AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
Deadline: December 31, 2024
A committee awards the annual prize for a book that makes an unusually important contribution to advancing the science and art of geography. An award of $1,000 will be made to the author(s). In any given cycle, the Meridian Book Award Committee may also select a second title from the pool of nominations to be recognized with an Honorable Mention.
Eligibility:
Books must be written or co-authored by a geographer. Books published for the first time in English, in any country, in the current calendar year or in the period Oct. 1 – Dec. 31 of last year, are now eligible for the awards. Please submit your book for consideration for only one of the AAG’s three book awards (i.e., J.B. Jackson Prize, Globe Book Award, or Meridian Book Award).
As with all other AAG awards, eligibility also rests on the candidate being in compliance with the AAG Professional Conduct Policy. Nominations may be rescinded, and the award may also be revoked for any candidate or awardee who is found in violation of the AAG’s Professional Conduct Policy.
Submissions:
Nomination statements (two page maximum length) should provide full contact information for the author(s) and the nominator(s), including email addresses, and should document the ways the nominated work contributes to advancing the science and art of geography. Please email nomination statements to grantsawards@aag.org indicating “Meridian Book Award” in the Subject Line. Please ship four copies of each nominated book to: American Association of Geographers, Attn: Meridian Book Award, 1701 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Suite 325, Washington, DC 20006.
AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography Recipients
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Karen Culcasi
Displacing Territory: Syrian and Palestinian Refugees in Jordan by Karen Culcasi (University of Chicago Press, 2023) presents a powerful and innovative response to the global crisis of forced displacement. Culcasi argues against framing the “refugee crisis” via the perspective and priorities of the Global North, instead setting her analysis in the Southwest Asia and North Africa region. Her focus on Jordanian refugee policy and the lived experience of refugees creates a provocative reframing of questions about migration and displacement, read against the central themes of power, territory, and place.
Culcasi’s engaging and forceful narrative is based on extensive research that encompasses the conceptual state-territory nexus and the more ambiguous imaginings of spaces including the refugee camps in Jordan. The overall product is an urgent book that represents a significant contribution to political geography, migration, and postcolonial studies. The writing is approachable, compelling, and richly innovative, and is a clear-sighted challenge to contemporary geopolitical imaginaries.
2023 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
Karen Culcasi
2023 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
Displacing Territory: Syrian and Palestinian Refugees in Jordan by Karen Culcasi (University of Chicago Press, 2023) presents a powerful and innovative response to the global crisis of forced displacement. Culcasi argues against framing the “refugee crisis” via the perspective and priorities of the Global North, instead setting her analysis in the Southwest Asia and North Africa region. Her focus on Jordanian refugee policy and the lived experience of refugees creates a provocative reframing of questions about migration and displacement, read against the central themes of power, territory, and place.
Culcasi’s engaging and forceful narrative is based on extensive research that encompasses the conceptual state-territory nexus and the more ambiguous imaginings of spaces including the refugee camps in Jordan. The overall product is an urgent book that represents a significant contribution to political geography, migration, and postcolonial studies. The writing is approachable, compelling, and richly innovative, and is a clear-sighted challenge to contemporary geopolitical imaginaries.
Honorable Mention: Sara Safransky
The City after Property: Abandonment and Repair in Postindustrial Detroit by Sara Safransky (Duke University Press, 2023) begins with a paradox: Detroit’s residents face foreclosures and evictions amidst a crisis of land abandonment. Safransky answers this paradox by weaving theoretically rich insights with detailed research, resulting in a rich account of urban property, racial capitalism, and deindustrialization. Safransky orients geographical scholarship to the possibilities of urban space outside dominant property regimes and centers the work of Black Detroit residents in confronting the challenges to their community.
Safransky’s compelling book is beautifully written and highlights the capacity of urban geography to address contemporary struggles around property and belonging. Her research looks toward futures beyond abandonment, highlighting the contradictions of scarcity amidst abundance that characterizes capitalist policy regimes.
2023 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
Honorable Mention: Sara Safransky
2023 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
The City after Property: Abandonment and Repair in Postindustrial Detroit by Sara Safransky (Duke University Press, 2023) begins with a paradox: Detroit’s residents face foreclosures and evictions amidst a crisis of land abandonment. Safransky answers this paradox by weaving theoretically rich insights with detailed research, resulting in a rich account of urban property, racial capitalism, and deindustrialization. Safransky orients geographical scholarship to the possibilities of urban space outside dominant property regimes and centers the work of Black Detroit residents in confronting the challenges to their community.
Safransky’s compelling book is beautifully written and highlights the capacity of urban geography to address contemporary struggles around property and belonging. Her research looks toward futures beyond abandonment, highlighting the contradictions of scarcity amidst abundance that characterizes capitalist policy regimes.
Kristian Karlo Saguin
Urban Ecologies on the Edge: Making Manila’s Resource Frontier (University of California Press, 2022) by Kristian Karlo Saguin (University of the Philippines) is an outstanding work of geographical scholarship, balancing empirical and conceptual insights that contribute to current interests in urbanization, the infrastructure turn, and environmental change in cities of the Global South. Saguin provides a relational political ecology that describes the unequal ways that Laguna Lake functions as a resource frontier and as a living ecology and is enrolled in and transformed by the urban political ecologies of Manila.
Saguin’s theoretically rich book is the product of extensive research, which represents an important contribution to political ecology and urban geography, as well as the historical geography of the environment. The writing is lively, highly accessible, and nuanced, and it is likely to serve as a model for students seeking to examine other urban places across the globe. This is a timely book and well-deserving of the AAG Meridian Book Award.
2022 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
Kristian Karlo Saguin
2022 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
Urban Ecologies on the Edge: Making Manila’s Resource Frontier (University of California Press, 2022) by Kristian Karlo Saguin (University of the Philippines) is an outstanding work of geographical scholarship, balancing empirical and conceptual insights that contribute to current interests in urbanization, the infrastructure turn, and environmental change in cities of the Global South. Saguin provides a relational political ecology that describes the unequal ways that Laguna Lake functions as a resource frontier and as a living ecology and is enrolled in and transformed by the urban political ecologies of Manila.
Saguin’s theoretically rich book is the product of extensive research, which represents an important contribution to political ecology and urban geography, as well as the historical geography of the environment. The writing is lively, highly accessible, and nuanced, and it is likely to serve as a model for students seeking to examine other urban places across the globe. This is a timely book and well-deserving of the AAG Meridian Book Award.
Honorable Mention: Mirela Altic
Encounters in the New World: Jesuit Cartography of the Americas (University of Chicago Press, 2022) by Mirela Altic (University of Zagreb) is a beautifully written masterpiece, representing an impressive work of scholarship, collating over 150 Jesuit maps from different national archives to examine the development of cartography, exploration, and encounter in the New World. By tracing the paths trodden by Jesuit explorers and mapmakers in Spanish, Portuguese, and French New World possessions, Altic reveals the character of the territories crossed by learned men who offered their interpretations on “flat sheets of paper” to foster deep understanding of the cultural landscapes and natural environments traversed.
Not only does she push forward our understanding of the colonial development of the Americas, Altic also offers ample evidence to support the notion that Jesuit epistemology was more closely aligned with the Enlightenment than heretofore often thought. This book contributes a very important chapter to the history of cartography.
2022 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
Honorable Mention: Mirela Altic
2022 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
Encounters in the New World: Jesuit Cartography of the Americas (University of Chicago Press, 2022) by Mirela Altic (University of Zagreb) is a beautifully written masterpiece, representing an impressive work of scholarship, collating over 150 Jesuit maps from different national archives to examine the development of cartography, exploration, and encounter in the New World. By tracing the paths trodden by Jesuit explorers and mapmakers in Spanish, Portuguese, and French New World possessions, Altic reveals the character of the territories crossed by learned men who offered their interpretations on “flat sheets of paper” to foster deep understanding of the cultural landscapes and natural environments traversed.
Not only does she push forward our understanding of the colonial development of the Americas, Altic also offers ample evidence to support the notion that Jesuit epistemology was more closely aligned with the Enlightenment than heretofore often thought. This book contributes a very important chapter to the history of cartography.
Honorable Mention: Jessica Barnes
Staple Security: Bread and Wheat in Egypt (Duke University Press, 2022) by Jessica Barnes (University of South Carolina) provides a captivating account of her noteworthy fieldwork in Egypt, which documents the imperative role bread plays in the Arab World. This splendid narrative offers deep insight into aspects of food insecurity that heretofore have largely remained unexplored. Barnes reveals views, tastes, and aromas of a cultural landscape often shaped by the nuances that glue together strategic elements of Egyptian society.
Her analysis bridges the affective and the structural, working connectively across scales from the personal to the global to untangle the varied significance of bread as food, heritage, commodity, and policy object. This work is certain to be considered a major contribution to ethnographic study.
2022 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
Honorable Mention: Jessica Barnes
2022 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
Staple Security: Bread and Wheat in Egypt (Duke University Press, 2022) by Jessica Barnes (University of South Carolina) provides a captivating account of her noteworthy fieldwork in Egypt, which documents the imperative role bread plays in the Arab World. This splendid narrative offers deep insight into aspects of food insecurity that heretofore have largely remained unexplored. Barnes reveals views, tastes, and aromas of a cultural landscape often shaped by the nuances that glue together strategic elements of Egyptian society.
Her analysis bridges the affective and the structural, working connectively across scales from the personal to the global to untangle the varied significance of bread as food, heritage, commodity, and policy object. This work is certain to be considered a major contribution to ethnographic study.
Katherine McKittrick
Katherine McKittrick for Dear Science and Other Stories (Duke University Press, 2021) presents incredibly rich conceptual and methodological contributions for researchers in human geography and beyond. This innovative book traces how multiple forms of Black scholarship, art, and indeed, Black life, move through and beyond the straits of knowledge systems co-constituted with and emergent from white supremacy. McKittrick’s writing on the forms of productive and destructive erasure that confront Black geographies will become necessary and likely transformative reading for scholars within and beyond the discipline.
2021 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
Katherine McKittrick
2021 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
Katherine McKittrick for Dear Science and Other Stories (Duke University Press, 2021) presents incredibly rich conceptual and methodological contributions for researchers in human geography and beyond. This innovative book traces how multiple forms of Black scholarship, art, and indeed, Black life, move through and beyond the straits of knowledge systems co-constituted with and emergent from white supremacy. McKittrick’s writing on the forms of productive and destructive erasure that confront Black geographies will become necessary and likely transformative reading for scholars within and beyond the discipline.
Honorable Mention: Case Watkins
Case Watkins for Palm Oil Diaspora: Afro-Brazilian Landscapes and Economies on Bahia’s Dendê Coast (Cambridge University Press, 2021) is an exemplary piece that is certain to withstand the test of time. The longstanding influence of the author’s academic lineage extending from Sauer to Parsons, Denevan, Turner, Doolittle, and Sluyter is evident in the work. Moreover, through the integration of previously uncovered evidence, this book offers new perspectives and raises questions concerning the impact of racism and colonial ways of knowing on academic scholarship.
2021 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
Honorable Mention: Case Watkins
2021 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
Case Watkins for Palm Oil Diaspora: Afro-Brazilian Landscapes and Economies on Bahia’s Dendê Coast (Cambridge University Press, 2021) is an exemplary piece that is certain to withstand the test of time. The longstanding influence of the author’s academic lineage extending from Sauer to Parsons, Denevan, Turner, Doolittle, and Sluyter is evident in the work. Moreover, through the integration of previously uncovered evidence, this book offers new perspectives and raises questions concerning the impact of racism and colonial ways of knowing on academic scholarship.
Honorable Mention: Kimberley Kinder
Kimberley Kinder for The Radical Bookstore: Counterspace for Social Movements (University of Minnesota Press, 2021) presents a new paradigm emerging in American geographic thought that is oriented toward social justice. Splendidly written, The Radical Bookstore not only offers a glimpse behind the scenes of a unique type of establishment that seeks to bring voice to marginalized peoples and perspectives, but it also challenges scholars to explore social movements through the lens of constructive activism.
2021 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
Honorable Mention: Kimberley Kinder
2021 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
Kimberley Kinder for The Radical Bookstore: Counterspace for Social Movements (University of Minnesota Press, 2021) presents a new paradigm emerging in American geographic thought that is oriented toward social justice. Splendidly written, The Radical Bookstore not only offers a glimpse behind the scenes of a unique type of establishment that seeks to bring voice to marginalized peoples and perspectives, but it also challenges scholars to explore social movements through the lens of constructive activism.
Chie Sakakibara
Chie Sakakibara, Whale Snow: Iñupiat, Climate Change, and Multispecies Resilience in Arctic Alaska, University of Arizona Press, 2020
2020 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
Chie Sakakibara
2020 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
Chie Sakakibara, Whale Snow: Iñupiat, Climate Change, and Multispecies Resilience in Arctic Alaska, University of Arizona Press, 2020
Julie Guthman
Julie Guthman, Wilted: Pathogens, Chemicals, and the Fragile Future of the Strawberry Industry, University of California Press, 2019
2019 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
Julie Guthman
2019 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
Julie Guthman, Wilted: Pathogens, Chemicals, and the Fragile Future of the Strawberry Industry, University of California Press, 2019
Martin Doyle
Martin Doyle, The Source: How Rivers Made America and America Remade its Rivers, W.W. Norton, 2018 |
2018 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
Martin Doyle
2018 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
Martin Doyle, The Source: How Rivers Made America and America Remade its Rivers, W.W. Norton, 2018 |
Julie Michelle Klinger
Julie Michelle Klinger, Rare Earth Frontiers: From Terrestrial Subsoils to Lunar Landscapes, Cornell University Press, 2017
2017 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
Julie Michelle Klinger
2017 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
Julie Michelle Klinger, Rare Earth Frontiers: From Terrestrial Subsoils to Lunar Landscapes, Cornell University Press, 2017
Eric Sheppard
Eric Sheppard, University of California, Los Angeles
2016 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
Eric Sheppard
2016 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
Eric Sheppard, University of California, Los Angeles
Christopher Sneddon
Christopher Sneddon, Concrete Revolution: Large Dams, Cold War Geopolitics, and the US Bureau of Reclamation, The University of Chicago Press
2015 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
Christopher Sneddon
2015 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
Christopher Sneddon, Concrete Revolution: Large Dams, Cold War Geopolitics, and the US Bureau of Reclamation, The University of Chicago Press
Matthew Gandy
Matthew Gandy, The Fabric of Space: Water, Modernity and the Urban Imagination, MIT Press.
2014 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
Matthew Gandy
2014 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
Matthew Gandy, The Fabric of Space: Water, Modernity and the Urban Imagination, MIT Press.
Stuart Elden
2009 Stuart Elden, Terror and Territory, The Spatial Extent of Sovereignty, University of Minnesota Press.
2013 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
Stuart Elden
2013 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
2009 Stuart Elden, Terror and Territory, The Spatial Extent of Sovereignty, University of Minnesota Press.
Richard Schroeder
Richard Schroeder, Africa After Apartheid: South Africa, Race and Nation in Tanzania, Indiana University Press
2012 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
Richard Schroeder
2012 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
Richard Schroeder, Africa After Apartheid: South Africa, Race and Nation in Tanzania, Indiana University Press
Martin Dodge and Rob Kitchin
Martin Dodge and Rob Kitchin, Code/Space: Software and Everyday Life, MIT Press.
2011 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
Martin Dodge and Rob Kitchin
2011 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
Martin Dodge and Rob Kitchin, Code/Space: Software and Everyday Life, MIT Press.
Alison Mountz
Alison Mountz, Seeking Asylum: Human Smuggling and Bureaucracy at the Border, University of Minnesota Press.
2010 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
Alison Mountz
2010 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
Alison Mountz, Seeking Asylum: Human Smuggling and Bureaucracy at the Border, University of Minnesota Press.
James A. Tyner
James A. Tyner, War, Violence, and Population: Making the Body Count, Guilford Press
2009 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
James A. Tyner
2009 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
James A. Tyner, War, Violence, and Population: Making the Body Count, Guilford Press
Robin Leichenko and Karen O'Brien
Robin Leichenko and Karen O’Brien, Environmental Change and Globalization: Double Exposures, New York: Oxford University Press
2008 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
Robin Leichenko and Karen O'Brien
2008 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
Robin Leichenko and Karen O’Brien, Environmental Change and Globalization: Double Exposures, New York: Oxford University Press
Diana K. Davis
Diana K. Davis, Resurrecting the Granary of Rome, Athens, OH: Ohio University Press/Swallow Press
2007 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
Diana K. Davis
2007 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
Diana K. Davis, Resurrecting the Granary of Rome, Athens, OH: Ohio University Press/Swallow Press
Laura Pulido
2012 Laura Pulido, Laura Barraclough and Wendy Cheng, A People’s Guide to Los Angeles, University of California Press.
2006 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
Laura Pulido
2006 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
2012 Laura Pulido, Laura Barraclough and Wendy Cheng, A People’s Guide to Los Angeles, University of California Press.
Allen J. Scott
Allen J. Scott. On Hollywood: The Place, The Industry, Princeton University Press
2005 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
Allen J. Scott
2005 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
Allen J. Scott. On Hollywood: The Place, The Industry, Princeton University Press
Cindi Katz
Cindi Katz, Growing up Global: Economic Restructuring and Children’s Everyday Lives, University of Minnesota Press
2004 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
Cindi Katz
2004 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
Cindi Katz, Growing up Global: Economic Restructuring and Children’s Everyday Lives, University of Minnesota Press
Michael Williams
Michael Williams, Deforesting The Earth: From Prehistory to Global Crisis, University of Chicago Press
2003 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
Michael Williams
2003 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
Michael Williams, Deforesting The Earth: From Prehistory to Global Crisis, University of Chicago Press
Aharon Kellerman
Aharon Kellerman, The Internet on Earth: A Geography of Information, John Wiley & Sons
2002 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
Aharon Kellerman
2002 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
Aharon Kellerman, The Internet on Earth: A Geography of Information, John Wiley & Sons
John Clarke
John Clarke, Land, Power, and Economics on the Frontier of Upper Canada, McGill-Queen’s University Press
2001 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
John Clarke
2001 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
John Clarke, Land, Power, and Economics on the Frontier of Upper Canada, McGill-Queen’s University Press
George L. Henderson
George L. Henderson, California and the Fictions of Capital, Oxford University Press (published in 1999)
2000 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
George L. Henderson
2000 AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography
George L. Henderson, California and the Fictions of Capital, Oxford University Press (published in 1999)