President's Column

Introducing the Themes for the 2020 AAG Annual Conference

Each year the AAG president helps to identify a few themes for the AAG Annual Conference. While any topic is accepted for presentation at the annual meeting and participants are encouraged to develop their own special sessions, themes encompass a few specific points of interest for our Annual Conference and are used to organize a series of sessions, to focus discussion, and to highlight key events during the conference.

The AAG is pleased to announce three themes for the 2020 Annual Conference to be held in Denver from April 6–10: The Changing North American Continent, Ethnonationalism and Exclusion around the World, and Expanding the Community of Geography.

The Changing North American Continent examines how the land and people have been transformed from pre-history through history. A meeting in Denver, the capital city of the U.S. West, allows us to focus specifically on the transformation of the western landscape, the effects of climate change, indigenous rights, new immigrant geographies of the West, the perils to our ecosystems, water scarcity and distribution, the West as a social laboratory, and other related aspects. We seek papers and other forums that address these topics and that otherwise fit within this broad rubric.

Ethnonationalism and Exclusion around the World describes and interrogates new political movements based around a more exclusive form of national identity. These movements often draw on race-based appeals, target immigrant populations, and may be violent. While ethnonationalism has been present within every society throughout history, modern-day ethnonationalist movements have given rise to several strong political movements contributing to the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom, the rise of populist parties in Hungary, Poland and Brazil, and the election of U.S. President Donald Trump. An exclusionary nationalist identity has also led to the hardening of borders as well as the vicious repression and destruction of minority groups, such as the Uighur people in China and the Rohingya in Myanmar. As part of this theme, we seek papers and other forums that are broadly concerned with nationalism, ethnic-inspired terrorism, racism, immigration, genocide, borders, populism, electoral geography and other related aspects.

Expanding the Community of Geography looks at how we can increase the active participation of geographers, at the AAG and elsewhere, who may have otherwise felt excluded, moved away from geography as a discipline, or may not realize their kinship with geography. One factor of this exclusion lies with geographers who work in often underrepresented institutions. This includes stand-alone geographers, community college stakeholders, those who work and study at Historically Black and Tribal institutions, and geographers who work outside of the academy. Most people who go on to get a Masters or Ph.D. in geography do not end up working as academics. They may have drifted away from the AAG, and we need to find ways to increase their contribution and interest in our society. As part of this theme, we seek papers and other forums that involve coping with limited resources, enhancing geography at minority serving institutions, community engagement, outreach to geographers beyond the academy, alternative ways of knowing, fostering interaction among stand-alone geographers, and many other related aspects.

Since the AAG first introduced themes for the annual meeting, they have been used to emphasize a particular set of interests. These three themes speak to the significance of our meeting’s location in Denver, the political era we find ourselves in, and the need to foster a larger and more inclusive geographical community. Future presidents will focus on different sets of themes and this is as it should be.

If you find that your interests intersect with one of these three themes and would like to serve on a committee, please contact me directly at dkaplan [at] kent [dot] edu. And if you find that your session, poster, or paper corresponds with a theme, please consider adding it to the lineup for our 2020 AAG meeting in Denver.

— Dave Kaplan
AAG President

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Governance and Policy Spatial Narratives
David Kaplan
David Kaplan
President's Column

Should we be worried? Or how to maintain and expand the number of geographers in our schools.

As geographers, we all know the value of geography. Right? It is a field that provides a unique perspective, an appreciation for particularity, an opportunity to synthesize. But as much as we affirm geography’s value to each other, we also need to look at how geography is perceived outside of our community.

In this regard, the last year or so has been sobering, at least for Geography in the United States. Geography degrees have been closed in some universities, including Boston University, whose Geography Ph.D. program did so well in the last National Research Council ratings. Geography has been threatened (but ultimately spared) at others, despite reorganization and faculty layoffs. Then, to add insult to injury, a recent report in Inside Higher Education (highlighting an even more precipitous drop in History) showed how the number of Geography majors had also declined in the last six years, falling about 7 percent. No matter our research excellence, our success in procuring funding, our prominence in public discussion – if geography loses its majors, the field as a whole is in peril. This was a point expressed many years ago in Ron Abler’s classic column “Five Steps to Oblivion.” Ignoring majors is a sure-fire path to program destruction and, as we know full well, we can never take geography’s position in the curriculum for granted.

So should we be worried? We should at least be guarded. The trends of major loss in the last few years are real, but there are other countervailing forces on which geographers should capitalize.

Compared to the other liberal arts, geography in the United States is a distinct underdog. We are the smallest of these traditional disciplines, just a bit under geology, physics and anthropology, and dwarfed by the likes of psychology and biology. Only 1 percent of all liberal arts majors specialize in geography. (By comparison, geography is squarely in the middle of the pack in the United Kingdom, comprising 5 percent of all liberal arts.) Geography has not been commonly taught in U.S. high schools. It is further hamstrung by its absence in most colleges and universities, relying on the larger state schools, some community colleges, a sprinkling of private colleges, and a very few private universities to provide the courses. Where geography is present, the departments tend to be small and most student majors arrive after their sophomore years.

Yet as a discipline, we punch far above our weight. Much of this is thanks to the AAG. Our membership of 12,500 rivals fields such as history, sociology, and political science. Our activities involve collaboration with geographers and other scientists around the world, many of whom look to American geography as a beacon, to the AAG as the one necessary organization, and to our annual meeting as the place to convene. About one-third of our membership is international, buoying our disciplinary footprint. Other strong organizations, like the American Geographical Society, the National Council for Geographic Education, and the Society of Women Geographers also help lay a foundation for geography outside the academy and in the schools.

A closer examination of the major numbers in the United States also shows that our recent decline may be a short-term phenomenon. Between 2007 and 2013, the number of geography majors grew 22 percent, and even with the decline in the last four years, we are still up nearly 10 percent over the last decade. But we may still look at how these recent trends could be reversed — a project that could involve seeing where the declines were sharpest and identifying possible areas of growth. (Liberal Arts as a whole has also suffered small declines). That we are in a better position in regard to majors than we were 11 years ago is a positive sign, but still worrisome.

One very encouraging sign is in the expansion of some of geography’s closest cognates — fields like meteorology, environmental studies, area studies, and the like. These are fields commonly folded within geography departments and so almost always can count as a “geography” major. The table below shows the most important of these:

Pursuing such strategies entails the teaching of geography by other means. Students want geographical knowledge, they gain this by taking classes in these close cognates — often with geography professors — and they come out with much greater exposure to geography than would have otherwise been the case. Some of these incorporations may be acknowledged by renaming and Five Steps to Oblivion; other times the department may keep its name and just promote its diversity of offerings. To be sure, some of the traditional quasi-geographical specializations such as landscape architecture and area studies have declined. But there has been an explosion in environmental studies and global studies, with more modest growth in some of the other close cognates. If geography departments can capture those majors, the path toward sustainability becomes much clearer. At my department for instance, we were able to create an environmental studies major precisely because there was nothing like this available on campus. As a result, we have tripled our “geography” major numbers within the last two years. Other departments may pursue other strategies. Middle Tennessee State University, for instance, has a vibrant Global Studies major.

The last point I want to make also has potential to be the greatest opportunity. Since its inception, the Advanced Placement Human Geography high school course has exploded. Thanks to geographers like past President Alec Murphy, David Lanegran, and others, we were able to create this AP course in the 1990s and it has continued to defy all expectations. Out of the 38 AP exams given, AP Human Geography ranks in 10th place. (Environmental Science ranks 13th). The most striking aspect is its growth. Human Geography has grown by about 450% since 2008, far ahead of any other subject. And all signs indicate that this expansion will continue, as AP Human moves into other parts of the country.

Unfortunately, this phenomenal growth has yet to translate into major gains in college majors. AP courses/tests should make a positive difference in later specialization. Whether they just confirm existing intentions or open up new possibilities is still in question. But some worry that they end up eating into introductory course offerings. But there can be no doubt that this is a city-sized opportunity available to us. We need to devise ways as a discipline to turn these high school learners into college majors. The AP Human Geography exam and other AP possibilities will be the subject for a future column.

So despite some reason to worry, longer-term trends in the last decade are still positive, some of our closest cognates are growing briskly, and the expansion of AP Human Geography has been nothing short of phenomenal. The long-term health of the discipline is not assured, but it is within reach. We must exploit our advantages.

If you have gotten this far, let me extend my gratitude to all of you for giving me the chance to serve as president of the American Association of Geographers. I am humbled in succeeding people like Glen MacDonald, Derek Alderman, and Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach, not to mention all the luminaries who served before them. I look on these columns as an opportunity to shine light into some of the various features and problems of our discipline. Among these will be columns on creating a more inclusive academic culture, the internationalization of the AAG, the explosion of metrics in our discipline, publishing paradoxes, encouraging great writing, managing mental health, promoting opportunities beyond academia, and rethinking the regions. I hope that each column helps to further a dialogue, as there are rarely easy answers. We just need to keep trying. Please email me at dkaplan [at] kent [dot] edu with your thoughts.

— Dave

DOI: 10.14433/2017.0056

Source for this data comes from IPEDS Access Database for Integrated Postsecondary Education Data (IPEDS) Collection, https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds.

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Changing Human Populations Governance and Policy Planning and Development
David Kaplan
David Kaplan
President's Column

Geography, Green Resolutions, and Graduation

Complex organizations have complex interests and responsibilities, especially in the 21st century. My October 2018 Column reminded us to keep our eyes on the prize of equity for all. Together, we Geographers have worked diligently over the last several years to shine a light on equity and banish harassment and bullying from our meetings, our places of work, and our lives. We have more work to do, but we do have a heightened awareness, and a strong, renewed resolve to move forward with justice. Even though we have a strong Statement of Ethics (2009) condemning workplace harassment and discrimination, we further renewed our resolve to fight bullying and harassment with the Harassment Free AAG Initiative of 2019 (Please also remember to take the Post-Meeting Survey). And we will keep working to improve the climate for all. While keeping an eye on our social and civil well-being, the well-being of our planet also needs our attention and actions as strongly as ever. Protecting the civil rights and human rights of scientists helps to advance and protect science, to the benefit of people and the planet.

Headlines are just as alarming on the environmental justice side of the scales as they are on the social justice side. A recent email correspondent offers fair points regarding institutions and fossil fuel divestment, but implied that AAG is neglecting the environment because of our recent focus on anti-harassment initiatives. We should not be forced to make a false choice between the workplace climate, the atmosphere, and our fiduciary responsibility to members and donors as a non-profit, among others. AAG has invested in a portfolio of green funds, and it is worth thoughtful consideration of additional long-term, planet-healthy investment strategies, absolutely. We must of course maintain a complementary balance of Planet Earth’s and her Inhabitants’ well-being. Our AAG Logo and flag, after all, are green.

Recent headlines and reports include this week’s news that atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations have hit an all-time high of 415 ppm (Washington Post, 5/14/19). That concentation is the “…highest level in human history” (WaPo 5/14/19). Other headlines include news that “humans are speeding extinction and altering the natural world at an ‘unprecedented’ pace” (NY Times 5/12/19).

In light of these daunting global trends, members of the U.S. Congress, led by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed. Markey have proposed a non-binding resolution, the Green New Deal. The Green New Deal does not pit society against the environment, but blends the well-being of both by resolving to “reduce greenhouse emissions…to avoid the worst consequences of climate change while also…addressing “societal problems like economic inequality and racial injustice.”(New York Times, 2/21/19).

The plan encompasses five main goals to:

“invest in sustainable businesses”;

“Move to 100% clean energy by 2030”;…

“Create a Commission…to provide publicity, training, education and direct financing” for projects and reforms;

“Establish a renewable Energy Administration” modeled after Roosevelt’s “Rural Electrification Administration”; and

Create a “Full Employment Program… a direct employment initiative to guarantee jobs and a living wage for every American…” (See this link for the Full Plan Language).

Geographers’ diverse talents and insights can contribute in all of these areas.

Within the AAG’s ranks, there are also renewed Green goals. AAG passed a Resolution Requesting Action on Climate Change in 2006. In Spring 2019, a group of members have pointed out that much has changed in the last 13 year since that resolution, and it is time to strengthen our commitment to fight climate change. This monumental effort was led by Geographers Rutherford H. Platt, Ian Burton, Susan Cutter, James Kenneth Mitchell, James L. Wescoat, Claire Rubin, and Martin A. Reuss. The group sent a new Resolution on Climate Change to Council, which was passed unanimously at the April 2019 AAG Meeting. The new Resolution was rooted in the legacy of Geographer and National Academy of Sciences Member Gilbert White (1911-2006), for whom a special session was convened by the aforementioned panelists at the 2019 Annual AAG Meeting. Dr. White’s work showed compassion for people and the environment, with his pioneering work using planning policies to move people out of dangerous flood plains and save lives and property, as opposed to sole reliance on technological solutions to flooding and flood control. His floodplain management work is a great example of fulfilling the human right to benefit from science. The Green New Deal echoes this, incorporating smart business and social policy solutions to improving the environment, the economy, and people’s well-being together. The new AAG Climate Change Resolution promotes 8 goals to fight climate change, compatible with the Green New Deal, summarized at the AAG Website 2019 AAG Climate Resolution for full details. Many thanks to the authors, and to the AAG Council for supporting this.

Future Geograph-ies/-ers

It is graduation time and the goals of social and environmental justice should inspire the new generation of Geographers who are graduating this month from our institutions. We welcome them to the company of scholars and professionals, and we encourage them to carry the torch forward, to create a better social, physical, and technological world, and a brighter future. We also need to continue lending our full support as senior scholars and professional mentors for the latest generation of Geographers, in whom I have great hope, confidence, and inspiration. I end this column with my very best wishes and gratitude to my students who will always be members of our home departmental community, and to all students at this important time of transition in your lives. Congratulations to all, and to those who share in your success!

— Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach
President, American Association of Geographers
Professor, Geography and the Environment and C.B. Smith Fellow in US-Mexico Relations, University of Texas at Austin

Feel free to share your thoughts with me at: slbeach (at) austin (dot) utexas (dot) edu

DOI: 10.14433/2017.0054

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Changing Human Populations Governance and Policy Living within Ecosystems Planning and Development
Sheryl Luzzadder
Sheryl Luzzadder

Daniel McGlone

Education: Masters in Urban Spatial Analytics (University of Pennsylvania), Bachelors in Geography and Geospatial Imaging (Harrisburg University of Science and Technology)

Could you give us a description of your job and some of the primary tasks and duties for which you’re responsible?
Azavea is a geospatial software company. We’re a mixture of professional services and products. I am the Senior GIS Analyst the Data Analytics team. I’m the only person at the company with a degree in GIS, so I’m the lead on any task that involves spatial analysis. We have projects that we work on for clients that involve spatial analysis or data analysis that produce maps or reports. We also service other teams in the company, so there might be a team that’s building a geospatial software application, and they might need some data analysis or data prep.

As the Senior GIS Analyst, I am often working any of the ends on projects as well as the analysis. When we’re scoping out a proposal, I’ll work on that and outline the different tasks that we’re going to be doing, the different steps in the geospatial analysis, as well as the outline of which tools and software we’re going to use to complete the analysis. I work hand in hand with the project manager, and we deliver a scope to the client. They’ll approve it or we’ll have negotiations around it, and then we’ll begin working on the project. When a project begins, I’ll work with the project manager to assign tasks and roles. The project manager will be the primary point of contact with the client, and I’ll be working internally with the team, often doing a lot of the analysis work, and finishing off the deliverables and end products and handing them over to the client.

Who are your clients?
Azavea is a B Corporation – that stands for “Benefits”. We’re a for-profit company, but we’ve operated with the mission of a nonprofit, so we work on projects that we think benefit the world and the community we live in. Primarily our clients are nonprofits, foundations, or governments. We also pride ourselves as a civic technology firm. We work on a lot of projects that we think help connect people with decision makers, and help improve the civic sphere that we all live in.

My other job title is Cicero Data Manager. Cicero is a database of elected officials, their contact information, and legislative districts for 9 countries, all 50 states, and about 300 cities throughout the United States. I’m in charge of maintaining all of our data on elected officials. We provide Cicero as a database so our clients, which are normally nonprofits or advocacy organizations who are trying to connect their members with elected officials, can advocate for their cause. We offer our database to them to use internally.

How do you perceive the value and importance of geographic knowledge in performing your work? Could you give us a breakdown of the substantive, conceptual, and procedural geographic knowledge you’ve acquired through your training in geography and how this relates to your job? 

Being the only person with a GIS Analyst job title in my company means that I am the one that people go to when they have questions about how to complete a project with spatial analysis or geographic data.

I would say the substantive and conceptual knowledge are important usually for scoping out projects and thinking about how to complete projects. We often have clients that come to us with limited budgets, or they have a lot of data and they just don’t know what to do with it. Having a conceptual knowledge of the type of tools that you would need to run, or the type of analysis that you would need to do is really important because that helps scope out a project and figure out the solution to their problem. They might have a bunch of data about their clients, and where their clients live, but they might not know that census data exists. We can predict where other clients might be that they haven’t tapped into. Having that kind of conceptual knowledge about the relationship between people and place is really, really important.

Procedural knowledge comes in when we actually win a project. We have to figure out how we are going to go about doing it. It’s also helpful in terms of scoping out projects. We tend to respond to a lot of RFPs for work, and we apply for a lot of small business innovation research (SPIR) grants. We have a technical writer, so she responds to all of these and writes up proposals. Sometimes, she’ll come to me if there is an opportunity through a government agency, so we can figure out if we can complete that project and how exactly we would do it.

To give an example, we recently had an opportunity to do some work in Madagascar. Our client wanted to work with folks on the ground in mapping Madagascar to better connect people with elected officials to promote environmental policy. Our solution was to leverage our Cicero product to get the legislative district boundaries for Madagascar and the elected official data, and then build a mobile app that allows people in Madagascar to connect with their assembly members in the legislature. Also, we could take environmental data for Madagascar to collect land cover change, climate, and other geographic/spatial data and aggregate that into legislative districts. This would actually give people information about land cover change, deforestation, and habitat change in their district so they could inform their elected official or assembly member about what was happening. We had to find the unique solution to that problem, and it was conceptual geographic knowledge that really helped figure that out.

Substantive knowledge definitely comes into play as well. We use census data all the time in our projects. We have to figure out what is the best census data to use, and what’s the best administration level (tracts, block groups, blocks, metropolitan areas). That comes into play with a lot of our projects, including some of our software projects where we have to scope out what is the best way to display this data on a web map (MSA level, block level, tract level, state level).

What have you observed in your work in terms of impacts in your applications and uses of geography and through your organization?
At Azavea, our bottom line is that we want our projects to have a positive impact on the community. A few years ago, we worked with the Delaware Valley Association for the Education of Young Children. They are an organization that advocates for higher quality child care across the Philadelphia region. We took data on childcare institutions in the city of Philadelphia and ranked the quality of childcare at these institutions. We looked at the quality of childcare and also the risk factors or negative impacts on children in Philadelphia, and then we ranked and scored city council districts using that information. We created these targeted reports that showed the city council how they were ranked against other city council districts. It enabled the Delaware Valley Association for the Education of Young Children to advocate for increased funding for childcare. That was really powerful, as the city council ended up awarding the Delaware Valley Association for the Education of Young Children $500,000. They also got a matching grant from the William Penn Foundation. They ended up getting a million dollars to improve the quality of childcare and education for young people in Philadelphia.

That kind of model of creating, aggregating, scoring and ranking data by legislative or council district has been effective for us for a lot of different causes. Last year, I was an expert witness for a federal court case on gerrymandering here in Pennsylvania. We had an organization that was filing a lawsuit to get the congressional districts in Pennsylvania overturned as a gerrymander. They needed some mapping done to prove that some districts were gerrymandered. In terms of this court case, I was brought on and mapped out all of the congressional districts. I also used data on a partisan voting index at the voting precinct level to show that the districts were gerrymandered. The evidence and the data that was used in our case were used in the subsequent court case at the state level, which actually won and overturned the congressional districts. I can’t say that our case was successful as we were turned down in federal court in a 2-1 decision, but the subsequent state case in the state court did end up winning.

What is it about geography that inspires you and helps you pursue your life aspirations?
I have been interested in geography and maps for my entire life. I love to travel and see new places in the world, and knowing about geography and having that understanding has helped me become a better world traveler. I feel that my deep interest and understanding of geography has also helped me become a better, more engaged citizen politically. Geography gives me a better understanding of different places and different people. In terms of my professional life, I had a lot of different options. Underlying all of these options was a strong interest in geography, and I felt that GIS was the way to go.

If you could think back to that undergraduate experience you had at Harrisburg, when did you have that ‘a-ha’ moment with geography?
One of these moments occurred when I was in an undergraduate course. I have always been pretty interested in urban planning and considered it as a potential career opportunity. When I first discovered the extent to which GIS could be used in planning and transportation analysis, I became even more interested in it. I worked on a project where I mapped out a potential commuter rail line between Harrisburg and Lancaster, and I used GIS to figure out how many people lived within certain distances of different branches of railroads for potential community rail lines. It was all very conceptual, and it was all very basic, but it was then that I realized “wow, this is really powerful.”

As someone who has been interested in politics all my life, another moment was when I first realized that I can connect the dots with GIS data in terms of redistricting and drawing legislative district lines. There’s not enough discussion about how, as a GIS Analyst, I can help make redistricting and drawing of lines more accessible to everyday people. At Azavea, I had the opportunity to work on one of our projects called District Builder, which is an online, web-based tool for drawing legislative districts. It was kind of a moment when I realized “wow, GIS is so important and fundamental to how we vote,” and that was definitely an ‘a-ha’ moment for me in realizing what I wanted to do as a GIS analyst and as a geographer.

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Beyond Compactness: A New Measure to Evaluate Congressional Districts

Redrawing congressional district boundaries, an activity that happens every ten years following the decennial census, may be the most consequential application of geography in the United States. As congressional elections have become less competitive, many are raising questions about the current boundaries of congressional districts, often citing lack of geographical compactness as their rationale. Geographical compactness generally ranges from 0 to 1, with 1 being a perfect circle. Wyoming’s only district is currently the most geographically compact district with a score of .77.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled multiple times that the assertion a district is oddly-shaped is insufficient to claim that the boundaries have been manipulated. In fact, some districts that score low in compactness can also be the most competitive. Odd shapes are sometimes needed to connect communities, to comply with the Voting Rights Act, or result from oddly-shaped states or coastal areas. Furthermore, communities rarely form in circles or squares naturally. Rather, communities rely more on existing administrative boundaries (counties, municipalities), infrastructure, and physical features to form.

A “Natural Communities” Score for District Boundaries

Esri’s Policy Maps team formed the research question: How much are current congressional boundaries defined by physical features (mountains and rivers), infrastructure (highways and railroads), or other existing administrative boundaries (county and place boundaries)? We calculated the percent of perimeter of each district that was a county boundary, a place (city, township, or other municipality) boundary, an interstate highway, a railroad track, a river, or within proximity to a mountain peak, as well as geographical compactness for comparison.

Also available as an interactive web map with detailed information in pop-ups.

Using a statistical technique called factor analysis, we were able to create an index that incorporates all these measures and to determine the optimal weights for capturing as much information possible based on the correlations between variables. We call this the Natural Communities index. Not surprisingly, the results of the factor analysis suggested giving the most weight to sharing a boundary with an existing administrative boundary. The least weight was given to proximity to a mountain peak. Geographical compactness helps the score, but not by much since that measure was given such a low weight. The infrastructure measures both had sizeable negative weights, meaning that having infrastructure as a boundary is somehow negatively associated with our construct of natural communities and thus hurts a district’s score, perhaps because infrastructure is used to bring people together rather than separate them. Using these weights, we can come up with a “natural communities” score for each district. The scores were then standardized to have a mean of zero and a standard deviation of 1, for easy comparison. Districts that score high on our Natural Communities index are shown in green on the map below, whereas districts that score low are shown in brown.

States with only one district (Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming) generally scored highly, but these districts having different values does not make sense since there were no other options these districts could have used. We gave all these districts a “perfect” score of 2.0, shown in dark green in the map.

A Look at Specific Districts

New Mexico’s 1st

New Mexico’s 1st District has a compactness score of .26 (national average was .18).

New Mexico’s 1st District scored average (0). This district has 60.4 percent of its perimeter defined by administrative boundaries (national average was 65.4 percent), and 2.4 percent defined by a major highway (national average was 2.3 percent).

Ohio’s 3rd

Ohio’s 3rd District has a compactness score of .06 (national average was .18).

Ohio’s 3rd District scored very low (-3.5). This district has only 16.3 percent of its perimeter defined by administrative boundaries (national average was 65.4 percent), and high percentages defined by the two infrastructure categories – railroad tracks and major highways – which has a negative impact on the score.

Arkansas’ 2nd

Arkansas’ 2nd District scored very high (+1.4). This district has 100 percent of its perimeter defined by administrative boundaries (national average was 65.4 percent), zero percent defined by infrastructure, and 37.5 percent defined by a river or stream (national average was 18.1%).

Arkansas’ 2nd District has a compactness score of .24 (national average was .18).

Our index adds information by accounting for the existing administrative boundaries as well as considering infrastructure and physical geographic features. This new score provides much more context when evaluating congressional district boundaries than simply geographical compactness. For example, Arkansas’ 2nd District is slightly less compact than New Mexico’s 1st District but scores much higher when taking into account the existing administrative boundaries (counties and places) and physical geographic boundaries (rivers and mountain peaks).

Join the Discussion

Our natural communities score can be used going into the upcoming redistricting exercises when evaluating multiple proposed districts. This score can add to the conversation when communicating proposed plans to the public during briefings and comment periods.

For maps, data, and other resources for creating your own policy maps, visit Esri Maps for Public Policy or watch the video Top 10 Tips for Policy Story Maps.

About the Author

Diana C. Lavery is a product engineer on Esri’s Living Atlas and Policy Maps teams.

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Governance and Policy Networks and Connections Spatial Narratives
Diana C Lavery
Diana C Lavery
New Books for Geographers

New Books: April 2019

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.

April 2019

American Hemp: How Growing Our Newest Cash Crop Can Improve Our Health, Clean Our Environment, and Slow Climate Change by Jen Hobbs (Skyhorse Publishing 2019)

Anarchist Cuba: Countercultural Politics in the Early Twentieth Century by Kirwin Shaffer (PM Press 2019)

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

The Anarchist Imagination: Anarchism Encounters the Humanities and Social Sciences by Carl Levy and Saul Newman (Routledge 2019)

Autonomy Is in Our Hearts: Zapatista Autonomous Government through the Lens of the Tsotsil Language by Dylan Eldredge Fitzwater (PM Press 2019)

The Battle for the Mountain of the Kurds: Self-Determination and Ethnic Cleansing in the Afrin Region of Rojavaby Thomas Schmidinger (PM Press 2019)

Carbon Markets in a Climate-Changing Capitalism by Gareth Bryant (Cambridge University Press 2019)

Contested Territory: Ðien Biên Phu and the Making of Northwest Vietnam by Christian C. Lentz (Yale University Press 2019)

Dictator’s Dreamscape: How Architecture and Vision Built Machado’s Cuba and Invented Modern Havana by Joseph R. Hartman (University of Pittsburgh Press 2019)

The Economic Geographies of Organized Crime by Tim Hall (Guilford Press 2018)

Enterprising Nature: Economics, Markets, and Finance in Global Biodiversity Politics by Jessica Dempsey (Wiley-Blackwell 2016)

A Farewell to Ice: A Report from the Arctic by Peter Wadhams (Oxford University Press 2017)

Frontier Road: Power, History, and the Everyday State in the Colombian Amazon by Simón Uribe (Wiley-Blackwell 2017)

Georg Forster: Voyager, Naturalist, Revolutionary by Jürgen Goldstein (University of Chicago Press 2019)

Geostories: Another Architecture for the Environment by Rania Ghosn and El Hadi Jazairy (Actar 2018)

Global Corruption from a Geographic Perspective by Barney Warf (Springer 2019)

A History of the Czech Lands (Second Edition) by Jaroslav Pánek, Oldřich Tůma, et al., eds. (Karolinum Press 2019)

Horizon by Barry Lopez (Penguin Random House 2019)

Landscape and Power in Geographical Space as a Social-Aesthetic Construct by Olaf Kühne (Springer 2018)

Life Takes Place: Phenomenology, Lifeworlds, and Place Making by David Seamon (Routledge 2018)

The Long Honduran Night: Resistance , Terror, and the United States in the Aftermath of the Coup by Dana Frank (Haymarket Books 2018)

Maxwell Street: Writing and Thinking Place by Tim Cresswell (University of Chicago Press 2019)

The Meanings of Landscape: Essays on Place, Space, Environment and Justice by Kenneth R. Olwig (Routledge 2019)

Native American Log Cabins in the Southeast by Gregory A. Waselkov, ed. (University of Tennessee Press 2019)

The Northeast: A Fire Survey by Stephen J. Pyne (University of Arizona Press 2019)

Offshore: Exploring the Worlds of Global Outsourcing by Jamie Peck (Oxford University Press 2017)

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

Painting Publics: Transnational Legal Graffiti Scenes as Spaces for Encounter by Caitlin Frances Bruce (Temple University Press 2019)

Plate Tectonics and Great Earthquakes: 50 Years of Earth-Shaking Events by Lynn R. Sykes (Columbia University Press 2019)

Prison Land: Mapping Carceral Power across Neoliberal America by Brett Story (University of Minnesota Press 2019)

Re-enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons by Silvia Federici (PM Press 2018)

Recipes for Respect: African American Meals and Meaning by Rafia Zafar (University of Georgia 2019)

The Red Atlas: How the Soviet Union Secretly Mapped the World by John Davies and Alexander J. Kent (University of Chicago Press 2017)

Reimagining Livelihoods: Life beyond Economy, Society, and Environment by Ethan Miller (University of Minnesota Press 2019)

Scarcity in the Modern World: History, Politics, Society and Sustainability, 1800-2075 by John Brewer, Neil Fromer, Fredrik Albritton Jonsson, and Frank Trentmann, eds. (Bloomsbury Academic 2019)

In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power by Alfred W. McCoy (Haymarket Books 2017)

Social Imaginaries of Space: Concepts and Cases by Bernard Debarbieux (Edward Elgar Publishing 2019)

The Science of Breaking Bad by Dave Trumbore and Donna J. Nelson (The MIT Press 2019)

Into the Tempest: Essays on the New Global Capitalism by William I. Robinson (Haymarket Books 2019)

Topoi/Graphein: Mapping the Middle in Spatial Thought by Christian Abrahamsson (University of Nebraska Press 2018)

The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World by Charles C. Mann (Penguin Random House 2019)

World in Crisis: Marxist Perspectives on Crash & Crisis by Guglielmo Carchedi and Michael Roberts (eds.) (Haymarket Books 2018)

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President's Column

Harassment-Free AAG: What to expect at the Washington D.C. Meeting

I am excited to write that there are four weeks to go in our countdown to the AAG Annual Meetings in Washington DC (April 3-7, 2019). I welcome guest columnist Dr. Lorraine Dowler, who has been a prior contributor to this space, and this month we highlight Climate Change to which we can all contribute positively for the AAG Meetings.

Harassing behavior by powerful individuals towards those more vulnerable has given rise to recent social movements including #MeToo, #UsToo and, Idle No More to name a few. These social movements are also influencing the academy as countless numbers of academic associations are currently examining how safe and inclusive their academic meetings are for those members who do not represent the majority of meeting attendees. These associations are gathering data about harassment through surveys, updating professional codes of conduct and hiring consultants to develop programs that directly address harassment and the creation of safe and inclusive spaces at academic meetings. Relatedly, the AAG charged a task force in Spring 2018 to gather information and recommend programmatic changes in order to envision a safer and more inclusive national meeting. The Council approved the task’s force proposal for the 2019 meeting, and this column will furnish a preliminary overview of resources that will be available to attendees at the Washington meeting.

The Harassment-Free AAG task force is committed to addressing sexual harassment in the Academy and at the national meeting. However, sexual harassment is only one form of harassment experienced at national meetings, and the task force is wary of addressing sexual harassment only, as that singular focus will allow for other forms of harassment, such as racism, transphobia and religious intolerance, to name just a few, to remain in the shadows. Therefore, the goal of this proposed program is to work towards a Harassment-Free AAG so that all of our members can benefit equally from attending the national meeting. This approach places the AAG as an institutional leader in addressing diverging and intersectional forms of potential harassment at a national meeting.

The task force took its lead from NSF’s ADVANCE Program Guidelines for the development of anti-harassment programs in academic societies and meetings. According to these guidelines, every anti-harassment program should adopt, at least, four fundamental elements. These elements are widely recognized as a “Standard of Care” for harassment prevention and remediation. They are:

  • A worded, widely disseminated, written anti-harassment policy;
  • Accessible and flexible complaint procedures designed to encourage people to come forward;
  • Prompt, thorough, and impartial investigative procedures implemented by appropriately trained investigators; and
  • Prompt and appropriate follow-up actions designed to stop harassment, discipline offenders, and protect complainants from any adverse effects of reporting

Keeping these guidelines in mind, we are implementing the following Harassment-Free AAG program at this year’s meeting. We are at the start of this process, and we encourage ideas and interventions from the membership on how to achieve an Harassment-Free AAG. You can find updated information about the program at http://annualmeeting.aag.org/conduct

At the registration desk at the D.C. meeting, you will receive information and links to our new Harassment-Free AAG policy and our newly expanded Statement of Professional Ethics. These statements reinforce that professional ideas and information are exchanged most effectively at the AAG meeting in an atmosphere free of discrimination or harassment and characterized by courtesy and respect. The AAG prohibits any form of harassment, sexual or in other forms, as outlined in these statements. We ask that you familiarize yourself with these statements as any violation of the Harassment-Free AAG policy will be reviewed by the Standing Committee on AAG Annual Meeting Attendee Disciplinary Matters and if warranted disciplinary action will be taken.

Resources for Attendees 

On-Site Independent and Confidential AAG Advocate

Advocates are professionals trained to provide confidential support victims of crime as they offer individuals information, emotional support, and help in finding resources and filling out paperwork, such as filing a complaint with an ombudsperson.

The AAG Advocate is a licensed social worker, and all interactions with the advocate will remain confidential. The advocate will be available to meet with conference attendees if:

  1. An attendee feels they were harassed or assaulted at the meeting and needs emotional support and/or access to victim services as well as reporting information.
  2. An attendee who has been harassed or assaulted at their home university and needs help in understanding what resources are available to them at their home institution.
  3. An attendee who is interested in creating or strengthening policies at their home institutions. The advocate is well-versed in Title IX accommodations and will have some sample policies on-hand for informational purposes.

<!–Contact information, bio and advocacy philosophy statement for the advocate can be found at http://annualmeeting.aag.org/conduct.–>

Workshop: Coordinated Department Response to Online Harassment

A 90-minute workshop will address how as technology improves our access towards instant communication with colleagues and rapid information sharing increases, we have also seen an increase in the use of technology to perpetuate harassment and harm. The workshop leaders Dana Cuomo and Natalie Dolci are members of the Seattle-based Technology-Enabled Coercive Control Working Group. Their research focuses on the role of technology in domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking, and harassment situations and how systems can better respond. In this workshop, attendees will learn how your department can better assist faculty, students and staff who are experiencing online harassment. Whether a department member is being targeted by a former intimate partner or someone who is ideologically opposed to their scholarship, workplaces have a responsibility to respond to the best of their ability. This workshop will give scenario-based practical tips for protecting your online privacy and best practice workplace policies to engage your institution in supporting its employees.

Look for further information about the workshop soon.

Off-Site Independent Ombudsperson

An independent ombudsperson will serve as the first point of contact for someone wanting to file a harassment complaint. The ombudsperson will work with AAG staff and the Standing Committee for handling incident reports. The ombudsperson will interact with complainants and alleged harassers and investigate the alleged incident. The ombudsperson will then supply the Standing Committee with incident reports.

Support A Harassment-Free AAG

Linked Sessions

The Harassment-Free AAG task force is sponsoring 27 sessions that make interventions into The Academy around issues of identity. The panel Enough! leads off the linked sessions on 3 April 2019, followed by other sessions and panels, including Sexual Harassment and Bullying Policies in Academia on 4 April. Other sponsored panels may be found on the AAG Session Gallery by searching for “Harassment-Free AAG Initiative” sponsorship. The task force wants to acknowledge the important and critical work that the organizers of these sessions are doing in making interventions into the academy around issues of mental health, all forms of harassment, physical health, and or identity in the discipline. The task force hopes this linking will promote attendance and will also serve as a powerful act of solidarity for a Harassment-Free AAG.

New Photography Policy

In parallel with photography policies at other professional meetings, AAG will provide information cards for presentations, to enable and support presenters who do not wish to have photos taken of themselves or their presentations without their permission. While some may consider photography a professional compliment, others have been harassed by photographers. In addition, some presenters may wish not to have their photos or embargoed research posted on social media or geotagged.

Please note that official AAG photographers and videographers are authorized to take photos and videos of all AAG-sponsored or AAG-organized events. However, the official AAG photographers and videographers are instructed to respect individual presenters’ preferences regarding permission to record them or their presentations.

Harassment-Free AAG survey

Attendees from the Washington D.C. meeting and past meetings will receive an email link to the Harassment-Free AAG survey. The survey will open shortly after the close of the D.C. meeting. The survey addresses multiple forms of harassment, including harassment based on disability, gender identity and/or gender expression, cultural expression, sexuality, racial identity, ethnic identity, and sexual harassment. This survey asks about the harassment you have witnessed or heard about, as well as harassment that you have directly experienced. Even if you do not believe that you have witnessed or experienced harassment, your responses are valuable, and you are encouraged to take this survey. The survey will be conducted by a research consultant who is independent of the AAG, and all responses will be confidential.

Visibly Support Your Colleagues for a Harassment-Free AAG

There will be Harassment-Free AAG lapel buttons available at different locations at the conference, including the registration and information desks. We ask that you wear these buttons as a statement of solidarity and a personal statement that as a meeting attendee will not tolerate any form of harassment at the national meeting. Information fliers will also be distributed with AAG Meeting materials.

We Need Your Patience!

Harassment at academic meetings will not be eradicated overnight. Academic meetings have a long history of complex social interactions where the vulnerability of junior scholars increases when they are put in close contact with influential scholars in an atmosphere that blurs the lines between work and play. It would be uncaring to those who have experienced harassment at the hands of influential actors to assume that this new program will mitigate their sense of precarity at the national meeting. Still, the fastest growing sector of our membership is students, and the task force feels immediate and innovative action is required to protect a new generation of scholars. For this reason, the task force intends to go beyond the simple updating of policies around sexual harassment only. Although this is a critical step for any academic association, as stated earlier the task force is committed to engaging with multiple forms of harassment directly at the meeting. As a result, we may be the first academic organization to host an independent on-site advocate, as well as an independent ombudsperson to engage with care any attendees who feel they are the victim of harassment. It is also important to mention that the Harassment-Free AAG task are your colleagues and are volunteers. They worked on this program in the evenings, over the weekends and traveled to multiple locations for work sessions and the AAG is most grateful for their important work. We also want to acknowledge that this program has increased the already high workload of the AAG staff, and we are appreciative of their labor and insight in implementing the program. For these reasons, we ask for your patience over the next month as we continually update the forthcoming Harassment-Free AAG site, as the program will be a work in progress until the first day of the meeting.

Meet the Harassment-Free AAG Task Force:

  • Dana Cuomo, University of Western Kentucky
  • Debanuj Dasgupta, University of Connecticut
  • Dydia DeLyser, California State University, Fullerton
  • Lorraine Dowler, Penn State University
  • Latoya E. Eaves, Middle Tennessee State University
  • Candida Mannozzi, American Association of Geographers
  • Carrie Mott, University of Louisville,
  • Beverley Mullings, Queens University
  • Marianna Pavlovskaya, Hunter College and Graduate Center – CUNY
  • Erin Royals, Rutgers University
  • Rashad Shabazz, Arizona State University
  • Erica Smithwick, Penn State University
  • Deborah Thomas, University of North Carolina, Charlotte
  • Rebecca M Torres, University of Texas, Austin

Closing Comments

As President I am grateful to the Task Force’s efforts, led by Dr. Lorraine Dowler. I ask that we all recognize Dr. Dowler’s vision and again the efforts of the AAG Staff and AAG Directors, the AAG Council, the Executive Committee, and Past Presidents on whose shoulders we stand, and you, our Members, in supporting and launching this new policy for a more welcoming and safe space for our AAG Annual Meetings. Thank you everyone for your contributions to usher in this new era for the AAG. Together, we are making a difference now and for the future. Please share your thoughts with us and your AAG Councilors and other leaders who work hard on behalf our members. We look forward to seeing you all in Washington DC next month!

— Dr. Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach, AAG President
University of Texas at Austin
Email: slbeach [at] austin [dot] utexas [dot] edu

— Dr. Lorraine Dowler, AAG National Councilor
Pennsylvania State University
Email: lxd17 [at] psu [dot] edu

DOI: 10.14433/2017.0052

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

To register for the annual meeting, click here.

Harassment-Free AAG, safe spaces
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Newsletters

Newsletter – February 2019

PRESIDENT’S COLUMN

AAG Election Underway and Looking Forward to Annual Meeting in Washington DC in April!

 

By Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach

AAG president Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach provides the inside scoop on upcoming activities at the AAG Annual Meeting as well as a reminder to vote in the ongoing AAG election in her monthly column. As she remarked in her first presidential column, as AAG members prepare to visit Washington, D.C., “imagine what 12,000-plus geographers can do together to make a better world.”

Continue Reading.

ANNUAL MEETING

2019 AAG Annual Meeting Presidential Plenary and Opening Session Announced

The AAG Opening Session will take place on Wednesday, April 3 at 6:20 p.m. Following welcoming remarks from Executive Director Doug Richardson, the Presidential Plenary will address “The Intersection of Geography, Environmental Science, Human Health, and Human Rights” and feature distinguished panelists joining AAG President Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach to discuss how their research fields intersect with geography and the three AAG 2019 DC themes.

Learn more. 

Eric Holder to Deliver Keynote on Gerrymandering

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In anticipation of the 2020 Census, the AAG announces the participation of Eric H. Holder, Jr. as a keynote speaker at this year’s Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. Currently serving as chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, he will present his expertise on gerrymandering in a special address. Holder will deliver his remarks on Thursday, April 4th 2019 at 12:00 pm.

Learn more about the keynote.

“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.

 

A Local’s Guide to D.C. Neighborhoods

Curious to know more about the area immediately surrounding the 2019 AAG Annual Meeting hotels? While the hotels themselves are situated in the Woodley Park Neighborhood (home to the Smithsonian National Zoo), several bordering neighborhoods are easily accessible by foot, bike, or transit. Learn more about the hyperlocal sites found in each of these communities while you prepare to visit Northwest D.C. in April.

Read more about DC Neighborhoods.

Don’t delay – book your room for #aagDC today!

AAG has negotiated a discounted block of hotel rooms at the 2019 AAG Annual Meeting headquarters, the Marriott Wardman Park. This rate is available on a first come, first served basis. Spring is a busy season in DC, be sure to reserve your room before they are filled and rates increase.

PUBLICATIONS

NEW Issue of The AAG Review of Books:
Discussions on Ethnicity, Economic Geography, Global Health, and Arid Lands

AAG-RoB-winter-7-1-cvr-baby

The latest issue of The AAG Review of Books is now available (Volume 7, Issue 1, Winter 2019) with 11 book reviews on recent books related to geography, public policy and international affairs. The Winter 2019 issue also includes one book review essay and four book review discussions.

All AAG members have full online access to all issues of The AAG Review of Books through the Members Only page. Each issue, the Editor chooses two items to feature, made available free of charge. In this issue you can read the following for free: Book Review Forum of The Arid Lands: History, Power, Knowledge, by Diana K. Davis and The Politics of Scale: A History of Rangeland Science, by Nathan F. Sayre; Review by Rebecca Lave, Thomas Bassett, Geoff Mann, Paul Robbins, Simon Batterbury, Nathan F. Sayre, and Diana K. Davis; as well as Sabina Lawreniuk’s Book Review Essay of From Rice Fields to Killing Fields: Nature, Life, and Labor under the Khmer Rouge, by James A. Tyner and Landscape, Memory and Post-Violence in Cambodia, by James A. Tyner. As a reminder, anyone can search the full list of books reviewed in all issues of The AAG Review of Books by title, author, reviewer, theme and other categories using our new database.

Questions about The AAG Review of Books? Contact aagreview [at] aag [dot] org.

In addition to the most recently published journal, read the latest issue of the other AAG journals online:

• Annals of the American Association of Geographers
• The Professional Geographer
• GeoHumanities
• The AAG Review of Books

New Books in Geography – January Available! 

AAGRoB-winter-7-1-cvr-babyFrom art in China to water security, almost the whole alphabet is covered with the latest titles in geography that were received by the AAG during the month of January. The New Books list contains recently published titles in geography and related fields.

Browse the whole list of new books.

ASSOCIATION NEWS

 

AAG Seeks Feedback In Search Process for New Executive Director

The AAG Council has assembled a search committee composed of current council members and other experienced geographers to work on the important task of recruiting a new executive director. In addition to specialty, affinity and other groups within AAG, the general membership is encouraged to provide their views, and suggested candidates, through an online survey available until Feb. 13 or via email to AAGExecDir [at] StorbeckSearch [dot] com.

More information on the survey

Vote today in the 2019 AAG Election

Election-buttonThe AAG election will be conducted online again, and will take place January 30 – February 21. Each member who has an email address on record with the AAG will receive a special email with a code that will allow them to sign in to our AAG SimplyVoting website and vote. The 2019 election slate is available on our website to prepare you for casting your vote.

Learn more about the candidates.

 

Meet the 2019 Class of AAG Fellows!

The AAG Fellows program recognizes geographers who have made significant contributions to advancing geography. AAG Fellows, conferred for life, serve the AAG as an august body to address key AAG initiatives including creating and contributing to AAG initiatives; advising on AAG strategic directions and grand challenges; and mentoring early and mid-career faculty.

See the Fellows.

AAG Welcomes Spring 2019 Interns

The AAG is excited to welcome three new interns coming aboard our staff for the Spring 2019 semester! Joining us this semester are Matilda Kreider, a junior at George Washington University majoring in Political Communication with a minor in Geography, Crystal King, a senior at Michigan State University majoring in Economic Geography with a cognate in Business, and Jessica Gillette, a sophomore at George Washington University double majoring in Geography and International Affairs.

MEMBER NEWS

Profiles of Professional Geographers

Many geographers are employed in all levels of government – local, state, and federal. This month, meet Hope Morgan, a GIS Manager at North Carolina Geospatial & Technology Management Office, an office within NC Emergency Management. Hope explains the connections between technology, emergency management, and government employment and how this helps her to make a difference in her home state of North Carolina!

Learn more about Geography Careers.

February Member Updates

HWISE-logo-300x146-1

The latest news about AAG Members.

The Household Water Insecurity Experiences (HWISE) – Research Coordination Network (RCN), led in part by AAG National Councilor Wendy Jepson, is hosting special sessions at the 2019 AAG Annual Meeting. HWISE is excited to announce five panels on April 4 with the following themes: HWISE Data, Methodological Advances, Thematic Engagements, Research in Economically Advanced Countries, and Quantitative Approaches. They will conclude with an open reception for networking. Watch a video of their recent work or follow them on Twitter @HWISE_RCN.

RESOURCES AND OPPORTUNITIES

Call For Papers – Special Annals Issue on the Anthropocene

In 2017 the Working Group on the Anthropocene recommended formalization of the Anthropocene with an Epoch rank based on a mid-twentieth century boundary associated with radionuclide fallout as a stratigraphic Golden Spike, but this recommendation has yet to be acted upon and is far from universally accepted. This Special Issue of the Annals of the American Association of Geographers calls for papers examining all geographic aspects of the concept of the Anthropocene. Abstracts of no more than 250 words should be submitted by email to Jennifer Cassidento (jcassidento [at] aag [dot] org) by March 31, 2019. The Editor will consider all abstracts and then invite a selection to submit full papers for peer review by May 15, 2019.

Learn how to contribute to the special issue.

FEATURED ARTICLES

Mapping chimps: Drones and the future of conservation

Professor Serge Wich, Dr. Alex Piel, Dr. Fiona Stewart and a team of PhD researchers from Liverpool John Moores University are working to save Tanzania’s chimpanzees. Their tools: homemade drones and Pix4Dmapper.

Since the project launched in 2012, Serge and the team have been working on a number of initiatives to support and protect the chimpanzees.

Learn how Pix4D is giving chimps a chance.

GEOGRAPHERS IN THE NEWS
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Awardees

AAG Announces 2019 AAG Award Recipients

The American Association of Geographers congratulates the individuals and entities named to receive an AAG Award. The awardees represent outstanding contributions to and accomplishments in the geographic field. Formal recognition of the awardees will occur at the 2019 AAG Annual Meeting in Washington, DC during the AAG Awards Luncheon on Sunday, April 7, 2019.

2019 Susan Hardwick Excellence in Mentoring Award

The AAG bestows an annual award recognizing an individual geographer, group, or department, who demonstrates extraordinary leadership in building supportive academic and professional environments and in guiding the academic or professional growth of their students and junior colleagues. The late Susan Hardwick was the inaugural Excellence in Mentoring awardee. The Award was renamed in her honor and memory, soon after her passing.

Lorraine Dowler, Penn State

Dr. Lorraine Dowler not only mentors at all levels (early career faculty, her own students, and students that were/are not her own-outside her university), but is a strong advocate for her advisees, the greater student body (undergraduate and graduate), and the AAG community. As mentioned in one of her letters of support, she is committed to the holistic development of her advisees, while another notes that she pays particular attention to the mental, physical, and emotional well-being of those with whom she interacts, especially new faculty learning to balance the demands of academia. Outside of her tireless advocacy for students and colleagues, she continues to advise, research, publish, and contribute to the field of geography. She continues to go over and beyond what is expected.

Dr. Dowler’s advocacy of students and colleagues beyond “just getting through the Ph.D. and tenure track” (e.g. working with the letter writer experiencing the travel ban, threatening students in the classroom, etc.) went above and beyond the criteria listed by the AAG. As noted by the committee, “…mentorship, and viewing students and colleagues as whole people, not just academics, is integral to our discipline as not just successfully producing the next cohorts of academics but actively supporting and sustaining us by transforming the discipline in the way they model and mentor.” As a committee, we agree that the qualities and characteristics that Dr. Dowler puts forth, and her genuine concern for all those that work with her (colleagues, students, etc.) make her an excellent choice for this award.

2019 Enhancing Diversity Award

The AAG Enhancing Diversity Award honors those geographers who have pioneered efforts toward, or activelyparticipate in efforts towards encouraging a more diverse discipline.

Latoya Eaves, Middle Tennessee State University

Dr. Latoya Eaves has worked with unflagging determination to bring emancipatory geography to the forefront of the discipline through institutional advocacy, mentorship, community engagement, and, of course, intellectual production. Her cutting-edge scholarship engages and informs racial, gendered, and sexual dimensions of identity and politics.

Dr. Eaves works actively on many fronts to create a more inclusive academy. Her commitment to establish the Black Geographies Specialty Group and her generous support of other specialty groups serving under-represented groups of geographers are widely applauded. One of her colleagues noted: “The time and energy [she] has dedicated to the discipline and the AAG is a key reason why many graduate students and faculty are engaging in Black Geographies thought and why a number of Geography departments are advertising for scholars whose research is grounded in Black Geographies.”

Minelle Mahtani, University of British Columbia

For over two decades Dr. Minelle Mahtani’s theoretical and applied work has made great inroads into the problem of racism in our discipline as well as in racist policy practices in Canada. In her current position as Senior Advisor to the Provost on Racialized Faculty at the University of British Columbia, she will be instrumental in advancing the University’s institutional commitment to advancing equity and inclusion in the scholarly and leadership environment for faculty at UBC.

Mahtani’s work on mixed race identities; the intersectionality of race, ethnicity, and gender; and the production of identity and knowledge have laid the foundations for other geographers’ work and teaching. Additionally, Dr. Mahtani is applauded for her generous mentoring of students of color.

As a journalist, Dr. Mahtani has used her skills to engage the public in issues of identity, diversity and the lack of diversity and place. This is exemplified notably, though not exclusively, through her radio program “Sense of Place.”

2019 The AAG Stanley Brunn Award for Creativity in Geography

The AAG Stanley Brunn Award for Creativity in Geography is given annually to an individual geographer or team of geographers that has demonstrated originality, creativity and significant intellectual breakthroughs in geography. The award includes a prize of $1,000.

Janice Monk, Research Professor, School of Geography and Development, and Research Social Scientist Emerita at Southwest Institute for Research on Women, at the University of Arizona

Janice Monk, Research Professor, School of Geography and Development, and Research Social Scientist Emerita at Southwest Institute for Research on Women, at the University of Arizona Professor Monk is one of the most influential figures in the disciplines of geography and women’s studies. Her interdisciplinary research in geography education and feminist/gender studies has played a pivotal role in within the discipline. Her two decades as Director of the Southwest Institute for Women’s Studies, focusing on women’s employment, education, health, as well as encouraging science and math education for girls, have introduced feminism to multiple generations of geographers. In addition, the AAG recognizes Dr. Monk’s work on university-level teaching and graduate level geography education; her early and significant involvement in the Geography Faculty Development Alliance (GFDA); and her work on AAG projects (EDGE and others) researching career opportunities and professional development for geographers. The AAG also applauds Dr. Monk for her large body of publications, and your co-editorships of two series: International Studies of Women and Place and of Society, Environment and Place.

Professor Monk forcefully demonstrates the highly creative and consequential place that geographers can have in engaging in and shaping broader transdisciplinary discussions and debates. For these reasons, the AAG is proud to confer the 2019 AAG Stan Brunn Award for Creativity in Geography on Janice Monk.

2019 AAG Presidential Achievement Award

The AAG Presidential Award is given with the purpose of recognizing individuals for their long-term, major contributions to geography. The Past President has the honor of bestowing this distinction on behalf of the discipline and the association.

Rickie Sanders, Temple University

The AAG recognizes Dr. Sanders’ path-breaking role in enhancing diversity and inclusion in geography and championing the study of race, gender, and social justice within the discipline and beyond. Her long-standing contributions include award-winning teaching and mentorship and leading important initiatives to broaden the participation and belonging of historically under-represented groups. She powerfully uses her scholarship and her own biography to address the need for women of color in geography, to confront white privilege and gender inequality in education, and to create dialogue between racial and feminist theorists and classroom teachers. Also noteworthy is her critical use of photography in urban landscape studies and addressing marginalized communities in cities. Dr. Sanders is a beloved role model, having transformed and enriched the lives, careers and perspectives of many geographers

David Padgett, Tennessee State University

The AAG recognizes Dr. Padgett’s significant contributions in advancing geography, GIS, and STEM education within the Historically Black College and University—an important but traditionally neglected community within our discipline. He has become an important authority on the opportunities, challenges, and needs facing geographers at predominantly minority-serving institutions as well as those working in small academic programs and blended departments. Dr. Padgett has amassed an exemplary career in community engaged scholarship and teaching, having developed working relationships with a variety of grassroots groups, non-profits, and government agencies. His innovations in service-learning and participatory research are felt locally and through the many national workshops and funded projects he has helped lead. He forcefully demonstrates our discipline’s capacity to leverage geographic knowledge and geospatial technology to empower citizen science and social and environmental justice.

2019 AAG Honorary Geographer

The AAG annually selects an individual as the year’s Honorary Geographer. The award recognizes excellence in research, teaching, or writing on geographic topics by non-geographers. Past recipients include Stephen Jay Gould, Jeffrey Sachs, Paul Krugman, Barry Lopez, Saskia Sassen and Maya Lin.

Rita Colwell, University of Maryland College Park

The committee chose Dr. Colwell for her distinguished career as the 11th Director of the National Science Foundation, her many important leadership roles in academia, and her many significant advisory positions in the U.S. Government, nonprofit science policy organizations, and private foundations, and in the international scientific research community.

The 2019 Marble-Boyle Undergraduate Achievement Award in Geographic Science
The Marble-Boyle Undergraduate Achievement Award recognizes excellence in academic performance by undergraduate students from the U.S. and Canada who are putting forth a strong effort to bridge geographic science and computer science as well as to encourage other students to embark upon similar programs. The award is an activity of the Marble Fund for Geographic Science of the AAG.

Katherine Jolly, Macalester College

Pearl Leff, Hunter College – CUNY

Rachel Pierstorff, University of Denver

2019 Community College Travel Grants
Provides financial support for students from community colleges, junior colleges, city colleges, or two-year educational institutions to attend the Annual Meeting.

Kevin Cody, Santa Barbara City College

Do Khym, Cerritos College

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New Books for Geographers

New Books: December 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)

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Changing Human Populations Governance and Policy Living within Ecosystems
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