Glen Elder

Glen Elder, Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Vermont, died recently at the age of 42 after collapsing while jogging near his Burlington home. A political geographer, he was known for his rigorous, critical, and innovative work on queer space, heteronormativity, masculinities, race, bodies, and borders in the post-9/11 context. Elder earned undergraduate degrees in both Geography and English at the University of Witwatersrand in his home country of South Africa. He completed his MA (1992) and PhD (1995) at Clark University. Elder was appointed as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Vermont in 1995, Assistant Professor in 1998, and achieved tenure and promotion to Associate Professor in 2002. He was in the process of preparing his dossier for promotion to full Professor at the time of his death. Elder had served on an interim basis as Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences since 2008 and had been scheduled to begin that role on a permanent basis on July 1. He was also past chair of the Department of Geography at UVM (2005-08). A well-known and respected teacher at the University of Vermont, Elder received a kroepsch Maurice Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2004 and the Dean’s Lecture Award for outstanding Teaching and Scholarship in 2005. known for his commitment to confronting issues of marginalization and uneven power relations in the geography of sex, race, and place, he taught classes in African regional geography, political geography, feminist geography, and sexuality and space. Elder’s publications include Hostels, Sexuality and the Apartheid Legacy: Malevolent Geographies (ohio University Press, 2003) and more than a dozen other articles and book chapters.

Glen Elder (Necrology). 2009. AAG Newsletter 44(8) 20.