“I took this photo on the beach in Provincetown, Mass., early one morning. An urban fox was trotting across a deck where a local painter displayed their art. Recently, I’ve been working on the importance of what architectural theorist Juhani Pallasmaa calls ‘atmospheric perception.’ Critiquing the ocularcentric bias of Western architecture, Pallasmaa argues for aesthetics that deemphasize focused vison in favor of peripheral and multisensory perception. ‘Focused vision confronts us with the world whereas peripheral vision envelops us in the flesh of the world.’ Here, both the fox and the painting sit at the edges of the visual field, making it hard for the eye to focus and emphasizing the textures of the wooden deck and the sand beneath it. Rather than a singular focus, the painting is part of a landscape of natural, animal and human forms; what Pallasmaa calls ‘the flesh of the world.’ It is easy for us, as academics, to adopt a singular focus and remain untouched by peripheral sensations of our world, or even the many other modes of understanding that populate the University. I’m trying to notice more peripheral foxes, even the mangey ones.”

—James Krasner, Professor of English