Awardees

Regional Divisions Announce 2023 Outstanding Student Papers During their Fall Meetings 

Photo of bright sparkly lights on dark background

The AAG is proud to announce the Fall 2022 recipients of the AAG Council Award for Outstanding Undergraduate and Graduate Student Papers at a Regional Meeting. The AAG Council Award for Outstanding Undergraduate and Graduate Student Papers at a Regional Meeting is designed to encourage student participation at AAG Regional Division conferences and support their attendance at AAG Annual Meetings. One graduate student and one undergraduate student in each AAG Regional Division receives this yearly award based on a paper submitted to their respective regional conference. The awardees receive $1,000 in funding for use towards their registration and travel costs to attend the AAG Annual Meeting. The board members from each region determine student awardees.

The recipients from each region will be presenting their papers in two dedicated paper sessions at the upcoming 2023 AAG Annual Meeting.

Association of Pacific Coast Geographers/Pacific Coast (APCG)
  • Olivia Cameron, Graduate Student Paper, Oregon State University; Paper Title – “Social Identity in Agricultural Decision Making”
East Lakes Division of the AAG (ELDAAG)
  • Ruijia Hu, Graduate Student Paper, University of Cincinati; Paper Title – “The use of remotely sensed data to model habitat selections of pileated woodpeckers (Dryocopus pileatus) in fragmented landscapes”
  • Connor O’Louglin, Undergraduate Student Paper, Northern Michigan University; Paper Title – “Chemical Inhibitor of Methanogenesis: How Does It React in Different Environments?”
Great Plains/Rocky Mountain Division of the AAG (GPRM)
  • Naomi Hazarika, Graduate Student Paper, University of Colorado, Boulder; Paper Title – “Urban ‘Re’-development: Geographies of Caste and the Embodied Infrastructural Realities of Slum Redevelopment in Delhi, India”
Mid-Atlantic Division of the AAG (MAD)
  • Lauren Gerlowski, Graduate Student Paper, University of Wisconsin, Madison; Paper Title – “A Teaching Assistant’s Reflections & Lessons from Covid-19”
  • Xueyuan Eric Gao, Graduate Student Paper, University of Maryland; Paper Title – “Exploration of a Novel Carbon Removal Solution: Lighting Up Tropical Forests at Night”
Middle States Division of the AAG (MSDAAG)
  • Maria Morresi, Graduate Student Paper, West Chester University, Paper Title – “Using GIS to Identify Locations for the Development of Urban Ecological Corridors for Birds: A Philadelphia Case Study “
  • Carolyn Weinstein, SUNY New Paltz, Undergraduate Student Paper; Paper Title – “Breaking Barriers at Land Grant Institutions: A Historic Geography”
New England – St. Lawrence Valley (NESTVAL)
  • Antoine Lachance, Graduate Student Paper, Concordia University; Paper Title – “The history of storms and hurricanes over the past 1000 years in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, as told by coastal ombrotrophic peatbogs on the Magdalen Islands, Québec, Canada”
  • Theresa Cocola, Undergraduate Student Paper, Southern Connecticut State University; Paper Title – “Assessing Sustainable Consumption Behavior: A Case Study of Starbucks, Newington, Connecticut”
Southwest Division of the AAG (SWAAG)
  • Weiying Lin, Graduate Student Paper, Texas A&M University; Paper Title – “The influence of urban form and sociodemographic factors on street-level greenery play out at multiple scales and vary across space”
  • Sarah Pettyjohn, Undergraduate Student Paper, University of North Texas; Paper Title – “How does sediment grain size decrease as rocks are transported within the flowing water of a river?”
  • Jacob Hines, Undergraduate Student Paper, Tarlton University; Paper Title – “Examining Red Tide within Florida’s Tampa Bay”
West Lakes Division of the AAG (WLDAAG)
  • Lauren Weber, Graduate Student Paper, University of Illinois; Paper Title – “Crisis, carcerality, and the real estate state: Portland, Oregon’s jail-to-shelter conversion”
  • Owen Bomba, Undergraduate Paper, DePaul University; Paper Title – “Zombies and Ghosts: The Critique of Modern Urban Development with Apparitional Language”
Southeast Division of the AAG (SEDAAG)
  • Sarah Jackson, Graduate Student Paper, University of South Carolina; Paper Title – “Urban-Rural Tornado Occurrence in the Midwestern & Southern U.S.”
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Annual Meeting

Social Media at #AAG2021

We’re getting closer to the 2021 AAG Annual Meeting! Whether you will be attending the meeting all week, for a few days, or catching up with recordings of presentations between other obligations, there are plenty of ways to get involved using social media. Social media is a great way for seasoned conference goers and newcomers alike to network, report on new research, engage in lively debate with those inside and outside of the discipline, and find out what’s going on during the largest geography conference in the world. Start planning your #AAG2021 social media strategy today with these helpful guidelines:

Twitter

One of the most frequently used social media sites for live events, Twitter is a great place to start scoping out the annual meeting. Twitter is used by geographers to discuss research ideas, share recent publications, or connect with others. As the main social media channel, the AAG annual meeting has had active Twitter users since at least 2011 in Seattle. This year the official conference hashtag will be #AAG2021. Start using and following #AAG2021; posts are already being compiled in anticipation of the meeting. If you are new to Twitter, try these tips to benefit most from the network:

  • Follow @theAAG on Twitter. The official AAG Twitter account will be active throughout the meeting with important announcements, live tweets of events, and fun ways to virtually interact with other conference attendees.
  • Use #AAG2021 on all your meeting related communications. Sometimes it is difficult to fit your thoughts into the 280 character count, but try to include the hashtag #AAG2021 in each of your tweets. This will ensure that your tweets are being seen by others who are attending the conference or following along. If you are new to hashtags, a hashtag is a way to organize a specific topic into one feed. Click on the hashtag to see the conversations happening related to that topic.
  • Whenever possible, try to include Twitter handles. If you are tweeting about a paper, panel, or poster, be sure to attribute the research to the right person by using their Twitter handle (@[name]). Presenters and panelists should consider including their handles on an opening slide or in a poster corner. Conversely, if you do not want your research to be tweeted, please state that information upfront so the audience is aware of your desires.
  • Follow the hashtag and join the conversation! The great thing about Twitter conversations is that they can be both live or asynchronous, helpful for those communicating between time zones.

Facebook

Do you prefer Facebook over Twitter as your social media site of choice? While there will be less live coverage of specific sessions, Facebook is a great way to share videos and news about the annual meeting with your friends, family, and colleagues.

  • Make sure you like the AAG Facebook page (www.facebook.com/geographers) and set the page so that you see it first in your News Feed by clicking on the “Following” dropdown menu on the AAG Facebook page itself. This will ensure that you receive the latest meeting related announcements as soon as you open the Facebook app or website.
  • Check on the page each morning for reminders of the day’s schedule of events.

Instagram

Instagram is a fun place to share your photos of your daily life as a geographer and where in the world you are participating from for the AAG Annual Meeting.

  • Follow @theAAG on Instagram for visual representations of programs currently underway at the AAG.
  • Share your photos of your personal experience of the annual meeting with other attendees using the conference hashtag #AAG2021.

Linked in

The AAG has recently expanded its presence on the professional networking site, Linked in. New features, such as the ability to write and publish short blog-style posts, has recently set Linked in apart from other social networks. With the ability to share content using hashtags, Linked in is a great network to share research, ask for feedback, and hear from industry thought leaders.

  • Are you following the AAG’s page on Linked in? Be sure to hit the follow button to ensure that anything posted by the AAG shows up in your feed.
  • Use #AAG2021 on Linked in as you would with Instagram or Twitter. Hashtags on Linked in work similarly to those on Instagram or Twitter, giving users a chance to follow a long with conversations about a particular topic, in this case, the 2021 AAG Annual Meeting.
  • Share upcoming professional development events or other items of interest to your Linked in feed using relevant hashtags. By adding hashtags to your posts, more people are likely to see your content.

General Communications

Because the AAG social media channels will be busy during the annual meeting, AAG staff may not be able to provide a timely reply through these mediums. The AAG Annual Meeting Website is a good place to start for conference information with regards to technology related questions, session times, and abstracts. If you have questions or concerns and need to contact a staff member, the best option is to email meeting[at]aag[dot[org].

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AAG Staff Participate in AP Human Geography Reading

AAG Staff member Emily Fekete recently participated in the AP Human Geography Reading, held annually June 1 to June 9 in Cincinnati, Ohio. The AP Human Geography Reading is a gathering of college professors and AP high school teachers for the purposes of evaluating essays written by students who took the AP Human Geography exam. Throughout the course of the week, individuals will read around 1,000 student essays a piece. To be eligible to score exams, AP readers must have either taught Human Geography at the university level or have taught AP Human Geography for at least 3 years. This was Emily’s seventh consecutive year scoring AP Human Geography exams and her second year attending as an employee of the AAG.

The number of students who took the AP Human Geography Exam from the year the exam started to 2019.


The exam is structured so that it contains a section of multiple choice questions scored with a scantron as well as a free-response section containing three essay style questions. AP Human Geography Readers score the free-response questions throughout the course of seven 8 AM to 5 PM days. The reading days are kept on a strict schedule to keep on pace to ensure that the scoring is complete by 5 PM on June 8. To score the exams, a rubric is developed by a group of question leaders made up of college professors who then train the readers on how to use the rubric to score the questions. This process ensures that readers are scoring as consistently as possible. The AP Human Geography exam is one of the fastest growing AP exams currently being offered. In 2001, the first year the exam was available, 3,272 students completed the test. In 2019, 233,817 students took the AP Human Geography exam. Because of the growth in the number of exams needing to be scored, the number of readers who attend the event has also grown. In 2019, approximately 950 readers were present to score the AP Human Geography exam, up from 794 in 2018.

AAG Past President Alec Murphy gives his keynote address at the AP Human Geography Reading
AAG Past President Alec Murphy gives his keynote address at the AP Human Geography Reading

During the evenings at the AP Human Geography Reading, professional development activities ranging from academic speakers to networking to a Human Geography Bowl are organized. Past AAG President Alec Murphy was the 2019 featured keynote speaker with his presentation “Why Geography Matters” where he discussed his role in establishing the AP Human Geography course and the importance of the discipline to create contemporary global citizens. Another popular night is the Night of the Round Tables, an evening to share teaching resources with AP Human Geography high school teachers. During the 2019 Night of the Round Tables, Emily shared the AAG’s Profiles of Professional Geographers and the Guide to Geography Programs in a short presentation. By giving high school teachers these resources, students who have an interest in pursuing a career in geography will be more knowledgeable about which universities have geography programs when deciding where to attend college.

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Social Media at #aagDC

We’re getting closer to the 2019 AAG Annual Meeting! Whether you will be attending the meeting all week, for a few days, or looking to follow the action from afar, there are plenty of ways to get involved using social media. Social media is a great way for seasoned conference goers and newcomers alike to network, report on new research, engage in lively debate with those inside and outside of the discipline, and find out what’s going on during the largest geography conference in the world! Start planning your #aagDC social media strategy today with these helpful guidelines!

Twitter

One of the most frequently used social media sites for live events, Twitter is a great place to start scoping out the annual meeting. Twitter is used by geographers to discuss and share research ideas or connect with others, often leading to face to face meet-ups at the annual meeting. As the main social media channel, the AAG annual meeting has had active Twitter users since at least 2011 in Seattle. The hashtag #AAG followed by the year of the event used to be the standard AAG Annual Meeting tag. However, this year we decided to switch it up! Due to increased traffic from other events who are already using #AAG2019 (hat tip to the ASEAN Autism Games) and the fact that as geographers we are always thinking about place and space, we will now use the hashtag #aag followed by the location of the conference. This year the official conference hashtag will be #aagDC! Start using and following #aagDC; posts are already being compiled in anticipation of the meeting! If you are new to Twitter, try these tips to benefit most from the network:

  • Follow @theAAG on Twitter! The official AAG Twitter account will be active throughout the meeting with important announcements, live tweets of events, and fun photos throughout the conference hotels. Due to popularity, the AAG will continue to conduct a Twitter poll once a day for members to choose a session they would like to see live-Tweeted!
  • Use #aagDC on all your meeting related communications. Sometimes it is difficult to fit your thoughts into the (now expanded!) 280 character count, but try to include the hashtag #aagDC in each of your tweets. This will ensure that your tweets are being seen by others both at the conference and following along offsite. If you are new to hashtags, a hashtag is a way to organize a specific topic into one feed. Click on the hashtag to see the conversations happening related to that topic.
  • Whenever possible, try to include Twitter handles. If you are tweeting about a paper, panel, or poster, be sure to attribute the research to the right person by using their Twitter handle. Presenters and panelists should consider including their handles on an opening slide or in a poster corner. Conversely, if you do not want your research to be tweeted, please state that information upfront so the audience is aware of your desires.
  • Unable to attend the meeting this year? Follow the hashtag and join the conversation!

Facebook

Do you prefer Facebook over Twitter as your social media site of choice? While there will be less live coverage of specific sessions, Facebook is a great way to share photos, videos, and news about the annual meeting with your friends, family, and colleagues.

  • Make sure you like the AAG Facebook page (www.facebook.com/geographers) and set the page so that you see it first in your News Feed by clicking on the “Following” dropdown menu on the AAG Facebook page itself. This will ensure that you receive the latest meeting related announcements as soon as you open the Facebook app or website.
  • Be on the lookout for Facebook Live videos from some of the major events like the Exhibition Hall opening and the World Geography Bowl finals!
  • Check on the page each morning for reminders of the day’s schedule of events.

Instagram

The AAG’s newest social media channel, Instagram is a fun place to share your photos of activities at the annual meeting and your daily life as a geographer!

  • Follow @theAAG on Instagram for photos of the annual meeting as well as behind the scenes looks at the work that goes into planning the conference on a yearly basis!
  • Share your photos of the meeting with other attendees using the conference hashtag #aagDC and look for an Instagram collage of #aagDC photos after the meeting ends.
  • Want to be featured in our new Instagram Campaign to meet members of the AAG, #MeettheAAG? Look for AAG Staff throughout the meeting who will be taking photos and collecting information about AAG members that will be showcased during the summer.

General Communications

Because the AAG social media channels will be busy during the annual meeting, AAG staff may not be able to provide a timely reply through these mediums. The AAG Annual Meeting App is a good place to start for conference information with regards to floor plans, session times and locations, and abstracts. If you have questions or concerns and need to contact a staff member, the best option is to find a conference volunteer (wearing a neon yellow t-shirt) or to stop by the AAG Meridian or Registration area in the Atrium of the Marriott Hotel.

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AAG Names Rita Colwell as the 2019 Honorary Geographer

Rita Colwell (Photo by Sam Kittner)

The American Association of Geographers has named Rita Colwell, the first woman to be director of the National Science Foundation (NSF), as its 2019 AAG Honorary Geographer. Rita Colwell currently is a distinguished university professor at the University of Maryland at College Park and at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, a senior advisor and chairman emeritus at Canon U.S. Life Sciences, Inc., and the president and CEO of CosmosID, Inc.

Colwell’s internationally recognized research primarily focuses on water and health with particular focus on cholera and infectious disease. A pioneer for women in science, she has published more than 750 articles and has authored or co-authored 17 books. During her time at the NSF she not only increased the size of individual grants awarded by expanding the budget of the NSF by 68 percent, but also advocated for greater support for women scientists and science and technology education. Dr. Colwell has taken on many significant advisory positions in the U.S. Government, nonprofit science policy organizations, and private foundations throughout her career, including her role as a former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Prior to joining NSF, Colwell served as president of the University of Maryland’s Biotechnology Institute and as Vice President for Academic Affairs at the University. She has been awarded 55 honorary degrees, as well as the recipient of the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star, bestowed by the Emperor of Japan, the 2006 National Medal of Science awarded by the President of the United States, and the 2010 Stockholm Water Prize awarded by the King of Sweden. The Colwell Massif geological site in Antarctica was named in recognition of her work in the polar regions.

Colwell may be familiar to some members of the AAG, as she provided the opening keynote lecture at the Centennial Meeting of the AAG in 2004 in Philadelphia, PA. Her talk, entitled “The New Landscape of Science: A Geographic Portal,” still resonates within the discipline today. AAG will confer the 2019 AAG Honorary Geographer Award upon Rita Colwell at the 2019 AAG Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. Details of this session will be forthcoming.

Every year the Association bestows its Honorary Geographer Award on an exceptional leader, to recognize excellence in the arts, research, teaching, and writing on geographic topics by non-geographers. Previous AAG Honorary Geographer awardees have included biologist Stephen J. Gould, architect Maya Lin, Nobel Laureate in economics Paul Krugman, sociologist Saskia Sassen, economist Jeffrey Sachs, and authors Calvin Trillin, Barbara Kingsolver, John McPhee and Barry Lopez, among others.

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Awardees

Carla Hayden, 2019 AAG Atlas Awardee, to Speak in D.C.

The American Association of Geographers invites attendees of the 2019 AAG Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C., to join in celebration of Carla Hayden at the AAG Atlas Award Ceremony. Carla Hayden, 14th Librarian of Congress, will deliver a keynote address at noon on Friday, April 5, after being presented with the 2019 AAG Atlas Award, the association’s highest honor.

Sworn in as the current Librarian of Congress on September 14, 2016, Hayden is both the first woman and the first African American to serve in the position. She is also the first professional librarian to hold the office in more than 60 years. Hayden was recommended to serve as the librarian by former president Barack Obama in February 2016. Following an extensive social media campaign organized by the American Library Association (#Hayden4LOC) urging thousands of library advocates to contact their senators and appeal for the confirmation of Hayden as the new librarian, Hayden was appointed on July 13, 2016.

Hayden has long been an outspoken advocate for the role of librarians as activists, championing equal access to libraries and information. Prior to her position as the Librarian of Congress, Hayden was the CEO of Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, Md. (1993-2016) where she started an outreach program for teens that included homework assistance, as well as college and career counseling. For these efforts, Hayden was the first African American to receive Library Journal’s Librarian of the Year Award in 1995. She also made the 2016 list of Fortune magazine’s World’s 50 Greatest Leaders and won the 2018 Newberry Library Award for Service to the Humanities.

Hayden has practiced her belief that librarians serve as activists: during the 2015 Baltimore protests as a result of the killing of Freddie Gray, she kept the library open as a refuge and opportunity center while many other businesses and public areas were closed down. While serving as the President of the American Library Association from 2003-2004, she vocally opposed the Patriot Act in support of the privacy of library users. In her new role as the Librarian of Congress she plans to modernize and digitize the vast collections in the Library of Congress to make them more accessible to all Americans while also preserving and respecting their historic structure and significance.

Hayden holds Bachelors of Arts degrees in history and political science from Roosevelt University and both a Master of Arts and Doctorate in library science from the Graduate Library School of University of Chicago. Prior to joining the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore she was the deputy commissioner and chief librarian of Chicago Public Library from 1991-1993, an assistant professor for library and information science at University of Pittsburgh from 1987-1991, and the library services coordinator for the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago from 1982-1987. She began her career as a children’s librarian and then young adult services coordinator with the Chicago Public Library.

The AAG Atlas Award, bestowed every other year, recognizes and celebrates outstanding, internationally-recognized leaders who advance world understanding in exceptional ways. The image of Atlas bearing the weight of the world on his shoulders is a powerful metaphor for this award program, as our nominees are those who have taken the weight of the world on their shoulders and moved it forward, whether in science, politics, scholarship, the arts, or in war and peace. Previous Atlas Awardees include primatologist Jane Goodall, international human rights and political leader Mary Robinson, civil rights icon Julian Bond, and public intellectual Noam Chomsky.

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Annual Meeting

Social Media at #AAG2018

We’re getting closer to the 2018 AAG Annual Meeting! Whether you will be attending the meeting all week, for a few days, or looking to follow the action from afar, there are plenty of ways to get involved using social media. Social media is a great way for seasoned conference goers and newcomers alike to network, report on new research, engage in lively debate with those inside and outside of the discipline, and find out what’s going on during the largest geography conference in the world! Start planning your #AAG2018 social media strategy today with these helpful guidelines!

Twitter

One of the most frequently used social media sites for live events, Twitter is a great place to start scoping out the annual meeting. Twitter is used by geographers to discuss and share research ideas or connect with others, often leading to face to face meet-ups at the annual meeting. As the main social media channel, the AAG annual meeting has had active Twitter users since at least 2011 in Seattle. The hashtag #AAG followed by the year of the event has become the standard AAG Annual Meeting tag – this year the hashtag will be #AAG2018. Start using and following #AAG2018; posts are already being compiled in anticipation of the meeting! If you are new to Twitter, try these tips to benefit most from the network:

  • Follow @theAAG on Twitter! The official AAG Twitter account will be active throughout the meeting with important announcements, live tweets of events, and fun photos throughout the conference hotels. New this year: the AAG will conduct a Twitter poll once a day for members to choose a session they would like to see live-Tweeted!
  • Use #AAG2018 on all your meeting related communications. Sometimes it is difficult to fit your thoughts into the (now expanded!) 280 character count, but try to include the hashtag #AAG2018 in each of your tweets. This will ensure that your tweets are being seen by others both at the conference and following along offsite. If you are new to hashtags, a hashtag is a way to organize a specific topic into one feed. Click on the hashtag to see the conversations happening related to that topic.
  • Whenever possible, try to include Twitter handles. If you are tweeting about a paper, panel, or poster, be sure to attribute the research to the right person by using their Twitter handle. Presenters and panelists should consider including their handles on an opening slide or in a poster corner. Conversely, if you do not want your research to be tweeted, please state that information upfront so the audience is aware of your desires.
  • Unable to attend the meeting this year? Follow the hashtag and join the conversation!

Facebook

Do you prefer Facebook over Twitter as your social media site of choice? While there will be less live coverage of specific sessions, Facebook is a great way to share photos, videos, and news about the annual meeting with your friends, family, and colleagues.

  • Make sure you like the AAG Facebook page (www.facebook.com/geographers) and set the page so that you see it first in your News Feed by clicking on the “Following” dropdown menu on the AAG Facebook page itself. This will ensure that you receive the latest meeting related announcements as soon as you open the Facebook app or website.
  • Be on the lookout for Facebook Live videos from some of the major events like the Exhibition Hall opening and the World Geography Bowl finals!
  • Check on the page each morning for reminders of the day’s schedule of events.

Instagram

The AAG’s newest social media channel, Instagram is a fun place to share your photos of activities at the annual meeting and your daily life as a geographer!

  • Follow @theAAG on Instagram for photos of the annual meeting as well as behind the scenes looks at the work that goes into planning the conference on a yearly basis!
  • Share your photos of the meeting with other attendees using the conference hashtag #AAG2018 and look for an Instagram collage of #AAG2018 photos after the meeting ends.
  • Want to be featured in our new Instagram Campaign to meet members of the AAG, #MeettheAAG? Look for AAG Staff throughout the meeting who will be taking photos and collecting information about AAG members that will be showcased during the summer.

Snapchat

Have you tried out the latest social media craze? While the AAG does not have an official Snapchat channel, there will be an unveiling of the first ever AAG Annual Meeting Snapchat Filter! This exclusive geofilter is only available in the Marriott by the registration, AAG booth, and Exhibit Hall (or on floors above and below these areas – 3D space!).

  • Take a snap, use the geofilter, and share it with your friends!
  • For extra pizzazz, save the snap with the applied geofilter to your memories and share it out over Instagram or Twitter with the #AAG2018 hashtag.
  • Add a special flourish to your social media profiles by using a geofiltered snap as your profile photo! Get creative and have fun!

General Communications

Because the AAG social media channels will be busy during the annual meeting, AAG staff may not be able to provide a timely reply through these mediums. The AAG Annual Meeting App is a good place to start for conference information with regards to floor plans, session times and locations, and abstracts. If you have questions or concerns and need to contact a staff member, the best option is to find a conference volunteer (wearing a neon yellow t-shirt) or to stop by the AAG Meridian or Registration area on the 3rd Floor of the Marriott Hotel.

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‘The International Encyclopedia of Geography’ receives CHOICE Award for Outstanding Academic Title 2017

The AAG-Wiley International Encyclopedia of Geography: People, the Earth, Environment, and Technology is the recipient of a prestigious CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title 2017 award from the Association of College and Research Libraries, a division of the American Library Association.

The new international AAG publication is the most comprehensive and authoritative reference work in geography today, and as it will be updated annually, will likely remain so for decades to come. Significantly, as the Encyclopedia’s Editor-in-Chief Douglas Richardson noted, “this six-year encyclopedia project also resulted in building a collaborative international community of leading geography scholars and researchers who served as editors and authors, and with the international geographical societies and associations with whom the AAG interacted throughout the creation of The International Encyclopedia of Geography.” This landmark work, published in 2017 in both hard copy (15 volumes) and online, is written for a graduate student audience, but also in a style to be accessible to undergraduates and the educated public.

Reviewed by CHOICE in October 2017, the Encyclopedia also received a “Summing Up” award of “Highly Recommended” for community college and undergraduate students through professionals/practitioners as well as for general readers. The published review referred to the work as “an initiative of the sort that yields high-quality, subject-specific information that librarians and faculty will want to direct students to, helping to counter the problem of novice researchers citing information that they readily encounter online but are ill-equipped to evaluate critically.”

The selective CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title awards are determined by criteria including the importance of the work within the field, the value of the work for undergraduate students and in building an undergraduate library, the originality of the work, and overall excellence in presentation and scholarship. Works granted the distinction of Outstanding Academic Title are regarded among the academic library community as the best of scholarly titles published each year. “This is fantastic news,” said Justin Vaughan, the Encyclopedia’s publisher at Wiley & Sons. “The CHOICE award for Outstanding Academic Title is a highly prestigious award that will further raise the profile of the work in the library market and the academic community.”

Quotes from Choice are reprinted here with permission from Choice Reviews. All rights reserved. Copyright by the American Library Association.

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Member News

Trevor Paglen Named 2017 MacArthur Fellow

Geographer and artist Trevor Paglen has been named a MacArthur Fellow for 2017 for his work revealing the secret world of U.S. military operations and corporate power through a mixture of artistic photography, cartographic analysis, and boots-on-the-ground geography. He uses public records and field work to bring public attention to the secrecy surrounding government surveillance, warfare, and social control. For his projects he has photographed locations of covert government actions such as Area 51, the “Salt Pit” prison in Afghanistan, and the skies in search of drones, military aircraft, and espionage satellites.

Paglen’s spectrum of work includes both written publications, as well as artistic pieces serving as an excellent example of the emerging field of geohumanities. Through written works, such as Blank Spots on the Map: The Dark Geography of the Pentagon’s Secret World or Torture Taxi – On the Trail of the CIA’s Rendition Flights, Paglen maps onto paper those areas in which the government has tried to keep hidden, asking his readers to think about the societal implications of secrecy in a democratic state. In more recent work, The Last Pictures speculates on satellites orbiting earth as artifacts of 20th and 21st century civilization. Paglen’s artwork is wrapped up in his written projects and contains photographs of secret sites, military aircraft, and satellites. His pieces have been featured in locations ranging from the galleries of New York City to the Fukushima Exclusion Zone in Japan to a gold disk launched into outer space.

Currently residing in Berlin, Germany, Paglen holds a B.A. in Religious Studies from U.C. Berkeley, an MFA from the Art Institute of Chicago, and a Ph.D. in Geography from U.C. Berkeley (class of 2008). His work has been highlighted in CityLab, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Vice Magazine, Artforum, and The Colbert Report. Paglen also received a 2014 Electronic Frontier Foundation Pioneer Award which recognizes individuals who are extending freedom and innovation in the realm of information technology.

A part of the MacArthur Foundation, the prestigious MacArthur Fellows Program annually awards fellowships of $625,000 over a period of five years to individuals to pursue scholarly and artistic endeavors. According to the MacArthur Foundation website, “the purpose of the MacArthur Fellows Program is to enable recipients to exercise their own creative instincts for the benefit of human society.” The Foundation and rotating Fellows Program Committee have chosen 24 individuals in the class of 2017 to receive MacArthur Fellowships. Recipients of the MacArthur Fellowship must be residents or citizens of the United States and cannot be holding elected office or be in an advanced government position.

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