Newsletter – May 2015
PRESIDENT’S COLUMN
How We Hurt Each Other Every Day, and What We Might Do About It
By Mona Domosh
For those who do not experience their ill effects, it is difficult to recognize the ways in which a glance, a comment, something mentioned or overlooked, made invisible or hyper-visible, a seat not taken or a body too close, inflicts pain on others. For those who do experience these often subtle acts of othering, the visceral knowing-ness is immediate and the effects cumulative. And they take a large toll on our bodies and our psyches. As the poet Claudia Rankine says, “You can’t put the past behind you. It’s buried in you; it’s turned your flesh into its own cupboard.”¹ Overt acts of sexism, racism, and homophobia in Geography are far less apparent than they used to be, but not so their subtle, small, everyday enactments, what Chester Pierce called microaggressions, that serve to keep people in their place (and that oftentimes means out of Geography). Continue Reading.
Recent columns from the President
AAG Presents Books Awards
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.
Randall Wilson of Gettysburg College for his book America’s Public Lands: From Yellowstone to Smokey Bear and Beyond, published by Rowman & Littlefield.
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.
Paul Knox, University of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, for editing The Atlas of Cities, published by Princeton University Press
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.
Matthew Gandy, University College London, for his book The Fabric of Space: Water, Modernity and the Urban Imagination, MIT Press (2014).
ANNUAL MEETING
Pacific Coast Division Team Takes 2015 World Geography Bowl Title
The Pacific Coast team won first place in the 2015 World Geography Bowl, an annual quiz competition for teams of college-level geography students representing the AAG’s regional divisions. This was the 26th year for AAG hosting during its annual meeting. Learn More.
NEWS
Registration is Open for AAG Department Leadership Workshop
June 24-27, 2015, Storrs, Conneticut
You are invited to the 12th annual workshop devoted to strengthening departmental leadership across the discipline. The workshop is for all geographers interested in improving their programs—chairs/heads, associate chairs/heads, deans, academic advisors, provosts and other administrators, as well as all faculty interested in leadership issues. The workshop is particularly well suited for individuals who may soon assume leadership positions. Learn More.
2015 Workshop for Early Career Faculty, Graduate Students
June 21-27, 2015, Storrs, Conneticut
Registration has begun for the 2015 GFDA workshop for graduate students and faculty who are beginning their careers in higher education — instructors, lecturers, assistant professors, and other untenured faculty. The workshop is open to faculty from all types of teaching and research institutions inside and outside the US. The workshop, sponsored by the Association of American Geographers, focuses on topics which are frequently the greatest sources of stress in the first years of a faculty appointment. Learn More.
Help Identify Candidates for AAG Honors, Nominating Committees
The AAG Council seeks nominations for candidates to serve on the AAG Honors Committee and the AAG Nominating Committee. The Council will prepare the final slate of candidates for both committees from the nominations received, and committee members will be elected by a vote of the AAG membership.
The Honors Committee submits to the Council nominations for awards at least two weeks before the council’s Fall meeting, accompanied by a statement indicating the contribution which forms the basis of the proposed award. Nominations for the Honors Committee may include persons (i) from the membership at large and (ii) from those members who have previously received AAG Honors (a list of previous honorees can be found online. Honors Committee members serve for two years. Learn More.
Inspired by Outstanding Teaching, Service, Research? AAG Seeks Your Nominations by June 30
AAG Honors, the highest awards offered by the Association of American Geographers, are offered annually to recognize outstanding accomplishments by members in research & scholarship, teaching, education, service to the discipline, public service outside academe and for lifetime achievement. Although the AAG and its specialty groups make other important awards (see Grants and Awards), AAG Honors remain among the most prestigious awards in American geography and have been awarded since 1951. Learn More.
MEMBER & DEPARTMENT NEWS
Two Geographers Receive ACLS Fellowships for 2015
Two geographers, Jessica Barnes and Eric Carter have received American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) fellowships for the 2015 program.
ACLS, funded in 1919, is a private, nonprofit federation of 72 national scholarly organizations, is the preeminent representative of American scholarship in the humanities and related social sciences. Advancing scholarship by awarding fellowships and strengthening relations among learned societies is central to our work. Other activities include support for scholarly conferences, reference works, and scholarly communication innovations. ACLS fellowships fund research in the social sciences and the humanities where the ultimate goal of the fellow is by the end of the year to produce a major piece of scholarly work. Read More.
IN MEMORIAM
POLICY UPDATES
Senate ESEA Reauthorization Bill Includes Geography Grant Program
The Every Child Achieves Act (ECAA), the given name of the Senate’s legislation reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) – which is currently known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB) – includes a program that awards competitive grants “to promote innovative history, civic, and geography instruction, learning strategies, and professional development activities and programs.”
The ECAA, which has been approved by the Senate’s education panel, also specifies geography as a core academic subject for K-12 instruction. The inclusion of the grant funding is a promising development for geography given the discipline was the only core subject in NCLB to not receive any dedicated funding authorizations as part of the 2002 law. Read More.
PUBLICATIONS
Special Issue of the ‘Annals of the AAG’ on Mountains
The Annals of the Association of American Geographers invites abstracts of papers to be considered for a special issue on Mountains. This will be the ninth of a series of annual special issues that highlight the work of geographers around a significant global theme. Papers are sought from a broad spectrum of scholars who address social, cultural, political, environmental, physical, economic, theoretical, and methodological issues focused on the mountains. These could include original research in such areas as mountains as sites and corridors of cultural and environmental diversity and gradients, mountains as the “water towers of the world”, mountain as regions highly sensitive to climate change, the critical nature of mountain regions as borders and as regions of conflict, mountain regions as barriers to migration yet also home to large numbers of refugees, mountains as sources of hazards and risk, mountains as sites of sacred importance, and as destinations for tourism and as cultural icons. Abstracts of no more than 250 words should be submitted by June 15, 2015 to jcassidento [at] aag [dot] org. Read More.
New Books Received — April 2015
The AAG Review of Books office has released the list of the books received during the month of April. Read More.
MORE HEADLINES
AAG Seeks Observers to Attend UN Climate Change Conference
The Association of American Geographers has been granted Observer Organization status to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. With this formal designation, the AAG is permitted to submit to the UNFCCC Secretariat its nominations for representatives to attend the United Nations Climate Change Conference that will take place from November 30 – December 11, 2015 on the outskirts of Paris in Le Bourget, France (COP-21/CMP11).
Submit your nomination and all required materials by Monday, June 15, 2015. Read More.
EVENTS CALENDER
- Venice International Conference on Waterscapes and Historic Canals as a Cultural Heritage, Venice, Italy, May 14-15
- GeoComputation 2015, Dallas, TX, May 20-23
- 21st Annual California GIS Conference, Sacramento, CA, June 1-3
- IMAGIN 2015 Annual Conference, Traverse City, MI, June 7-9
- Annual Conference of the European Society for Literature, Science and the Arts 2015, Malta, June 15-18
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