Carvile Earle

Carville Earle, former editor of the Annals of the Association of American Geographers and Carl O. Sauer Professor of Geography Emeritus at Louisiana State University, passed away 9 October 2003 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1942, Earle earned his B.S. from Townson State College in 1966, his M.A. from the University of Missouri in 1967, and his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1973. He began his academic career near his home, teaching at Cantonsville Community College before taking an assistant professor position with the University of Maryland Baltimore County (1973-1977). He took a visiting position at the University of Wisconsin in 1977, before returning to Baltimore, where he remained until 1984. At that time, he accepted the post of Chair at Miami University in Ohio where he served until he took the same position at Louisiana State University in 1988. He was Chair until 1994 and remained as a professor at LSU until his retirement in 2003. A noted scholar, Earle had a prodigious publication record. His work appeared in numerous journal articles, book chapters, and other works. His landmark scholarly titles include Evolution of A Tidewater Settlement: All Hallow’s Parish Maryland, 1650-1783 (University of Chicago, Department of Geography, 1975), Geographical Inquiry and American Historical Problems (Stanford, 1992) and The American Way: A Geographical History of Crisis and Recovery (Rowman and Littlefield, 2003). He was also an accomplished editor, serving as the editor of Ohio Geographers and Historical Geography. Most notably, he edited the, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, flagship journal of the Association, from 1993 until 1996. His early work focused on the settlement of the American South and this provided an excellent fit at LSU. Throughout his career, his scholarship challenged standard historical interpretations and earned him recognition far beyond his peers in geography. Earle was a stalwart member in the Association of American Geographers, and from 1987 to 1990 he chaired the Historical Geography Specialty Group. During his tenure the specialty group brought in several world-class scholars from related disciplines and an editorial team under Carville’s leadership prepared the historical geography chapter for Geography in America (1989).

Carvile Earle (Necrology). 2003 AAG Newsletter 38(10): 19.