Journals

‘The Professional Geographer’: COVID-19 Announcement

March 27, 2020

To the authors, readers, reviewers, and staff members who contribute their energy and insight to The Professional Geographer,

I am grateful to this community of scholars and practitioners, whose contributions to The Professional Geographer have helped maintain its high quality and excellent reputation. Your dedication to scholarship and reflections on practice have put The Professional Geographer in a strong position to weather the unprecedented challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Right now, all of us are experiencing intense personal and professional demands. As teachers and professionals, we must move our work online, with increasing requests of our students and colleagues. As parents and caregivers of family and friends, and as individuals, we are called upon to cope with change, uncertainty, economic stress, and threats to our own and loved ones’ health.

In recognition of these realities, and to respond to our community’s needs, The Professional Geographer will adjust its customary timetables for submissions and reviews to accommodate everyone who will need extra time this year because of increased professional and personal obligations. Our team will make every effort possible to move the editorial process along smoothly, working within the realistic timeframes needed by each person we work with, as the need arises. For example, we may need to extend the review period for a submitted paper, or give an author extra time to make revisions. Editorial decisions, which rely on voluntary peer-reviews, may be prolonged as a result.

In short, we expect to slow down the production process in the coming months, to help our contributors and staff rise to the unexpected challenges of this global public health crisis. Production of The Professional Geographer will not stop, however. Perhaps now more than ever, our discipline needs the excellent scholarship and professional reflections the journal provides on how and with what tools we learn about the world and work to solve its problems.

As the editor of a journal that has evolved over 70 years to fulfill this mission, I am confident that even this challenge will lead us to become more robust, once we get through this tunnel. I look forward to working with you. Together we will endure this challenging moment. I ask for your patience and resilience, and thank you for your support of our community.

Editor, The Professional Geographer

Heejun Chang

News

‘Annals of the AAG’: COVID-19 Announcement

March 24, 2020

The Long View

When the Annals was launched in 1911, penicillin did not yet exist. As Editors, we are taking the long view on the COVID-19 pandemic. While the journal has persevered through many global crises, the present moment is clearly not business as usual.

We recognize these are exceptional times that are creating unusual burdens for individuals and communities. Many people are taking on additional duties as they cope with self-isolation and social distancing; cancelled classes, school and childcare; caring for and assisting older people and those with underlying health conditions; and the very real needs of students, staff and colleagues in our institutions. Those with caring responsibilities are facing more demands on their time, not fewer. These caring responsibilities are diverse and include friends, neighbors, colleagues and students—not just family members or dependent children.

We have chosen not to suspend our journal activities or operations for a set period, given the uncertain duration of this crisis. Instead, we are slowing things down, in order to stay nimble and responsive to differential challenges, capacities, and needs of our staff, contributors, and community members. Editorial decisions and copy-editing will be slower than usual; the window of reviewing will be extended and adapted to personal circumstances; responses and communications may be uneven or delayed. The months ahead will test all of us in different ways. Through difficult times, we ask for your patience.

Most important, we ask that our readers put care and community first. Peer review and academic publishing is, at its core, an act of goodwill—it requires sustained, thoughtful engagement with others, a kind of relation-building. We fully recognize and respect that not all members of our community are in a position to submit or review papers at this time. If you are able to engage in peer review, we will work with you to fully take account of your circumstances.

In the months to come, we expect to see trials and tests like never before, requiring us to pull together as a community. In this community, we find strength and hope. Reflecting on the recent words of Leo Varadkar, the Irish Taoiseach, we take some inspiration: “in the years to come, let them say of us: when things were at their worst, we were at our best.”

Editors, Annals of the American Association of Geographers

Ling Bian, David R. Butler, Katie Meehan, Kendra Strauss

News

Geographers Act on COVID19

March 24, 2020

GeoDS Lab at University of Wisconsin, Madison. County-level Spring 2020 travel data from March shows thousands of trips generated in the U.S., which may help explain the rapid growth of infection cases across the country.

On March 23, AAG asked how our members and followers are responding to the COVID19 pandemic. We got an extraordinary range of responses from all over the world. Here are just a few:

Addressing vulnerability. Rafael Pereira of Brazil’s Institute for Applied Economic Research (Ipea) is working with a team using transportation modelling and geolocated data to map where vulnerable people live in areas with difficult access to health care facilities in the largest 20 cities of Brazil; David Garcia is working with the Phillipines-based geospatial collective he founded, The Ministry of Mapping, to crowdsource the location, treatment capacity, and equipment needs of all health facilities there, while also working with a clinical psychologist to provide emotional support to the mappers themselves as they examine painfully difficult data. Jim Herries is working with a team at Esri to provide a wide variety of visualizations, including a map of where America’s seniors live, and under what conditions.

Spotting patterns and susceptibility. Geographers responded rapidly to examine disease transmission data at the local and regional level. Examples include the Northeastern Pennsylvania Alliance dashboard using data from Johns Hopkins University and Esri’s ArcGIS platform; Clio Andris at the Friendly Cities Lab at Georgia Tech mapping how our movements connect us; and Song Gao’s team’s modeling of potential transmission in Wisconsin. Geographers are also instrumental in tracking the impact of social distancing on disease transmission, as well as changes to air quality due to changes in social interactions (Descartes Labs).

Reflecting on context and history. Some geographers offer perspectives, op eds, essays, and interviews on the significance of COVID-19. Tim Cresswell of the University of Edinburgh reflects on how mobility has shaped the pandemic: “Turbulence has made certain aspects of our normal, taken-for-granted and never questioned mobile worlds visible.” At University of Saskatchewan, post-doc Chris Marsh was frustrated by the lack of Canadian-centric projections, and made his own. Medical geographer Graham Mooney of Johns Hopkins University has offered nearly a dozen interviews to major media outlets on what previous pandemics can teach us about COVID-19. And William Moseley of Macalester College participated in a quick-response UN-sponsored effort to understand global food security issues in light of COVID-19. His op ed on emerging food security issues in Africa due to the pandemic is here.

Do you know about a geographer’s work to respond to COVID-19? Contact Lisa Schamess, AAG Director of Communications.

COVID-19, current events, pandemic

Awardees

AAG Announces 2019 Book Awards

February 20, 2020

The AAG is pleased to announce the recipients of the three 2019 AAG Book Awards: the John Brinckerhoff Jackson Prize, the AAG Globe Book Award for Public Understanding of Geography, and the AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography. The AAG Book Awards mark distinguished and outstanding works published by geography authors during the previous year, 2019. The awardees will be formally recognized at the Awards Luncheon during the 2020 AAG Annual Meeting in Denver, CO.

The John Brinckerhoff Jackson Prize

This award encourages and rewards American geographers who write books about the United States which convey the insights of professional geography in language that is both interesting and attractive to lay readers.

Robert Lemon, The Taco Truck: How Mexican Street Food Is Transforming the American City, (University of Illinois Press, 2019)

Robert Lemon’s The Taco Truck is an evocative and penetrating look at a fascinating, often underappreciated part of urban America. The book is based on extensive field work, participant observation, and in-depth interviews in Oakland, San Francisco, Sacramento, and Columbus, Ohio. The immigrant Mexican origins of the taco truck are described and the author demonstrates how these moveable features on the urban scene have become important parts of Latino identity.

In this engaging, clearly written, and well-illustrated book, Lemon also explores some of the controversial urban politics that have surrounded, shaped, and sometimes limited the taco truck’s access to parts of the city. Lemon’s book marks a creative intersection of food geography, ethnic studies, and urban political geography and the result is a readily digestible, yet meaty appreciation for how taco trucks and their informal cuisine have created new, fluid, and mobile places in the cities we live in.

Simply put, Lemon’s appealing exploration of the taco truck—crafted in a wonderfully Jacksonian narrative—demonstrates the author’s success in making these street-side eateries a more legible part of the vernacular urban landscape and in highlighting where millions of Americans meet for lunch.

The AAG Globe Book Award for Public Understanding of Geography

This award is given for a book written or co-authored by a geographer that conveys most powerfully the nature and importance of geography to the non-academic world.

Adam Moore, for his book, Empire’s Labor: The Global Army that Supports U.S. Wars (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2019).

Empire’s Labor conveys powerfully the nature and importance of geography to audiences beyond academic geography. Clearly written and accessible to readers without training in specialist theory and vocabulary, the book nevertheless shows how extensive fieldwork and a critical geographical imagination can re-map the abstract and violently inhuman logistics of war-fighting in a profoundly humanizing way. As former AAG President John Agnew noted: “[Moore’s book]… displays the very best qualities of contemporary geographical scholarship in its synthesis of first-person experiences, wide reading of specialized literature across a range of fields, and a sophisticated but clearly expressed theoretical framing, particularly with its emphasis on the transfer of risk onto the shoulders of foreigners even as the objectives pursued are defined in Washington DC.”

Further, the prominent use of maps in the book helps to document a global geography of military infrastructure that is commonly ignored or obscured. What is especially impressive is the way in which Empire’s Labor conveys the human geographies and voices of the workers who toil in ‘someone else’s war’. This is a book that geographers will be able to recommend to non-geographers with pride.

The AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography

This award is given for a book written by a geographer that makes an unusually important contribution to advancing the science and art of geography.

Julie Guthman, Wilted: Pathogens, Chemicals, and the Fragile Future of the Strawberry Industry (University of California Press, 2019)

Julie Guthman has earned the 2019 AAG Meridian Book Award for her innovative, timely and terrific tome, Wilted: Pathogens, Chemicals, and the Fragile Future of the Strawberry Industry. This in-depth analysis of the California strawberry assemblage is about so much more than strawberries; it is about the socioecological consequences of corporate domination of scientific practice and the limits of chemical plantation agriculture. Based on extensive research that represents the best of the art and science of geography, Guthman’s masterful examination of the co-evolution of strawberry monocultures, soils, chemicals, climate, and labor, reveals that decades of narrowly-focused one-off solutions to pathogens and pests has had the effect of breeding ever more hostile growing conditions and requiring ever more extreme measures to perpetuate a deeply destructive agricultural practice on which ever more extensive food markets depend. Thus, the work exposes the limitations privatized science. Moreover, the book not only documents the strawberry assemblage in exquisite detail, but also proposes solutions to “repair the repair”.

With lessons that resonate far beyond strawberries to the complex of industries and institutions involved in global chemically-intensive commercial food production, this book constitutes an unusually important contribution to geography as well as an empirically-grounded clarion call to fundamentally reorganize how we produce food, conduct research, and organize land and labor markets. Wilted, then, will seem a “Silent Spring for our present moment” to many readers.

AAG Book Awards, AAG Globe Book Award for Public Understanding of Geography, AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography, Brinckerhoff Jackson Prize, Globe Book Award, JB Jackson Prize, John Brinckerhoff Jackson Prize, Meridian Book Award

Member Profiles

A Day in the Life of a Geographer

January 19, 2020

New Books for Geographers

New Books: January 2020

January 15, 2020

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.

January 2020

China’s Asian Dream: Empire Building along the New Silk Road (Revised and Expanded Edition) by Tom Miller (Zed Books 2019)

Conspiracy Theories: Philosophers Connect the Dots by Richard Greene and Rachel Robinson-Greene, eds (Open Court 2020)

The Digital City: Media and the Social Production of Place by Germaine R. Halegoua (New York University Press 2020)

Futureproof: Security Aesthetics and the Management of Life by D. Asher Ghertner, Hudson McFann, Daniel M. Goldstein, eds (Duke University Press 2020)

Geocultural Power: China’s Quest to Revive the Silk Roads for the Twenty-First Century by Tim Winter (University of Chicago Press 2019)

Motorbike People: Power and Politics on Rwandan Streets by Will Rollason (Rowman and Littlefield 2019)

Multispecies Households in the Saian Mountains: Ecology at the Russia-Mongolia Border by Alex Oehler and Anna Varfolomeeva, eds (Rowman and Littlefield 2020)

The Ocean Reader: History, Culture, Politics by Eric Paul Roorda, ed (Duke University Press 2020)

Propositions for Non-Fascist Living: Tentative and Urgent by Maria Hlavajova and Wietske Maas, eds (MIT Press 2019)

Stagnant Dreamers: How the Inner City Shapes the Integration of Second-Generation Latinos by María G. Rendón (Russel Sage Foundation 2019)

This Pilgrim Nation: The Making of the Portuguese Diaspora in Postwar North America by Gilberto Fernandes (University of Toronto Press 2020)

Traces of J. B. Jackson: The Man Who Taught Us to See Everyday America by Helen L. Horowitz (University of Virginia Press 2020)

Traveling With Sugar: Chronicles of a Global Epidemic by Amy Moran-Thomas (University of Califonia Press 2019)

Urban Mountain Beings: History, Indigeneity, and Geographies of Time in Quito, Ecuador by Kathleen S. Fine-Dare (Rowman and Littlefield 2019)

The Wari Civilization and Their Descendants: Imperial Transformation in Pre-Inca Cuzco by Mary Glowacki and Gordon F. McEwan, eds (Rowman and Littlefield 2020)

Awardees

AAG Announces 2020 AAG Award Recipients

December 16, 2019

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 2020 AAG Annual Meeting in Denver, CO during the AAG Awards Luncheon on Friday, April 10, 2020.

2020 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.

Jeffery Roth, Stephen F. Austin State University

The AAG Enhancing Diversity Committee, and the Committee on the Status of Women in Geography have selected Dr. Jeffery Roth of Stephen F. Austin State University to receive the 2020 AAG Susan Hardwick Excellence in Mentoring Award.

Dr. Roth’s nomination materials speak to his excellent mentoring abilities in advising students from a variety of backgrounds and his commitment to supporting students both professionally and personally. He truly embodies the exemplary legacy of the late Susan Hardwick. Dr. Roth has served as Geography Club advisor, he continues to create lifelong learners, has received teaching awards, and actively participates, and encourages students to participate in community activities. It is clear that Dr. Roth has shaped the lives of faculty, students, and members of the community in remarkable ways.

The AAG is proud and pleased to present the 2020 AAG Susan Hardwick Excellence in Mentoring Award to Dr. Jeffery Roth.

2020 Enhancing Diversity Award

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

Demetrice Jordan, Michigan State University

Demetrice (Dee) Jordan, has been a true change agent for diversity in our discipline.

Among Ms. Jordan’s many notable accomplishments, she founded and co-leads the Michigan State University Geography Department’s graduate student diversity recruitment initiative “Advancing Geography through Diversity,” which actively recruits and increases application submissions and acceptance among underrepresented minorities. Dee is a tireless mentor and advocate for creating an institutional climate that encourages the development of under-represented minorities as leaders in our discipline.

Ms. Jordan was named MSU’s 2018 Excellence in Diversity, Individual Emerging Progress recipient, as well as the 2018 Black Faculty, Staff and Administrators Association’s Graduate Student Emerging Leader recipient, becoming the first Geographer at MSU to hold these honors.

The AAG is proud and pleased to award Ms. Demetrice Jordan its 2020 AAG Enhancing Diversity Award.

2020 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.

2020 AAG Stanley Brunn Award for Creativity in Geography

Brian J. L. Berry, Lloyd Viel Berkner Regental Professor and Dean of the School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences at The University of Texas at Dallas

Professor Berry is one of the most influential figures in the disciplines of geography, urban studies, and regional planning. Berry’s early urban and regional research helped spark the quantitative revolution that occurred in geography and urban research in the early 1960s, making him the world’s most frequently cited geographer for more than 25 years. Throughout Professor Berry’s distinguished career he has successfully bridged theory and practice and has been heavily involved in urban and regional planning in both developed and developing countries.

In addition, the AAG recognizes Dr. Berry’s service to the discipline, including as AAG President (1978-1979) and as dean of the former University of Texas at Dallas School of Social Sciences, transforming it during a period of rapid growth into the (now) School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences. Professor Berry’s over 500 books and countless significant awards speak volumes on the impact of his research in geography, and its recognition in other scientific fields.

2020 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.

Kathryn Dwyer Sullivan, geologist, former NASA astronaut, NOAA Scientist, and 2017 Charles A. Lindbergh Chair of Aerospace History

The AAG Executive Committee recognizes Kathryn Sullivan’s distinguished career, including being the first American woman to walk in space, serving as Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere, and as a NOAA Administrator. The direction in which Sullivan steered Administration and NOAA priority work in the areas of weather and water services, climate science, integrated mapping services and Earth-observing capabilities is immediately recognized and welcomed by geographers. Sullivan also led NOAA with regard to satellites, space weather, water, and ocean observations and forecasts to best serve American communities and businesses. As a woman scientist and role model, Kathryn Sullivan mirrors many of the values the AAG also actively pursues in our discipline and our association.

2020 AAG Harold M. Rose Award for Anti-Racism Research and Practice

The Rose Award was created to honor Harold M. Rose, who was a pioneer in conducting research on the condition faced by African Americans. The award honors geographers who have a demonstrated record of this type of research and active contributions to society, and is awarded to individuals who have served to advance the discipline through their research, and who have also had an impact on anti-racist practice.

Dr. Audrey Kobayashi, Queen’s University

Dr. Kobayashi exemplifies the ideals of the AAG Harold Rose Award, with a decades-long commitment to anti-racist research that has reshaped the discipline with impact far beyond university walls. In terms of research, Kobayashi has published on anti-racist practice in top field journals and in her Presidential addresses to the AAG “The Idea of Race in Geography,” and to CAG “What’s Race Got to Do with it? The Geography of Racialization in Canada.”

Kobayashi’s writing is frequently taught in graduate courses, thus impacting the next generation of geographers in the project of building an anti-racist geography. She is an impressive model of anti-racist praxis, from her work advocating for employment equity in Canada to her involvement authoring commissioned reports on anti-racist practice, to her mentoring of early career underrepresented scholars and efforts to consult with university administrators. We will end with the words of one of the letters of support, “Rose’s effort to confront the “Geography of Despair” remains unfinished. However, as exemplified by the steadfast work of scholar-activists such as Professor Kobayashi, this work continues.

The 2020 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.

Jacob Bostick, University of Colorado – Colorado Springs

Nathan Fiscus, University of North Alabama

Chelsie Perkins, East Tennessee State University

2020 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.

Martha (Kennedy) Masanzi, Santa Barbara City College

Ozer Ozturk, Lone Star College

Brenna Strawn, Lone Star College

Stuart Watts, Montgomery College

Newsletters

Newsletter – December 2019

December 4, 2019

PRESIDENT’S COLUMN

Going Local or How the AAG Can Help Enhance its Regional Divisions

By David Kaplan

The region is one of geography’s main concepts and, true to these roots, regional divisions—mostly within the United States but many including Canadian provinces—developed as an intrinsic part of the American Association of Geographers. The Pacific Coast Division was formed in 1938 and the other regional divisions were established in the 1940s and 1950s. Preston James and Geoffrey Martin credit regions with much of the AAG’s growth during the 1960s, but what else would you expect from a geography organization? Regions are part of our DNA.

Continue Reading.

ANNUAL MEETING

Book your stay in Denver, CO

The 2020 AAG Annual Meeting will be headquartered in downtown Denver, Colorado at the Hyatt Regency – Convention Center. Discounted rooms will also be available at the neighboring Sheraton – Denver Downtown, currently being freshly renovated for meeting attendees to enjoy! A discounted block of rooms is being held for those attending the AAG Annual Meeting. Book your stay before rooms sell out or the rate expires on March 13, 2020.

View the accommodations.

Career Mentors Needed for #aagDENVER

The advice of a mentor can be instrumental in preparing young geographers for success in today’s competitive job market. The AAG seeks professional geographers representing the business, government, nonprofit and academic sectors to serve as volunteer Career Mentors during the 2020 AAG Annual Meeting in Denver, CO. During sessions held each morning of the conference, mentors will answer questions and provide general career advice to students and job seekers interested in learning more about industries that employ geographers, the work geographers perform and strategies for getting into the field. For additional questions and to volunteer, please contact Mark Revell at the AAG.

More information about the Jobs & Careers Center.

Hiking around the Denver Area

Focus-on-Denver-graphic

If you are looking for some fresh air during the 2020 AAG Annual Meeting, the Denver area has plenty of open spaces to choose from! While Rocky Mountain National Park and Mount Evans are some of the more well known locations for hiking, Esri Education Manager Joseph Kerski has some “off the beaten path” suggestions. His map of top ten hikes include a variety of options from urban hiking to views of the great plains to geologic vistas! Get ready to get outdoors at #aagDENVER.

Learn more.

Poster abstracts for #aagDENVER due January 31!

Present a poster at the 2020 AAG Annual Meeting. As soon as your poster is ready, upload the electronic file to our Poster Portal so it can be viewed online well before and beyond your presentation session. In addition, the AAG has set up printing partnerships for discounts on paper poster printing to help you save.

PUBLICATIONS

New Books in Geography — October Available

New-books1-1 Read the latest titles in geography and related disciplines as found on the New Books in Geography list. Some of these books will be reviewed in The AAG Review of Books. The editors of The AAG Review of Books are happy to receive suggestions for potential reviews and potential reviewers. Reviews are commissioned by the editors, based on the appropriateness and qualifications of the reviewer, observing the usual avoidances of conflict of interest. Persons wishing to volunteer their reviewing services should have the requisite qualifications and demonstrable prior knowledge and engagement with the subject area, preferably through publications. Please contact the editors at aagrb [at] lsu [dot] edu.

Browse the full list of new books.

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 issue of African Geographical Review

The latest issue of the journal of the Africa Specialty Group of the AAG, the African Geographical Review, has recently been published. Volume 38, Issue 4 (December 2019) is available online for subscribers and members of the Africa Specialty Group. The latest issue contains eight articles covering all sub-fields of geography, to enhance the standing of African regional geography, and to promote a better representation of African scholarship.

See more about the journal.

ASSOCIATION NEWS

Meet the 2020 Class of AAG Fellows!

honors and awards 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 is Proud to Announce the 2020 AAG Honors

Each year, the AAG invites nominations for AAG Honors to be conferred in recognition of outstanding contributions to the advancement or welfare of the profession. The AAG Honors Committee is charged with making award recommendations for each category, with no more than two awards given in any one category. The AAG is proud to officially announce the 2020 AAG Honors. Formal recognition of the Honorees will occur at the Awards Luncheon at the 2020 AAG Annual Meeting.

See the Honorees.

Introducing the Climate Action Task Force

In response to a member petition circulated last spring calling upon the AAG to reduce CO2 emissions related to the Annual Meeting, AAG Council formed a Climate Action Task Force. Task Force members Patricia M. Martin and Joseph Nevins report on the early initiatives set forth to attempt to transition to a low-carbon conference model. Planning for several experimental activities is currently underway for the 2020 AAG Annual Meeting.

Read the report.

Get ready for the 2020 AAG Election

The AAG election will be conducted online again, and voting will take place January 8-30, 2020. 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. It’s important to update your email address in your AAG account to ensure you receive the email ballot. The 2020 election slate will be published soon.

Be prepared for the election.

AAG Hosts Workshop at Regional Division Meetings

To better understand how the AAG could assist geography programs with student recruitment, the AAG developed a workshop (the “AAG Geography Student Recruitment and Career Resources” workshop) that was offered at four AAG Regional Division Meetings throughout Fall 2019. AAG staff encouraged participants to think geographically about their student recruitment plans and to come up with an actionable plan for their own campuses. By offering the workshop, the AAG was able to identify some strategies that can any program can consider tailoring to their own needs.

Learn more about the workshop.

Congratulations to Outstanding Graduate Student Papers from Regional Meetings

The AAG is proud to announce the Fall 2019 student winners of the AAG Council Award for Outstanding Graduate Student Paper at a Regional Meeting. The annual award, designed to both encourage regional meeting participation and support AAG Annual Meeting travel, is granted to one student from each division as decided by regional division board members. The winners from each region will present their work in two dedicated sessions at the 2020 AAG Annual Meeting. Congratulations to all of the students who participated!

Read more about the winners.

POLICY CORNER

GIS Day at the Library of Congress

The Library of Congress hosted an event on Nov. 13th in honor of GIS Day. The program featured Librarian of Congress and 2019 AAG Atlas Award Recipient, Carla Hayden, along with Sen. John Boozman (R-AR), Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-AR) and other distinguished researchers and speakers. The projects presented throughout the day exemplified the utility of GIS around the themes of cultural heritage preservation and disaster response. The AAG co-hosted a celebratory reception later that day on Capitol Hill with MAPPS, ACEC, and NSGIC.

In the News:

The President has signed another short term continuing resolution (CR) to replace the previous one set to expire November 21st. This newly signed CR will postpone the fiscal year deadline another month and will allow the government to continue operating under FY 2019 levels. The House and Senate hope to complete work on all FY 2020 spending bills before the new deadline of December 20th.
One notable exception to the static funding levels maintained in the most recent CR is the increase in funding for the U.S. Census Bureau. The short term stopgap bill passed on November 21st allocates $7.3 billion to the agency as they prepare for the 2020 count. This funding, which had previously been delayed, is a crucial resource as the Census Bureau substantially expands its staff and capacity in anticipation of next year.

MEMBER NEWS

Profiles of Professional Geographers

College is about learning to think critically says Lisa Colson, GIS & Imagery Specialist at USDA/Foreign Agricultural Service. Lisa was attracted to a career in geography because it allowed her to combine her interests in food security, sustainability, and alleviating poverty. The skillsets geographers have are increasingly in demand in our globalizing world!

Learn more about Geography Careers.

December Member Updates

The latest news about AAG Members.

AAG National Councilor Jennifer Collins is spearheading the organizational efforts for the 2020 Symposium on Hurricane Risk in a Changing Climate. As a new event, the symposium seeks to foster communication among scientists, engineers, and practitioners in order to increase understanding of and better ways to deal with tropical cyclone risks. The early bird registration deadline is December 15. Learn more.

RESOURCES AND OPPORTUNITIES

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 21-27, 2020, at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The shorter four-day workshop for department leaders (June 24-27) will overlap with the week-long conference for early career attendees providing a full career spectrum of exercises and activities.

Register today!

NSF seeks program officer in Geography and Spatial Sciences

NSF_logo2s The National Science Foundation is seeking qualified candidate for a Geographer (Program Director) position for the Geography and Spatial Sciences (GSS) Program, within the Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences (BCS), Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE), Alexandria, VA.

See the job posting.

IN MEMORIAM

David Eugene Schwarz

The AAG mourns the loss of David Schwarz (1936-2019), a professor of geography at San Jose State University. He passed away in Gilroy, CA, aged 82, after a long struggle with Parkinson’s disease. David accepted a position at SJSU in 1971 and spent his entire career in various positions serving the university. His research was largely in the field of remote sensing.

Continue reading.

GEOGRAPHERS IN THE NEWS

EVENTS CALENDAR

Post

AAG Holds Workshops on Student Recruitment at Regional Division Meetings

December 2, 2019

AAG President David Kaplan recently outlined the need among geography programs to actively recruit students and to develop further community connections to AP Human Geography teachers. Geography faculty and chairs at colleges and universities, however, share difficulties attracting students to major in geography (or related) degrees mainly because students are unfamiliar with the discipline or associated career paths. To address President Kaplan’s call and better understand how the AAG could assist geography programs with student recruitment, staff members Coline Dony, Emily Fekete, and Mark Revell developed a workshop that built on existing AAG Resources (The Guide to Geography Programs, Profiles of Professional Geographers) and knowledge about existing recruitment strategies across our programs. The “AAG Geography Student Recruitment and Career Resources” Workshop was offered at four Regional Division meetings throughout the Fall: the Great Plains/Rocky Mountain meeting, the Association of Pacifiic Coast Geographers meeting, the Mid-Atlantic Division meeting, and the Southeast Division meeting.

These workshops attracted about 60 members, including program chairs, faculty, and students. Each workshop was introduced by AAG staff with an overview of possible recruitment strategies. Participants were prompted to first think geographically about their program and campus, leveraging our discipline’s very own expertise! For example, geography programs should understand where their own students come from (which schools feed into their college), and where their graduates go (how far and for what positions). The workshop went over a handful of on-campus strategies, such as connecting with undergraduate counselors and ways to showcase career possibilities, which could be implemented relatively easily. Other, more ambitious strategies that look beyond the college campus were also provided, including connecting to AP classrooms as a potential avenue to recruit students. This led to a broader discussion on the need to bolster ties with K-12 geography education in the US and on AAG’s active efforts in this area (e.g., Powerful Geography, Encoding Geography). Funding opportunities that can support those more pioneering and collaborative efforts around education research were also highlighted. Finally, important advice was provided on how to best leverage social media to reach different audiences (e.g., students, parents, or college administrators) and on how to manage social media accounts.

The overview of on- and off-campus approaches was followed by a break-out session providing workshop participants the opportunity to reflect on these suggestions, share their own outlook with us, and raise additional opportunities or challenges. During this break-out session, each group was also charged to create an actionable recruitment plan that would fit their program. Throughout these workshops, AAG staff learned that there is no “one size fits all” strategy to effectively recruit students. Techniques that work in Pennsylvania won’t necessarily work in Montana. By improving your understanding of your program’s “catchment area” (e.g., where are students coming from and where are they going) it will be easier to think critically about strategies. For example, if your program draws largely from a handful of high schools, you should reach out to those schools directly or offer to get involved in their AP Human Geography or AP Environmental Science programs. If your university draws from a community college, try to engage or collaborate with their faculty. Perhaps you can invite students to campus for Geography Awareness Week. If your college or university is drawing from students on a more national scale, you could consider contacting your registrar to see who has completed the AP Human Geography or Environmental Science exams on your campus and proactively reach out to these students. Finally, chairs and faculty need to think ahead and be aware of major demographic shifts impacting the overall demand for a college education in their area or across Institutions of Higher Education in general.

Despite these geographic and administrative differences, there are, however, some tactics that any program can implement to begin developing a recruitment plan. First among these is to ask your majors directly what made them choose geography as a major. Understanding how students make this choice will make your strategies more successful. Second, strive to develop good relations with college or university administrators. An active presence on social media could support this effort. Next, make sure to keep your faculty aware about ongoing events on your campus to leverage opportunities that could have an impact on your program. Fourth, actively connect with the undergraduate counselors and external advisors on your campus and perhaps consider using available funds to send the geography advisor to the AAG Annual Meeting to attend the Jobs & Career Center sessions for a day so they can familiarize themselves with the discipline. Finally, remember that student recruitment and program building takes sustained effort and time. Programs need to stay proactive about recruitment, make sure to assess strategies for their effectiveness, and understand that recruitment never ends (each year a new crop of students needs to be recruited).

We all care about geography and believe in the value of geographic education. If we work towards promoting and changing the cultural perception of geography as a subject, we can work towards building a more sustainable discipline.

While current funding only allowed staff to attend four Regional Division meetings, the workshop will also be offered at the Virtual 2020 AAG Annual Meeting. The free workshop titled “Geography Student Recruitment Workshop: strategies to attract more majors to your geography program” will be offered Wednesday, April 8, 2020, from 1:45 PM – 3:00 PM MDT. To attend the session please join here. A related session of interest to participants “What’s in a Name? Undergraduate Student Perceptions of Geography, Environment, and Sustainability Key Words and Program Names” is being offered by Justin Stoler, University of Miami, beforehand on Wednesday, April 8, 2020 from 11:10 AM – 12:25 PM MDT. In addition to the AAG Annual Meeting, the virtual workshop will be also held Wednesday, May 20, 2020 from 2:00 to 3:30 PM EDT. Those interested in participating in the free online event can register here.

*Funding for travel to present the AAG Student Recruitment and Career Resources Workshop at the four regional meetings outlined above was provided by the National Science Foundation (Award# 1837577). .

New Books for Geographers

New Books: November 2019

November 15, 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.

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

November 2019

America’s Johannesburg: Industrialization and Racial Transformation in Birmingham by Bobby M. Wilson (University of Georgia Press 2019)

Deported to Death: How Drug Violence is Changing Migration on the US Border by Jeremy Slack (University of California Press 2019)

Fifty Maps and the Stories they Tellby Jerry Brotton and Nick Millea (Bodleian Library 2019)

For a Politics of the Common Good by Alain Badiou and Peter Engelman (Polity 2019)

Geographies of City Science: Urban Lives and Origin Debates in Late Victorian Dublin by Tanya O’Sullivan (University of Pittsburgh Press 2019)

Infinite Cities: A Trilogy of Atlases—San Francisco, New Orleans, New York by Rebecca Solnit, Joshua Jelly-Schapiro, Rebecca Snedeker (University of California Press 2019)

Islamic Maps by Yossef Rapoport (Bodleian Library 2020)

Limits: Why Malthus Was Wrong and Why Environmentalists Should Care by Giorgos Kallis (Stanford University Press 2019)

Manufacturing Decline: How Racism and the Conservative Movement Crush the American Rust Belt by Jason Hackworth (Columbia University Press 2019)

Mapping Beyond Measure: Art, Cartography and the Space of Global Modernity by Simon Ferdinand (University of Nebraska Press 2019)

On the Backs of Tortoises: Darwin, the Galápagos, and the Fate of an Evolutionary Eden by Elizabeth Hennessy (Yale University Press 2019)

Power, Participation, and Protest in Flint, Michigan: Unpacking the Policy Paradox of Municipal Takeovers by Ashley E. Nickels (Temple University Press 2019)

Public Los Angeles: A Private City’s Activist Futures by Don Parson, edited by Roger Keil and Judy Branfman (University of Georgia Press 2019)

Red, Black, White: The Alabama Communist Party 1930-1950 by Mary Stanton (University of Georgia Press 2019)

Suspect Communities: Anti-Muslim Racism and the Domestic War on Terror by Nicole Nguyen (University of Minnesota Press 2019)

The Company We Keep: Interracial Friendships and Romantic Relationships from Adolescence to Adulthood by Grace Kao, Kara Joyner, and Kelly Stamper Balistreri (Russel Sage Foundation 2019)

The Far Right Today by Cas Mudde (Polity 2019)

The Global Interior: Mineral Frontiers and American Power by Megan Black (Harvard University Press 2018)

The Selden Map of China: A New Understanding of the Ming Dynasty by Hongping Annie Nie (Bodleian Library 2019)

Water, Life, and Profit: Fluid Economies and Cultures of Niamey, Niger by Sarah Beth Keough and Scott M. Youngstedt (Bergahn Books 2019)

Writing Revolution: Hispanic Anarchism in the United States by Christopher J. Castaneda and Montse Feu, eds. (University of Illinois Press 2019)