture?
3. Give three examples of the kind of sources cited within this article.
Herron cites some historical, primary source documents, such as Karl Marxs The
Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. His sources also include websites authored by
creditable people. For instance, Department Store History is authored by historian Jan
Whitaker and Michael Lisicky, owner of the largest newspaper archive of department
store news in America. Herron also cites the sources of art, primarily photographic

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documentaries or expressions of Detroits decay, he comments on in his writing. One
example of this is The Ruins of Detroit by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre.
4. Where would your research take you next after reading this article if you were pursuing
this broad idea of place? Why?
I would start with the Department Store History website, and then move on to Whitakers
and Lisickys other publications in order to find answers to the last question I posed in
part two. I would also search out other economic institutions that reflect place that could
shed light on consumer culture. I could also search for government or educational
institutions that connect place and culture.
5. Create an annotation for one of the sources on our Moodle site. Youll probably want to
choose one from your broad category (place, food, identity, culture), but you dont have
to do so.
Sow Much Good. So Much Good Inc. 2012. Web. October 12, 2014.
This website is a production of Sow Much Good, an organization committed to providing
local, fresh food to Mecklenburg Countys population in food deserts. As such, their
intended audience is the entire population of Mecklenburg County and surrounding areas.
Robin Emmons, founder and executive director of Sow Much Good, has personal
association with this mission, as do the others involved in the nonprofit. As such, all are
credible sources for the Sow Much Good Inc. and the food access challenges of parts of
Mecklenburg County. However, there is no documentation of the authors of this cite, and
so credibility cannot be certain. There is no voice of those actually at risk of hunger in
Mecklenburg County, which creates bias.
Sow Much Good is committed to providing healthy, local food at affordable prices to the
population of Mecklenburg County in food deserts. Sow Much Good has multiple
gardens and community programs to raise awareness of hunger issues in Mecklenburg
County. There are volunteering, donation, and sponsoring opportunities.