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Morgan Flitt
Professor Rieman
UWRT 1103
13 October 2014
Reading Response Questions for The Forgetting Machine: Notes Toward a History of
Detroit
1. Create an annotation for The Forgetting Machine: Notes Toward a
History of Detroit. Write your own gist.

Herron, Jerry. "The Forgetting Machine: A History of Detroit." Forgetting Machine:

Notes Toward a History of Detroit. N.p., Jan. 2012. Web. 11 Oct. 2014.

Author is reliable, as he is a professor of English and American Studies at a

prestigious university. The article was published on a public scholarship website, which
is backed with academic partners. It is not clear who the intended audience of the article
might be. This is a mostly opinionated article, so there are clear biases based on personal
experience but that doesnt get in the way of the delivery of content.

Detroit as a city that represents our larger tendency to forget by remembering only
specific places and only parts of the functions of those places. Detroit perfectly
encompasses the blurred line between decay and life and depicts the ways that
functionality is imposed but only to a certain extent.

2. What questions arose for you as you read this piece?

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Numerous kinds of questions arose for me as I read this piece. Often times, I
questioned mostly whether or not this was applicable in most cities around the United
States. I wondered if the history of Detroit has a huge influence in the ways that people
choose to remember it and if some cities have less of a past that might want to be
forgotten. I wondered if the people in the city, especially those who have spent their
whole lives, feel the same as the author of the article. I wondered what I might see if I
came to Detroit myself and if I would notice the decay or if I would see it as art. I
wondered if the same thing was going on in my hometown and I wondered if anything
could be done about the process. I wondered what those who want to remember feel like
when places of historic value are replaced and I wondered if holding onto those places
causes more harm than good. I also asked myself the question why does it all matter?
What do places like these tell us about our own human condition? I wondered if these
places act as mirrors and if they do, should we be changing that reflection.

3. Give three examples of the kind of sources cited within this article.

Books, magazine, and photographs

4. Where would your research take you next after reading this article if you
were pursuing this broad idea of place? Why?

I think that if I were pursuing the idea of place, I might next look into the ways that
Gastonia, my hometown, is experiencing the same things as Detroit. Gastonia has a rich
history that is mostly reflected in the downtown. But in many ways, like Detroit, the
downtown is the least appealing component of the city as it is destitute and rundown.

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There are people throughout Gastonia who want to renovate completely and others who
want to preserve the history that destitution conveys, so it has caused quite a debate.
Other places, much like the ones brought up in the article, have been refurbished but only
function partly. I would want to research more in depth the roots of what has happened in
Gastonia and the future that might come for the history displayed there. I would do this
because I think that getting an idea of what the article was talking about in a more
applicable way would be helpful to my understanding of the broad idea of place, as I
have actually seen this process first hand and can get an idea of the ways it manifests
itself in many different manners through the people and the city.

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.

Kothari, Geeta. "If You Are What You Eat, Then What Am I?" The Kenyon Review.
Kenyon College, n.d. Web. 12 Oct. 2014

This author is a relatively reliable source who has won two awards for her writing and
is the editor of the literary journal the article was published in. The article was published
in the Kenyon Review, which is published by a university; therefore the article has a good
amount of reliability. Once again, it is not clear who the intended audience might be;
possibly those students who are in a similar position as the author once was. The article is
a personal account, so it has biases, but these arent relevant considering it is more a
narrative than a factually based piece.

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Gives a personal account on the ways that food can both exclude and include different
people from the majority. Relates food and its presence or absence in ones life heavily to
ones identity and ends with a conclusion that we make choices on the ways we allow
components of our culture to infiltrate or fade from ours lives.