in the past. For Tuan, historical changes have been for the better overall: "In the larger view, the human story is one of progressive sensory and mental awareness ... culture, through laborious and labyrinthine paths traversed over millennia, has greatly and variedly refined our senses and mind." Progress itself depends on particular ways of dealing with the tensions between space and place, cosmos and hearth, dominance and affection, morality and imagination. The promise of the future lies in recognizing the existential poles of nearness and remoteness and how they are reflected in each other. Constructionism Tuan has foregrounded the importance of language in the making of place. Throughout his works, texts such as poems, novels, letters, and myths are understood as integral elements in the creation of a sense of place. Human communications form the basis for the social processes of imagining, understanding, planning and conceiving places. Representations guide the human and material interactions creating, sustaining, and destroying places. Tuan's deep reflection on the role of representation in the creation of place forms an important foundation for the geography of media and communication. Selected bibliography Romantic Geography: In Search of the Sublime Landscape. 2013. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI. Humanist Geography: An Individual's Search for Meaning. 2012. George F. Thompson Publishing, Staunton, VA. Religion: From Place to Placelessness. 2010. Center for American Places, Chicago, IL. Human Goodness. 2008. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI. Coming Home to China. 2007. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN. Place, Art, and Self. 2004. University of Virginia Press, Santa Fe, NM, in association with Columbia College, Chicago, IL. . Dear Colleague: Common and Uncommon Observations. 2002. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN. . Who am I?: An Autobiography of Emotion, Mind, and Spirit. 1999. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI. . Escapism. 1998. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD. . Cosmos and Hearth: A Cosmopolite's Viewpoint. 1996. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN. . Passing Strange and Wonderful: Aesthetics, Nature, and Culture. 1993. Island Press, Shearwater Books, Washington, DC. . Morality and Imagination: Paradoxes of Progress. 1989. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI. . The Good Life. 1986. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI. . Dominance and Affection: The Making of Pets. 1984. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT. . Segmented Worlds and Self: Group Life and Individual Consciousness. 1982. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN. . Landscapes of Fear. 1979. Pantheon Books,