Annual Meeting

Little Known Tampa: Culturally Diverse and Exciting!

December 18, 2018

When you come to Tampa, you’ll find examples of good planning, fabulous natural areas, and appealing urban spaces. Here are some things to keep in mind:

Florida and the Tampa Bay area are—or at least were—national leaders in growth management

Beginning in the late 1970s and culminating in the Growth Management Act of 1985, the state of Florida had one of the nation’s most fully articulated statewide planning regimes. Perhaps because Floridians had experienced firsthand the problems of rapid growth without much planning, the state legislature created measures to ensure that each county and municipality engaged in long term planning, that large regional projects were reviewed by regional planning agencies, and that state officials would be charged with upholding plans. Transportation, water resources, and coastal concerns were all taken into account when new developments were proposed. Growth management hardly stopped development – Florida’s population grew from 9.7 million in 1980 to just over 19 million in 2012, with new single family housing accommodating much of that growth. But under the state’s growth management laws, some of the sins of the 1960s and 1970s – houses constructed without attendant municipal services in place, unrestrained draining of wetlands, and inattention to water resource limits – were contained. Unfortunately, important parts of these Growth Management laws were overturned in 2011. The full impact of this retreat has not yet been felt; thanks to the recession, demand for new construction has been limited. But once demand picks up, the flight from comprehensive planning is likely to be felt, especially in the less urban parts of the state.

Tampa Demographics
White or Caucasian (including White Hispanic)	62.9%
(Non-Hispanic White or Caucasian)	46.3%
Black or African-American	26.2%
Hispanic or Latino (of any race)	23.1%
Asian	3.4%
Native American or Native Alaskan	0.4%
Pacific Islander or Native Hawaiian	0.1%
Two or more races (Multiracial)	3.2%
Source: US Census Bureau

Tampa has an industrial history

Incorporated in 1849, Tampa, unlike many Sunbelt cities, emerged as an industrial center. Between 1865 and World War II, Tampa was a key center of the cigar industry. The cities (and now neighborhoods within Tampa) of Ybor City and West Tampa both developed around cigar manufacturing, drawing streams of immigrants to work in the factories. Tampa has a tradition of union activism having experienced several general strikes in the early decades of the last century. Its racially and ethnically diverse population has a tradition of immigrant social clubs and mutual benefit societies that provided cultural and material resources to working class residents. The built legacy of these traditions can be found throughout these communities. The Cuban Club, the German-American Club and the Italian Club are a few of the early 20th century establishments whose buildings have been preserved. And the former cigar factories remain distinctive features of the central Tampa built environment. While some of these sit vacant, others have been repurposed for other industrial uses or converted to condos and offices. Those interested in exploring Tampa history can do so in Ybor City, either by taking advantage of the programs of the Ybor City Museum (www.ybormuseum.org ), or by strolling through the neighborhood.

Tampa has rediscovered its downtown waterfront

Among the most striking characteristics of our area are its water features. Parts of Tampa and all of Pinellas County (location of St. Petersburg) are defined by their rivers, bays and oceans. But until recently, Tampa was largely cut off from its waterfront. In an earlier era, river and bayfront areas were dominated by industrial, port and transportation infrastructure, but as those uses have receded (the Port of Tampa remains quite active, but other waterfront industries are gone), Tampa was slow to recognize the value of its waterfront for recreation and the development of other amenities. One of the major commercial developments in the downtown area, the Channelside shopping/entertainment center, is located directly on the water, next to the Tampa port facilities, and it has been ingeniously designed so that those visiting the development have no contact with the water at all – no access, no vistas. Perhaps that helps explain why the development has gone bankrupt.

But more recent downtown planning has embraced the waterfront location. A “Riverwalk” has been under development now across two mayoral administrations; a recent federal grant will accelerate its completion (www.thetampariverwalk.com ). Those of you visiting downtown Tampa will have the opportunity to enjoy the water at some new locations. The Tampa Bay History Center opens onto a waterfront plaza (https://www.tampabayhistorycenter.org/ ). The newly renovated Curtis Hixon Park, at the other end of the downtown peninsula, is a well-designed, inviting urban space flanked by the newly built Tampa Museum of Art (https://tampamuseum.org/ ). With food kiosks, fountains and children’s play areas, it’s the sort of urban gathering point that this city has lacked for too long. These new spaces signal the success of fledgling coalitions of elected officials, civic activists and business leaders who share an appreciation for appealing design and pedestrian-friendly urban environments.

Ride the TECO trolley

Like too many Sunbelt cities, Tampa once had a dense network of light rail lines, most of which were bought up by bus companies and dismantled by the late 1940s. But a trolley line was resurrected recently; it runs a loop connecting the downtown/Channelside area with Ybor City (https://www.tecolinestreetcar.org/). The embattled trolley line has struggled to maintain ridership; critics claim its empty cars are proof that this region will never embrace mass transit while defenders note that its limited route makes it useful mostly to visitors or the rare resident whose home and work happen to be near one if its stops. But those of you staying at one of the conference hotels are well positioned to use the trolley for your explorations.

There’s much in this area that transcends the generic – the newly opened bike and pedestrian bridge that traverses Tampa Bay along the Courtney Campbell Causeway; one of baseball’s best teams (the Tampa Bay Rays) playing in one of baseball’s worst stadiums (Tropicana Field); the annual invasion of the city by sea led by business and civic leaders dressed as pirates (the Gasparilla Festival) and the annual crowning of a “Strawberry Queen” in nearby Plant City. If you want to learn more about what the region offers, you can read all about it the highly regarded Tampa Bay Times (www.tampabay.com), one of the last independently owned metro area newspapers. We urge you to explore the area and learn that it has a diverse array of historic places, quirky areas, and scenic spots. ♦

Elizabeth Strom
University of South Florida

DOI: 10.14433/2013.0024

New Books for Geographers

New Books: December 2018

December 15, 2018

Every month the AAG compiles a list of newly-published books in geography and related areas. Some are selected for review in the AAG Review of Books.

Publishers are welcome to send new volumes to the Editor-in-Chief (Kent Mathewson, Editor-in-Chief, AAG Review of Books, Department of Geography and Anthropology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803).

Anyone interested in reviewing these or other titles should also contact the Editor-in-Chief.

PLEASE NOTE: Due to current public health policies which have prompted the closing of most offices, we are unable to access incoming books at this time. We are working on a solution during this transition and will continue our new books processing as soon as we can. In the meantime, please feel free to peruse previous books from our archived lists.

December 2018

Alfred Wegener: Science, Exploration, and the Theory of Continental Drift by Mott T. Greene (Johns Hopkins University Press 2018)

Bodies as Evidence: Security, Knowledge, and Power by Mark Maguire, Ursula Rao, Nils Zurawski (eds.) (Duke University Press 2018)

Coffee: From Bean to Barista by Robert W. Thurston (Rowman and Littlefield 2018)

Doreen Massey: Critical Dialogues by Marion Werner, Jamie Peck, Rebecca Lave, Brett Christophers (Agenda Publishing 2018)

The Doreen Massey Reader by Brett Christophers, Rebecca Lave, Jamie Peck, Marion Werner (eds.) (Agenda Publishing 2018)

The Geography of Scientific Collaboration by Agnieszka Olechnicka, Adam Ploszaj, Dorota Celińska-Janowicz (Routledge 2018)

Giving Back: Research and Reciprocity in Indigenous Settings by R. D. K. Herman (Oregon State University Press 2018)

Greening the City: Urban Landscapes in the Twentieth Century by Dorothee Brantz and Sonja Duempelmann (eds.) (University of Virginia Press 2019)

Handbook on the Geographies of Corruption by Barney Warf (ed.) (Edward Elgar Publishing 2018)

Metropolitan Denver: Growth and Change in the Mile High City by Andrew R. Goetz and E. Eric Boschmann (University of Pennsylvania Press 2018)

Neighborhood by Emily Talen (Oxford University Press 2018)

Other Geographies: The Influences of Michael Watts by Sharad Chari, Susanne Freidberg, Vinay Gidwani, Jesse Ribot, Wendy Wolford (eds.) (Wiley-Blackwell 2017)

Portuguese Decolonization in the Indian Ocean World by Pamila Gupta (Bloomsbury Academic 2018)

The Promise of the East: Nazi Hopes and Genocide, 1939-43 by Christian Ingrao (Polity 2019)

The Torrid Zone: Caribbean Colonization and Cultural Interaction in the Long Seventeenth Centuryby L. H. Roper (ed.) (University of South Carolina Press 2018)

Unsettled Waters: Rights, Law, and Identity in the American West by Eric P. Perramond (University of California Press 2018)

WikiLeaking: The Ethics of Secrecy and Exposure by Christian Cotton and Robert Arp (eds.) (Open Court 2019)

A World of Many Worlds by Marisol de la Cadena, Mario Blaser (eds.) (Duke University Press 2018)

Dorothy Drummond

It is with sadness that we note the passing of geography professor and advocate Dorothy Drummond on November 30, 2018. At the age of 89, she was traveling on her seventh trip to China to conduct research when she fell at the museum for the Three Gorges Project. After surgery in Hong Kong, she sustained severe head trauma and passed away peacefully with her friend and daughter by her side.

Drummond began her career as an editorial assistant for the Geographical Review, the flagship journal of the American Geographical Society. She then went on to live in Terre Haute, Indiana where she was an affiliate faculty member of Indiana State University and an adjunct at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College. In 1983 she founded the geography non-profit, Geography Educators’ Network of Indiana, following her husband’s death in 1982, and remained a long standing board member of the organization.

Born in San Diego in 1928, she held an undergraduate degree from Valparaiso University (1949) and a masters degree in geography from Northwestern University (1951). A world traveler, she lived in Burma during 1957 while both her and her husband were Fulbright Scholars. She also traveled widely in Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East, and had visited large parts of Central and South America, Australia, New Zealand, and China. She used this experience and her geographical expertise to author and co-author four World Cultures textbooks. She was included as a GeoInspiration in Directions Magazine in 2016.

In addition to her work with the Geography Educators’ Network of Indiana, Dorothy was active in service to several non-profit organizations including United Campus Ministries and Citizens for Better Government and a respected member of the Terre Haute community. She was scheduled to present a paper at the 2019 AAG Annual Meeting on the historical settlement of ancient Israel as well as appear on a panel sponsored by the Bible Geography Specialty Group on curbing violence in the Middle East.

The information above is courtesy of the Terre Haute Tribune Star

See All Memorials

President's Column

Paradise Lost, Global Warming Report, and Geographers Speak Up

November 30, 2018

The 2019 Annual Meeting of the AAG is shaping up, and I thank those who responded to participate in the three featured themes, Health and GIScience, Human Rights, and Physical Geography in Environmental Science, in addition to the many independent abstracts and sessions submitted. Program committees and AAG staff, to whom I offer my deepest appreciation, are now sorting abstracts and assembling sessions from the more than 5,000 paper abstracts submitted. Thus far, we have 306 paper abstracts and 71 sessions submitted in Health and GIScience; in the Human Rights Theme we have 201 paper abstracts and 82 sessions; and in Physical Geography in Environmental Science there are 233 paper abstracts and 42 proposed sessions. Although the call for paper sessions and abstracts is now closed, participants may still edit their entries until 23 February 2019. Additionally, the Call for Posters is open until 31 January 2019, and poster session organizing is open until 14 February 2019. I look forward to seeing you in Washington, D.C., April 3-7, 2019!

Smoke plume from the fast-moving Woolsey Fire encroaching on Malibu on Nov. 9, 2018, as residents evacuate along the Pacific Coast Highway (CC by-SA 4.0 by Cyclonebiskit)

This week marked two landmark accomplishments. The first accomplishment is that fire-fighting crews have brought the Camp Fire in my beloved northern California to 100 percent containment. The city of Paradise, (population around 26,000), is devastated along with the smaller communities of Magalia and Concow in the largest and deadliest wildfire in California history, and the largest fire in the U.S. in 100 years. 88 people are now known to have lost their lives, with nearly 200 still missing. Paradise is on the doorstep of Chico where I went to school, and families are hurting, with hundreds homeless, 18,000 buildings destroyed, and more than 62,000 hectares scorched (an area bigger than the city of Chicago). Schools across northern California, all the way to San Francisco, were closed due to the smoke from the fires, and only recently are re-opening. A part of southern California also burned in tandem to the Camp Fire, with the Woolsey Fire in Ventura and Los Angeles Counties consuming over 39,000 hectares, an area roughly the size of Denver. The fire destroyed 1,500 buildings, and killed three people. It was brought under containment shortly before the Camp Fire. Three firefighters were injured in each fire, respectively. We thank Cal Fire and all of the responders from other jurisdictions who assisted. Cal Fire provides web based GIS fire mapping and incident tracking, an important geographic information science benefit offered to the public. And the first response from the White House was unbridled ignorance about California forests and blame wrongly cast upon California State forest management, before and after a Presidential site visit. Our dear leader in the White House suggested forest floor raking as the answer. This is lunacy. In reality, 45.8 percent of all land in CA is federally owned, and KTVU TV reported that 57 percent of California forests are federally managed, with 2 percent managed by the state, and the remaining 39 percent are under private management, where most of the fire losses have occurred. Most of the land that burned does not look like Trump’s imagined Jellystone (apologies to Hanna-Barbera Productions) to be tended by Finnish raking teams, it is Mediterranean scrubland and chaparral, mixed with suburban neighborhoods. As the Camp Fire hit close to home for my family and community, the Woolsey Fire hit even closer to home for Past AAG President Glen MacDonald, who with his family had to evacuate from their home. Dr. MacDonald made a bold public statement calling out the U.S. President’s misinformation about California forest management, and noted the powerful connection between increasingly frequent and large wildfires, changing seasonality, and climate change. Now, flooding is beginning to take over the Camp Fire site. Although Giving Tuesday is past, and I do not often break the “fourth wall” to make personal appeals, please do consider contributing to the charities of your choice to assist wildfire victims.

Leslie-Ann Dupigny-Giroux (Photo courtesy U. of Vermont)

The second landmark accomplishment this week was in climate change communication: Federal scientists at 13 Federal agencies partnering with independent, university, and research scientists were able to complete and publish a clear and sobering report on Climate Change, the Fourth National Assessment, reporting mandated by Congress since 1990. The report covers 12 areas of impact and actions. When reporters asked Trump about the report, Trump said he “saw” it, read “parts” of it, and it is “fine.” A follow-up question about the findings of negative economic impacts elicited his response that he does not believe it. This is completely off the rails to deny, without any counter evidence, his own administration’s scientists’ dire findings on global warming that will affect our economy, our environment, our food, our water, and our health. He claims that our water and air are at their “cleanest” by ignoring the very legislation that he has attempted to disassemble, that allowed air and water quality to improve over the last decades. If our commander in chief will not wake up, we cannot wait for that day, we must wake up and act ourselves. Geography Professor Lesley-Ann Dupigny-Giroux, Northeast Chapter lead author on the Fourth Climate Assessment, spoke out in an interview on the report. She notes that changes in seasonality and in coastal environments are vulnerabilities in the Northeast, the regional report she led. She also notes a key takeaway that mitigation and adaptation measures being put in place offer hope and are critical. Dr. Dupigny-Giroux also notes that even if greenhouse gas inputs stop today, global warming will not level off anytime soon due to greenhouse gases already accumulated in the atmosphere. Climate change matters. The free press matters. Peer-reviewed science matters. The freedom to practice, communicate, and benefit from science matters.

An ancient Roman aqueduct leading to ancient Carthage (Tunis) is presented by CAJG meeting local organizing chair Dr. Mabrouk Boughdiri, professor at the University of Carthage, earth science department to field group. (Photo courtesy Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach)

I end this column with hope. We must work hard to get there, however. In the same month that a CNN White House correspondent had his press credentials stripped by the White House, but later restored by a federal judge, as noted in last month’s column, a Washington Post reporter was brutally murdered in the Saudi Embassy in Istanbul. The White House has repeatedly called members of the press the enemy of the people and has chosen to believe Saudi government denials of involvement in the murder, over our own national intelligence community findings otherwise. I travelled to Tunisia this month to give a keynote in the 10^th Anniversary of a Springer/Nature Journal, the Arabian Journal of Geosciences, the flagship journal of the Saudi Society for Geosciences. (Full disclosure, I am an AJGS associate editor for Geography, Geoarchaeology, and Geotourism.) What I witnessed at this international meeting of nearly 500 participants was enthusiastic freedom of expression, camaraderie, academic diplomacy, thoughtful discussion and debate, student encouragement and empowerment, and science communication. In my keynote comments, I thanked the founding editor for giving voice to scientists across the region for the past 10 years with the journal, and reminded all of the right for scientists to practice, to share their science, and to gather and collaborate internationally. And at this meeting, all were treated as welcome, and women were featured speakers in addition to men. I am grateful for the new friends I have met, the outstanding papers I heard, the excellent field trips to enhance our teaching, and the new research opportunities and ideas we all shared. (Tunisia hosted the International Geographical Union meeting in 2008). This week, Tunisian citizens freely rose up to speak against the visit of the Saudi Crown Prince, in protest of the murder of Journalist Jamal Khashoggi. So, our Geoscience conference was not a singular or staged event in free speech. I am encouraged by Tunisians lighting a candle in the darkness, and thank our Tunisian hosts for their warm welcome, sincere hospitality, and many kindnesses during the meetings, and look forward to returning, Inshallah.

Finally, there are two upcoming events related to Science and Human Rights to observe in December: The 30^th Anniversary of World AIDS Day will be observed on 1 December 2018; and Human Rights Day will mark the 70^th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on 10 December 2018. Cherish and protect our First Amendment and our human rights. Take part, speak up, and make a difference with Geography!

Wishing you a peaceful and rejuvenating holiday season,

— Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach
President, American Association of Geographers
Professor of Geography and Fellow of the C.B. Smith Sr. Centennial Chair in U.S. Mexico Relations, University of Texas at Austin

Please share your ideas with me at: slbeach(at)austin(dot)utexas(dot)edu

DOI: 10.14433/2017.0048

New Books for Geographers

New Books: November 2018

November 15, 2018

Every month the AAG compiles a list of newly-published books in geography and related areas. Some are selected for review in the AAG Review of Books.

Anyone interested in reviewing these or other titles should also contact the Editor-in-Chief.

November 2018

Anarchist Education and the Modern School: A Francisco Ferrer Reader by Francisco Ferrer (author); Mark Bray and Robert H. Haworth (eds.) (PM Press 2018)

Barcelona by Gary McDonogh, Sergi Martínez-Rigol (Polity Books 2018)

Bodies as Evidence: Security, Knowledge, and Power by Mark Maguire, Ursula Rao, Nils Zurawski (eds.) (Duke University Press 2018)

Gringolandia: Lifestyle Migration under Late Capitalism by Matthew Hayes (University of Minnesota Press 2018)

A Living Past: Environmental Histories of Modern Latin America by John Soluri, Claudia Leal, José Augusto Pádua (eds.) (Berghahn Books 2018)

The New Authoritarianism: Trump, Populism, and the Tyranny of Experts by Salvatore Babones (Polity 2018)

The New Faces of Fascism: Populism and the Far Right by Enzo Traverso (Verso 2019)

Sea Otters: A History by Richard Ravalli (University of Nebraska Press 2018)

Shaping the Postwar Landscape: New Profiles from the Pioneers of American Landscape Design Projectby Charles A. Birnbaum and Scott Craver (eds.) (University of Virginia Press 2018)

This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy by Matthew Karp (Harvard University Press 2018)

Vernacular Latin Americanisms: War, the Market, and the Making of a Discipline by Fernando Degiovanni (University of Pittsburgh Press 2018)

Visualizing Posthuman Conservation in the Age of the Anthropocene by Amy D. Propen (The Ohio State University Press 2018)

A World of Many Worlds by Marisol de la Cadena, Mario Blaser (eds.) (Duke University Press 2018)

Newsletters

Newsletter – November 2018

November 6, 2018

PRESIDENT’S COLUMN

Watershed Moments

By Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach

vote sticker i voted 3002776434_643d076694_z-150x150 “It is encouraging to be receiving AAG Members’ thoughtful geography abstracts for the AAG Annual Meeting major themes: Geospatial Health Research; Geography and Human Rights; and Physical Geography in Environmental Science. Thank you. There is still time to participate… While you are in Washington, visit your legislators, share your science, speak up and be a part of the change: make a difference with Geography. And on Tuesday 6 November, make a difference with your citizenship: VOTE.”

Continue Reading.

ANNUAL MEETING

Additional Theme Announced for #aagDC

Deepwater_horizon_beach_cleanup500-300x200 The AAG Council and Executive Director have announced a third theme for the 2019 AAG Annual Meeting: Physical Geography in Environmental Science. This theme joins two others, Geography, GIScience, and Health: Building an International Geospatial Health Research Network (IGHRN) and Geographies of Human Rights: The Right to Benefit from Scientific Progress, as a way to focus the meeting.

Learn more about the meeting themes.

FocusOnNewOrleansLogo

“Focus on Washington, DC and the Mid Atlantic” is an ongoing series curated by the Local Arrangements Committee to provide insight on and understanding of the geographies of Washington, DC and the greater Mid Atlantic region in preparation for the 2019 AAG Annual Meeting.

Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center

Amidst the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge in Dorchester County, Maryland lies the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center. The Center celebrates the legacy of Harriet Tubman, who spent her childhood enslaved in the area before assisting over 100 African American slaves to freedom in the mid 1800s. Catherine W. Cooper provides an overview of Tubman’s life and the landscape she impacted.

Read more.

Registration rates increase for #aagDC November 8!

Abstracts for paper presentations are due November 8, while abstracts for poster presentations are due January 31. All abstracts can be edited until February 23.

ASSOCIATION NEWS

Geography Awareness Week is Almost here!

Geography Awareness Week, held the third week of November each year, will run from November 11-17, 2018. This year’s theme is Migration. Get involved in Geography Awareness Week with some of our suggested activities. Don’t forget to share your involvement with us on social media with the hashtags #GeoWeek or #GeographyAwarenessWeek.

Find activities and resources.

AAG Announces Launch of Geography.com

AAG and Esri have teamed up to create geography.com, a website designed for educational purposes and the promotion of the discipline. It is intended as an outreach tool for site visitors to learn more about what geography is, what geography offers, and career opportunities available in the field. The intended audience includes the general public and students (high school and undergraduates), as well as educators, parents, and federal agencies or other organizations seeking information about geography.

Learn more about the website.

Dwayne Parks Joins AAG Staff as Accounting Specialist

The AAG is pleased to welcome Dwayne Parks to fill the role of Accounting Specialist. Dwayne brings more than 17 years of experience working with organizational data to the association headquarters in D.C. Previously, he has worked in a variety of fields including science, legal, and healthcare.

Read more about Dwayne.

MEMBER NEWS

Profiles of Professional Geographers

Douglas Gress

Douglas Gress, Professor of Economic Geography, Seoul National University, has spent the majority of his professional career outside of his home country of the United States. In this month’s Profile he offers some advice not just about geography careers, but also about living abroad and being prepared to move while working to obtain a dream job.

Learn more about geography careers.

November Member Updates

The latest news about AAG Members.

The UK Academy of Social Sciences conferred the award of Fellow on Mei-Po Kwan in their 2018 class of social scientists. Kwan, the only US geographer to receive the award this year, was chosen for her “significant contributions to theory, methods and practice in urban, GIScience, mobility and health research.” More about the award.

In early October, Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton issued a certificate of commendation to the John R. Borchert Map Library at University of Minnesota for its work in preserving and providing access to historical aerial photography of the state. The library provides online access to 270 different sets of 1923-1991 historic photos covering Minnesota’s 87 counties. The Map Library is named for John R. Borchert, AAG president in 1968-69. Borchert was professor of geography at the University of Minnesota (1949-1989) and member of the National Academy of Sciences. Explore the library.

RESOURCES AND OPPORTUNITIES

Upcoming Awards Deadlines – Nominate Deserving Geographers!

honors and awards December 31st marks the deadline for multiple awards to honor and support geographers in all stages of their careers. Members may nominate their colleagues for the Wilbanks Award for transformational research in geography or the Glenda Laws Award for social justice as well as the AAG E. Willard and Ruby S. Miller Award for contributions to geography in teaching or research. Students can apply for AAG Dissertation Research Grants and the Hess Community College Geography Scholarship. Those with a geography career are invited to apply for an AAG Research Grant. Nominations are also being solicited for a variety of books in geography awards including the Globe Book Award, the Jackson Prize, and the Meridian Book Award.

Follow the AAG Awards Calendar for Deadlines.

Take Time Out This Summer for Professional Development

The AAG’s Geography Faculty Development Alliance (GFDA) will once again offer a valuable in-depth opportunity for early career professionals and department leaders in Geography to learn and engage during its annual workshops June 23-29, 2019, at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The shorter four-day workshop for department leaders (June 26-29) will overlap with the week-long conference for early career attendees providing a full career spectrum of exercises and activities. These workshops are part of AAG’s membership resources, which also include its Jobs and Careers Center and many other programs.

Learn more.

IN MEMORIAM

Marilyn Sue O’Hara

The AAG is saddened to hear of the sudden passing of Marilyn Sue O’Hara, also known as Marilyn Ruiz on September 30, 2018. O’Hara was a Clinical Professor of Pathobiology at the University of Illinois. She obtained a PhD in geography in 1995 from the University of Florida. Her work largely centered around the spatial diffusion of disease and epidemiology.

Read more.

PUBLICATIONS

Read the November 2018 Issue of the ‘Annals of the AAG’

Annals-cvr-2017

The AAG is pleased to announce that Volume 108, Issue 6 (November 2018) of the Annals of the American Association of Geographers is now available online. The November issue contains a special forum: Context and Uncertainty in Geography and GIScience.

Full article listing available.

New Books in Geography — September and October 2018 Available

New Books in Geography illustration of stack of books

From places like the Arctic and Africa to people like Lévi-Strauss and Doreen Massey, the topics are varied on the latest list of new books in geography! Recently released books are compiled from various publishers each month. The October list features topics such as citizenship, drugs, plants, and fire safety. Some of these titles are later reviewed in the AAG Review of Books.

Browse the list of September new books.

Browse the list of October new books.

Fall 2018 Issue of ‘The AAG Review of Books’ Now Available

Volume 6, Issue 4 of The AAG Review of Books has now been published online. This quarterly online journal publishes scholarly reviews of recent books related to geography, public policy and international affairs. A review essay this quarter by Gerry Kearns reflects on Ireland’s Brexit Problem.

Read the reviews.

GEOGRAPHERS IN THE NEWS

EVENTS CALENDAR

Submit News to the AAG Newsletter. To share your news, email us!

President's Column

Watershed Moments

November 5, 2018

It is time to show our democracy, our humanity, our compassion, and our resolve. It is time to say no to the murders of journalists, worshippers in synagogues, African American churchgoers, schoolchildren, theatergoers, yoga practitioners, and disco dancers. It is time to VOTE. Please take a moment of silence for all victims of ever-senseless and hate-fueled violence inspired by the rhetoric of the current U.S. Administration…

…Thank you.

I embrace the privilege to write this column each month, a right to free expression for which Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi died. VOTE.

I am honored for the opportunity to take part in AAG Regional Division Meetings this fall, and am grateful for the freedom of assembly, a right for which 11 worshippers died in the Pittsburgh Tree of Life Synagogue. VOTE.

Now, the U.S. President believes he can change the Constitution by executive order, to erase the birthright of American citizenship. Furthermore, the Administration is working to erase transgender identities, lift protections for endangered species, and is sending National Guard troops to an imaginary invasion at the U.S.-Mexico border. VOTE.

Remember to speak out against alternative facts, to light the candle in the dark. During Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s powerful testimony in the Kavanaugh Confirmation Hearing, Sen. Patrick Leahy stated “Bravery is Contagious.” VOTE.

When you exercise your right and civic duty to vote on Tuesday 6 November, remember that our great grandmothers fought for that right in suffrage. Communities today still fight voter suppression. This is a watershed moment in our history, it is now or never for freedom of expression, for civil and human rights, for the environment, for the future of the planet. Of course, your choices are your own: be heard. VOTE.

Deepwater Horizon beach cleanup. (Photo by National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health)

Meanwhile in the Colorado River Watershed we are not safe either, and are not being helped by a gutted and demoralized EPA…It is humbling to live in the very modern city of Austin, Texas, with the advantages of modern water treatment and sewer systems, to receive a 5 am text with a boil water order for our metropolitan area of nearly a million citizens. Our water treatment system was overwhelmed by flood waters traveling down the Colorado River Watershed. This 50 year magnitude storm event took out a 49 year old bridge in the Hill Country. Austin and its suburbs were without clean tap water for over a week and we still face restrictions of not being able to water yards, fill pools, or wash cars. Such a first world problem with regards to pools and cars, and water conservation is the increasing norm for drought-prone central Texas. Imagine never having clean water or sanitation in the first place. 844 million of the world’s citizens today have no access to safe water, and 2.3 billion people live without access to sanitation. And in the U.S., Food and Water Watch notes that half a million households had their water shut off for the inability to pay their water bills in 2016. How do we ensure water security, both from an economic and humanitarian perspective, and from a production capacity perspective? This is a grand challenge for Geographers to work on. As climate change continues to bring more extreme events, our infrastructure is being overwhelmed. If this is the case in one of the most developed nations on the planet, how will less well-off countries cope with looming environmental challenges? In the U.S., the Trump Administration rolled back protections for clean water in 2017, relaxing limits on toxic water pollution from coal-fired power plant ash, among other senseless environmental protection rollbacks. VOTE.

It is encouraging to be receiving AAG Members’ thoughtful geography abstracts for the AAG Annual Meeting major themes: Geospatial Health Research; Geography and Human Rights; and Physical Geography in Environmental Science. Thank you. There is still time to participate the paper abstract deadline has been extended to 8 November 2018; Poster abstracts are due 31 January 2018. Consider submitting your research to be presented at the AAG Annual Meeting in Washington DC in April 2019. While you are in Washington, visit your legislators, share your science, speak up and be a part of the change: make a difference with Geography. And on Tuesday 6 November, make a difference with your citizenship: VOTE.

Please share your thoughts with me at slbeach (at) austin (dot) utexas (dot) edu.

— Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach
Professor and C.B. Smith Sr. Fellow in U.S.-Mexico Relations
Geography and the Environment, University of Texas at Austin

DOI: 10.14433/2017.0047

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Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center

November 1, 2018

“I never ran my train off track and I never lost a passenger.” Harriet Tubman was fond of saying this in her later years, but during the 1850s when she was actively escorting enslaved people north to freedom using the Underground Railroad (UGRR) network, she was taking grave risks with her own life and liberty as well as that of the people she led. The Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center (HTVC) tells the story of this renowned “conductor” with her words and with exhibits providing insights into her early years and the historic events of her times. Sites and artifacts of the UGRR are limited. After all, its success depended on secrecy.

Sculpture by Brendan O’Neill, Sr. The sculptor depicts Tubman at about age 30, approximately when she achieved her freedom. The bust and its pedestal are five feet tall, just Tubman’s height. The scars from whippings stand out on the back of her neck in O’Neill’s sculpture. (Photo by C.W. Cooper)

The history of slavery and of the UGRR is known. This HTVC puts a person, Harriet Tubman, at the center of the historic story. We know where she grew up and the work she did. After she escaped to free territory we know of a number of her trips back to her home region, and we know about many of the family members and friends she helped to escape. Some of the places and people that harbored her and the people with her are known. Most are not. But a drive through this rural landscape of “Chesapeake Bay country” can provide a sense of the woman and the times. Sensitivity to this landscape can help the visitor imagine and understand the events and the people who risked so much to gain so much.

The Site Is the Setting

Highway sign at approach to Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center (Photo by C.W. Cooper)

The HTVC in Dorchester County is approximately a two-hour drive from Washington D.C. to the Eastern Shore of Maryland – that is, east of the Chesapeake Bay. The county seat of Dorchester County is Cambridge on the Choptank River. The Cambridge courthouse was the scene of slave auctions and almost the scene of auctions of some of Tubman’s family members.

The HTVC is not at Harriet Tubman’s birthplace, like many national park sites, nor at another notable place in her life. But the landscape around the HTVC and across the broader region is an integral part of her story. The HTVC property is carved from Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge (BNWR), so the setting is protected. The farm fields, woodlands, impoundments and open waters of the refuge provide cover and habitat for the migratory waterfowl and other creatures and give a sense of the mid-nineteenth century landscape.

The land of Tubman’s youth is the coastal plain of Delmarva, a region of farming, timbering, marshes, and rivers. Dorchester County is overwhelmingly low lying and flat. The waterways and the land peninsulas (“necks” in this region) intertwine like the fingers of clasped hands. Places that are nearby as the crow flies may be miles apart as the road winds. Woodland trees are not especially tall, but the woods are thick, and the ground cover can be dense. In marshy areas, “wetlands,” there may by little hillocks of dry land. The roads are now paved and the field crops may differ, but imagination may help the visitor form an impression of former times.

The Historic Setting

Students studying the period leading to the Civil War typically concentrate on the national political scene of presidential elections and federal legislation. The story of a single person leading small groups of individuals through the hazards of escape can give a different perspective to illuminate the political story.

The historic setting of the 1840s and 1850s is one of Northerners’ growing antislavery sentiment and of Southerners’ steadfast commitment to slaveholding in a primarily agrarian economy. Political parties shifted and realigned. Opinions became increasingly entrenched with successive administrations: John Tyler (following death of William Henry Harrison 1840, Whig); James K. Polk (elected 1844, Democrat); Zachary Taylor (elected 1848, Whig); Millard Fillmore (following Taylor’s death in 1850, Whig); Franklin Pierce (elected 1852, Democrat); James Buchanan (elected 1856, Democrat); and finally Abraham Lincoln, elected in 1860, Republican. Other important events: The Missouri Compromise, 1820, set the precedent that new states would be admitted to the Union in pairs, one free state and one slave state together. The Fugitive Slave Act, 1850, provided that escaped slaves found in the North must be returned. The Dred Scott decision in 1857 ruled that Dred Scott, a slave, was not a citizen and had not obtained his freedom because he had been taken from a slave state to a free state; it also essentially ruled the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional. The Lincoln-Douglas debates (1858) made Lincoln well known when he ran for the presidency. Then in April 1861 the South fired on the Union troops at Ft. Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina touching off the Civil War.

The history is the big story. But it played out in the lives of individuals on local landscapes. One such individual whose local actions illustrated the larger context is Harriet Tubman in Dorchester County on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

Harriet Tubman, the Person and Her Actions

Water, marsh grasses and woodlands in Dorchester County, Maryland (Photo by C.W. Cooper)

Harriet Tubman was born, it is thought, in 1822 near the village of Madison. She was born Araminta Ross, and was called Minty. Her parents, Ben and Harriet (Rit) were slaves owned by different, though related, people. In 1844 Harriet married John Tubman, a free African American, and about that time took her mother’s first name, Harriet (Larson, p. xvi). Tubman’s father was freed in 1840 by act of his deceased owner’s will (Larson p. 27). Tubman’s brothers remained enslaved until she conducted them to Canada in late 1854. In 1855 Ben bought Rit, then 70 years old, for $20. In pre-Civil War Dorchester County, approximately one-half of the African Americans were free.

One incident in Tubman’s childhood had lifetime repercussions. When she was about seven years old, she accompanied a slave woman of her owner’s household to make a purchase at the Bucktown store. Also at the store were another slave and his overseer. As the two men argued and the slave turned to leave, the overseer threw a two-pound counter weight at him mistakenly hitting Tubman in the head. She dropped to the floor unconscious. It was several days before she recovered, and she carried the scar, a dent in her forehead, the rest of her life. Until her death Tubman was prone to suddenly falling asleep, awakening in a few moments, and she had visions and recurring dreams.

As a youngster, aged about six, Tubman was assigned to collect the catch in muskrat traps. Muskrat is a rodent that lives in marshland, about a foot long when fully grown. The hides are most valuable when the muskrat is caught in the winter when the fur is thick. That’s when the water is cold, sometimes frozen over. Checking muskrat traps is a cold, unpleasant assignment.

Harriet’s father, Ben, worked in timbering, cutting trees and hauling the lumber to wharfs to be sent to shipbuilders in Baltimore. In her teens, Tubman worked with him. Tubman was a strong, effective worker. It was not unusual for a slave owner to hire out a slave for wages which would be paid to the owner. When she was about 25 Harriet paid her owner a fee, estimated at $50 – $60, and then for the next year she kept her wages. With her income she bought two oxen which would have boosted her wage rate.

Tubman would have known a number of people in the broader community. In the lumber camps and river docks she would have met people from beyond the immediate region. Water transport was widespread with boats docking at the wharfs of large homes as well as at the town docks. African Americans working on the boats would have brought news of a wider world. Perhaps the most valuable aspect of her varied work and locations was learning to live on the land.

The horrors of slavery were real. “Every time I saw a white man I was afraid of being carried away. I had two sisters carried away in a chain gang ― one of them left two children. We were always uneasy” (HTVC). The sculptured bust of Tubman displayed in the HTVC includes the raised scars on the back of her neck ― marks of whipping.

Harriet Tubman was determined to be free. As she said looking back in 1886, “I had reasoned this out in my mind; there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other, for no man should take me alive” (HTVC).

After an aborted attempt to escape with her brothers, she went alone. She left after dark one Saturday night in 1849 (Adler p.23). With no work done on Sunday, she would not be missed for two days. Looking back on that 1849 flight to freedom and thinking about her feelings as she crossed into a free state, she said, “When I found I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything the sun came like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in heaven” (HTVC). What was unexpected in the following weeks, was how much she missed her family. She determined that they too should be free and that she would see to it. Yet every time she returned to Dorchester County to lead others north, she was traveling from a safe place to a place of danger – a place where detection and capture meant the probability of a whipping, or worse, and the possibility of being “sold south.”

In late 1850 through friends, John Bowley, a free African American, contacted Tubman for help. This took some coordination. He was a ship carpenter in Baltimore, but his enslaved family still lived on their owner’s farm on the Eastern Shore. Bowley’s wife, Kessiah, a niece of Tubman, together with the couple’s two young children, was to be sold in an auction on the courthouse steps in Cambridge. Tubman got to Baltimore and met with Bowley to plan his wife’s escape. At the auction, Bowley made the highest bid for the woman and the two children. The officials managing the auction broke for lunch and returned to collect payment but found that the high bidder was no longer around. As they started to re-auction Kessiah, they realized she too was gone. The four members of the Bowley family hid in a nearby cellar and slipped away at night in a small boat on the Choptank River and then sailed to Baltimore where they met Tubman who guided them north to Philadelphia and freedom (Adler p. 48). December weather added to the hazard of the 75-mile journey up the Chesapeake Bay to Baltimore.

In preparing for another journey, Tubman sent a coded letter message to a friend. When the suspicious postal inspectors could not find anything wrong, they handed the letter to the intended recipient who read it, understood the message and tossed the letter back saying it made no sense to him. He then went and alerted Tubman’s brothers to be ready to leave at a moment’s notice.

After gaining his freedom, Tubman’s father had established a home for himself and Rit in Poplar Neck in Caroline County, 40 miles from the Brodess Plantation, where Harriet’s brothers lived near Bucktown. On Christmas Eve, 1854, the brothers went to their parents’ home. Eight people waited in a corncrib, unwilling to let Rit Ross know her children were so close for fear her emotions would alert other people. Ben Ross brought food to them. Knowing he’d be questioned by slave catchers and wanting to answer truthfully that he “hadn’t seen them,” Ben covered his eyes with a handkerchief as he helped his grown children.

Tubman had an unshakable faith that God would protect her and would show her the way to safety in the years she led people north to freedom. One time she was escorting a number of escaping slaves. She had a premonition of danger and immediately left the road leading her “passengers” to wade through chest deep water to cross a river. The danger was real since slave catchers were waiting ahead on the road. Describing her safe escape, she said “It wasn’t me. It was the Lord” (Adler p. 59).

In all, Tubman made, it is believed, 13 trips between the Eastern Shore and free lands, escorting 70 enslaved persons to freedom, and her advice helped at least 50 others escape. No wonder she was called “Moses.” In later years she was fond of saying, “I never ran my train off track and I never lost a passenger” (Adler p.4).

After the Civil War broke out, Tubman went south and aided efforts of the Union Army. She went on one raid up the Combahee River in South Carolina to disrupt Confederate supply lines. As slaves in plantations along the river realized the boats were Union boats, they swam to get aboard. Tubman also helped in the field hospitals for the black troops and distributed food and clothes to escaping slaves who flocked to the Union camps. In later years, Tubman made her home in Auburn, New York, where her parents and some siblings had settled after the war and after returning to the United States from Canada. Tubman actively supported women’s suffrage. She died in 1913.

The Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center

Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center exhibit with sculptural bust and welcome signage (Photo by C.W. Cooper)

The Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center tells the story of Harriet Tubman’s life in the context of her times. The design concept of the visitor center is “The View North,” referencing the direction the slaves took towards freedom setting their course by the North Star. The layout of the building and the exhibits within it follow a progression northward.

Although not particularly “high tech,” the exhibits, the artifacts of model cabins, the two-pound weight, the video of the region with a narrative commentary of her escape trips all contribute to an immersion in Tubman’s world. The context includes acknowledgment of the dangers risked by other people, both enslaved and free, in helping the passengers along on the “railroad.”

Born into slavery, Tubman was small and unable to read and write. She freed herself and others and continued to be a voice for individual rights all her life. The HTVC presents her story. The setting, the Dorchester County landscape, is an integral part of the story.

DOI: 10.14433/2017.0046

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Bibliography:

Adler, David A. 2013. Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad. New York: Holiday House. This biography is often classified in the children’s or youth portion of a library.

HTVC, Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center exhibits.

Larson, Kate Clifford. 2004. Bound for the Promised Land. New York: Ballantine Books. This is a full-length biography of Harriet Tubman.

Lockhart, Barbara M. 2012. Elizabeth’s Field. North Charleston, South Carolina: c. Barbara M. Lockhart. This book of fiction is based on extensive research and the personal oral history with the author’s elderly African American neighbor who heard the stories first hand. The author’s land had been owned briefly in the 1850s by a freed African American woman. This unusual event gave rise to extensive research and this fictional account weaving the lives of slaves and free, owner and slave, and the life of the times. Today’s high school and college students find it to be the basis of discussion and enhanced appreciation for people and place. Copies of Elizabeth’s Field are available at the HTVC and through Amazon.

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Sites of Visitor Interest

Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center

Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Byway (Tubman Byway) — The Byway maps a route of over 130 miles in Maryland, Delaware and Pennsylvania showing over 30 sites linked with Tubman’s life and work.

Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge

Statue of Frederick Douglass, Easton, Maryland — On the grounds of the Talbot County Courthouse at 11 North Washington Street, in downtown Easton.

Adkins Arboretum, Ridgeley Maryland

Academy Art Museum, Easton, Maryland

Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, St. Michael’s, Maryland — The 18-acre campus on the Miles River is an active center with historic watercraft and interpretive displays of life in the region, watermen, farmers, tourists, people who have made their living from the Chesapeake Bay and the region.

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Dwayne Parks joins AAG as Accounting Specialist

October 23, 2018

The AAG is pleased to announce that Dwayne Parks has joined the AAG Staff at the association’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. as an Accounting Specialist. Dwayne has over 17 years of experience working with organizational data in both New York City and the Washington, D.C. metro area. Throughout this timeframe, Dwayne has managed employee payroll and record keeping in both the legal and healthcare industries including companies such as Edmond Scientific Company, Encore Legal Solutions, and Ikon Document Services (formerly Nightrider Copy Service and Alco Standards).

Dwayne holds an associates degree from Elizabeth Brant School of Business. He has also worked to provide financial reports to his former employers and is certified in QuickBooks for Federal Contractors by the Federal Contractor Services Network. In his spare time, he was volunteer head coach for the Lee Mount Vernon Sport Club over the past 8 years, from 2009-2017. The team always ranked as a number 1 or number 2 seed. Dwayne thought it was “wonderful to watch a child develop from having little skills to developing great skills.” He coached the same group of boys from 4th to 12th grades. The team was more than a team… they were a family!

New Books for Geographers

New Books: October 2018

October 15, 2018

Every month the AAG compiles a list of newly-published books in geography and related areas. Some are selected for review in the AAG Review of Books.

Anyone interested in reviewing these or other titles should also contact the Editor-in-Chief.

October 2018

Adventures in Archaeology: The Wreck of the Orca II & Other Exportations by P. J. Capelotti (University Press of Florida 2018)

American Tropics: The Caribbean Roots of Biodiversity Science by Megan Raby (University of North Carolina Press 2017)

Anarchy and Geography: Reclus and Kropotkin in the UK by Federico Ferretti (Routledge 2018)

Atlas of the World, Twenty-Fifth Edition by Oxford (Oxford University Press 2018)

Edges, Fringes, Frontiers: Integral Ecology, Indigenous Knowledge and Sustainability in Guyanaby Thomas Henfrey (Berghahn Books 2018)

Eurasian Environments: Nature and Ecology in Imperial Russian and Soviet History by Nicholas Breyfogle (ed.) (University of Pittsburgh 2018)

Garbage Citizenship: Vital Infrastructures of Labor in Dakar, Senegal by Rosalind Fredericks (Duke University Press 2018)

Here and There: A Fire Survey by Stephen J. Pyne (University of Arizona Press 2018)

Imagining the Atacama Desert: A Five-Hundred-Year Journey of Discovery by Richard Francaviglia (The University of Utah Press 2018)

Inevitably Toxic Historical Perspectives on Contamination Exposure, and Expertise by Brinda Sarathy, Janet Brodie, and Vivien Hamilton (eds.) (University of Pittsburgh Press 2018)

The Life of Plants: A Metaphysics of Mixture by Emanuele Coccia (Polity Books 2018)

A Million Years of Music: The Emergence of Human Modernity by Gary Tomlinson (Zone Books 2015)

Mining the Borderlands: Industry, Capital, and the Emergence of Engineers in the Southwest Territories, 1855-1910 by Sarah E. M. Grossman (University of Nevada Press 2018)

Opium’s Long Shadow: From Asian Revolt to Global Drug Controlby Steffen Rimner (Harvard University Press 2018)

Origins and Destinations: The Making of the Second Generationby Renee Reichl, Luthra Thomas, and Soehl Roger Waldinger (Russell Sage Foundation 2018)

Powerful Places in the Ancient Andes by Justin Jennings and Edward R. Swenson (eds.) (University of New Mexico Press 2018)

Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study, With a New Preface by Orlando Patterson (Harvard University Press 2018)

Urgency in the Anthropocene by Amanda H. Lynch and Siri Veland (The MIT Press 2018)