Editor’s Note

Who gets to describe a place? In this issue of Cite, who gets to describe Aggieland, the mythical conflation of Bryan, College Station, and the campus of Texas A&M University? Whose reality should be most valued? We doubt the assumption that places are out there simply waiting to be described by authorities. If one's authority to describe a place is determined by those with similar experiences and interests, then authoritative descriptions tend to be more concerned with propping up the set of experiences and interests shared with one's peers than in understanding a place inhabited by people unlike oneself. To question descriptive acts is to question authority. Even well intended efforts to describe a place are efforts to predict and control.

This issue of Cite acknowledges this dilemma by offering multiple, conflicting descriptions of Aggieland. Historians will offer contextual descriptions from the outside. Architects and geographers will offer spatial descriptions. Local residents will offer their experiential descriptions. These competing descriptions will elicit competing responses from readers. Traditionalists will argue that the descriptions offered by experts are truer. Relativists will argue that competing descriptions can all be true. Progressive readers will argue that the descriptions offered by average citizens are truer because their views of Aggieland are not impaired by the satisfied experiences of those at the top. As a reader, your view of Aggieland may not fit into any of these categories. Different myths (and different jokes) have conditioned our expectations of Aggieland. It is not our intention to champion the reductive realities constructed by mythmakers on the inside or jokesters on the outside. Rather, we hope that the assembled voices will construct some of the complexity of Bryan, College Station, and the mythical Aggieland all too often lost in stereotypes.

 

Steven A. Moore and Stephen Fox

Table of Contents

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Table of Contents 41

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Descriptions and Redescriptions From the Inside

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Contradictions: An African - American View of Aggieland

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Downtown Bryan: Remaking the Past in Search of the Future

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Sacred Paths and Places of Aggieland

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The Mystique of Aggieland

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A View of Tradition

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Flying High and Fast: The Genesis of CRS

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Three Views: The George Bush Presidential Library and Museum

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Same as it Ever Was: Housing at Texas A&M University

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The Landscape of Aggieland

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The Geographical Anatomy of Bryan - College Station

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Bryan/College Station: An Architectural Tour

Contributors

Robin Abrams; Jay Baker; Joel Warren Barna; Vincent B. Canizaro; Timothy J. Cassidy; Stephen Fox; Wesley H. Henderson; Shon Link; Ernesto Maldonado; Barry Moore; Steven A. Moore; Barrie Scardino; Jonathan M . Smith; Nancy Volkman; and David G. Woodcock.