Going Global or How Best to Recognize the Internationalization of the AAG; Plus – an Addendum to my Previous Column

We have always been the “AAG” but five years ago the membership overwhelmingly decided to change the full title from the Association of American Geographers to the American Association of Geographers. I remember being part of the Council when this change was discussed. It went beyond verbal tweaking and reflected our best efforts to recognize that the AAG was no longer just an organization of U.S.-based geographers. Instead we had become a community in which geographers from many countries gather.

The value of internationalization was promoted especially by past President Kavita Pandit. In her columns, she recognized that higher education has become more international. With geography leading the way, we must welcome and validate students from around the world and incorporate study abroad curricula in our programs. Kavita was not alone in pointing to the importance of international geography. Past presidents such as Victoria Lawson, Ken Foote, and Derek Alderman, among many others have spoken to the need to extend our reach and our knowledge beyond national borders.

For me the internationalization of geography and of the AAG has been a godsend. Over 20 years ago I met a number of geographers from Finland who regularly attended the national meetings — resulting in long and fruitful collaborations that continue to this day. I have also collaborated with geographers from France and Italy who regularly partake in our yearly conference. And I am delighted to renew friendships each year with geographers from a whole host of different countries.

Unlike the International Geographical Union (IGU), the AAG is not structured as a super-organization made up of various national geographic societies. But we are growing ever more international and becoming a vital meeting space for geographers from around the world. In 2018, 3,476 members came from outside the United States, comprising 31 percent of all members. This is up from 22 percent international membership in 2013. The following charts show the breakdown by the largest countries and then by broad regions. International membership is led by Canada, China, and the United Kingdom, with over 90 other countries represented. Many of these geographers travel to our annual meeting to present and to network. Here the international presence is even greater, with fully 36 percent of attendees arriving from outside the United States.

This international presence adds tremendous value to our organization. This has been recognized already in several ways. We have implemented the Developing Regions initiative, which provides low-cost membership to geographers in several countries where access might otherwise be too dear. On the editorial side, we just selected two new Annals editors, both of whom work at institutions outside the United States. And about a quarter of our editorial boards are also international. What is more, I have been working with the presidents of the Canadian Association of Geographers and the European Association of Geographers to foster greater collaboration across national geographical societies.

We should move forward to the next level. Now is the time to consider international representation that better reflects our membership and puts force behind the meaning of our name change in 2015. For this reason, I am in favor of adding a dedicated international councilor, somebody who comes from an institution outside the United States. Right now international geographers have little representation. All U.S.-based geographers also belong to regional divisions, with their own regional councilor. Yet, with the exception of a few Canadian provinces folded into these AAG divisions such as NESTVAL, there is no dedicated representation for international members.

Why should we accord international members this special status? As with other groups, we could try to increase international representation through the nominations process, creating a larger pool of non-U.S. candidates for our existing “national” councilor and vice president slots. But this would be slow and unsteady — with few guarantees. In the last 10 years, we have had only two vice president and three councilor nominations from outside the United States. Of these, only past President Audrey Kobayashi from Canada was elected under our standard process.

Moreover, the AAG is intrinsically geographical in its own organization, befitting the nature of our field. Just as we divide the United States into nine geographical regions for the sake of governance, to bring an AAG experience closer to home and to represent the concerns of different parts of the United States, so we should pursue the unique advantages of recognizing the geographies of the one-third of our membership who do not live in any of these regions.

A dedicated international councilor would ensure that the AAG Council always has a representative from outside the United States. And while “international” encompasses the vastness of the world, there are relevant concerns that an international councilor could address and that would be common to members from Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Such concerns include the difficulties of access to U.S.-based meetings, potential linguistic issues, visa problems (particularly prevalent in this political environment), and better strategies for linking the AAG to geography societies around the world. I believe that an international councilor would add a great deal to our discussions and provide a hitherto underrepresented perspective.

While we have a team of people working on the particulars, I should emphasize that this reflects my personal views. The details behind creating this position will need to be worked out and approved by Council, and I will not go into them here. We may also consider a trial run, much as we did with our Student Councilor, so that we can see how well this idea works in practice and make modifications if need be. But make no mistake — the time has come to represent the international reach of our organization. The time has come to elect an International Councilor.


Addendum

As the latest in the lineup of AAG presidents charged with writing a weekly column, I would like to thank all of you who offer praise, reflections, insights, and corrections around the themes brought out each month. February’s column, Beyond the Academic 1 Percent, garnered more than its usual share of comments. Some of you noted omissions in my map of geography programs, which has been quite helpful in revising our comprehensive database of geography programs. Others agreed with the main premise of the column, in the need for greater institutional diversity and sympathy with the basic points.

There were also some critiques related to what was perceived by some as my denigrating geography at elite universities, especially Ivy League universities. My “unpopular” opinion was intended to be controversial and I will stick by my major view: the lack of large Ph.D. programs at Yale, Harvard, Princeton, and others has had some drawbacks, especially in regard to visibility — as many have pointed out over the years. But judging from the evidence among other disciplines, it has also had a salutary effect of making institutional geography more equitable. People can disagree about which is more important.

One thing we can all agree on, however, is the value of having strong geography programs at elite private institutions. Like all of you, I would like to see geography as an option for every undergraduate major. Many students tend to pick colleges first and then consider their majors, and it is a serious lapse not to have a geography degree among the options. Strong geography programs at colleges like MiddleburyMacalesterVassar, and Mount Holyoke (to name just a few) should be encouraged and replicated across the country. The undergraduate geography program at Dartmouth College has been a true standout in this regard. Its faculty continue to contribute to the discipline while they introduce geography to legions of highly talented and demographically diverse students, who go on to become leaders in the field. These institutions are truly beacons in our geographical landscape, and our discipline would be a lot poorer without their presence and energy.

— Dave Kaplan
AAG President

DOI: 10.14433/2017.0069

    Share

What will be Presented at the 2020 AAG Meeting?

Jeong Chang Seong, Chul Sue Hwang, Ana Stanescue, Yubin Lee, and Youngho Lee

A total of 4,893 papers and posters are scheduled to be presented at the Denver AAG Annual Meeting in April this year (numbers as of February 2, 2020). In order to help meeting participants and fellow geographers to sketch out what is going to be presented at the meeting, we summarized the AAG 2020 presentation submissions using keywords network analysis methods.

We collected all keywords from the presentation submissions. They were preprocessed with deletion, concatenation, standardization, normalization, and conversion techniques. A total of 21,954 keywords were split into single-word keywords. Any duplicate words in each record were also deleted. A total of 6,521 unique keywords were identified. We used 40 as the keyword frequency threshold for network visualization. As a result, a keywords network diagram was constructed with 129 keywords as shown in Figure 1. In the figure, circle sizes reflect keyword frequencies, edge widths indicate co-occurrences between two keywords, and circle colors indicate cluster memberships.

Figure 1. A keywords network constructed with the 2020 AAG presentation submissions

Urban (532) was identified as the most frequent keyword at the 2020 AAG Annual Meeting, followed by GIS (322), Spatial (276), Climate Change (234), Development (218), Water (215), Health (191), Climate (168), Remote Sensing (164), Social (158), and Food (158). Each number in parentheses indicates the frequency of the keyword.

When a keywords network clustering algorithm was applied, keywords were grouped into 12 topical clusters as shown in Table 1. The Urban cluster had the largest number (1522) of keywords as members. When the influence of each cluster was measured with the eigenvector centrality, the Urban cluster was also most influential by taking 28.12% of all possible connections among keywords. When only the Urban papers were analyzed, eleven Urban sub-clusters were identified, and their percent influences and member keyword counts are shown in Table 2.  No particular topic stands out in the Urban research. Rather, several topics are very competitive.

Table 1. Clusters of AAG 2020 Presentations
Table 2. Sub-clusters of Urban Research

Some other interesting watch points are also found in the AAG 2020 presentation submissions. Firstly, this year’s 4,893 presentations are significantly less than last year’s 6,026 presentations. Secondly, the Spatial Data Science theme is independent of the GIS theme. It appears to be a much more influential cluster than GIS. Thirdly, the Urban cluster doesn’t seem to be a proprietary estate for traditional urban geographers. It embraces various expertise like GIS, data science and modeling, land use and landcover, water, ecology, and environmental health. Indeed, Urban is rather a solid entity calling diverse geographers. Finally, it will be interesting to see what will happen to the HealthWaterEducationGeopolitics, and Ontology clusters. Will they keep tenures at the AAG 2021 Meeting at Seattle?

Acknowledgment: This research was supported by the MSIT (Ministry of Science, ICT), Republic of Korea, under the High-Potential Individuals Global Training Program (IITP-2019-0-01603) supervised by the IITP (Institute for Information & Communications Technology Planning & Evaluation). We also thank AAG for supporting data for this research, and thank Dr. Coline Dony, AAG Senior Geography Researcher, for encouraging us to submit this article to the AAG Newsletter. 

DOI: 10.14433/2017.0068

About the Authors
Jeong Chang Seong, Ph. D., is a professor of geography at University of West Georgia (UWG), Carrollton, GA
Chul Sue Hwang, Ph. D., is a professor of geography at Kyung Hee University (KHU), Seoul, South Korea
Ana Stanescu, Ph. D., is an assistant professor of computer science at University of West Georgia, Carrollton, GA
Yubin Lee is a graduate student at KHU who is currently performing a visiting research at UWG
Youngho Lee is a graduate student at KHU who is currently performing a visiting research at UWG

    Share

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

2020 AAG Harm de Blij Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching

This annual award recognizes outstanding achievement in teaching undergraduate Geography including the use of innovative teaching methods. The recipients are instructors for whom undergraduate teaching is a primary responsibility.  The award consists of $2,500 in prize money and an additional $500 in travel expenses to attend the AAG Annual Meeting, where the award will be conveyed. This award is generously funded by John Wiley & Sons in memory of their long-standing collaboration with the late Harm de Blij on his seminal Geography textbooks.

Dr. Jennifer Collins, University of South Florida

Dr. Jennifer Collins, a Professor of Geosciences at the University of South Florida, is described by her colleagues as a highly respected role model (especially for female students in STEM) and passionate about undergraduate education. Dr. Collins designs her courses to offer high impact learning experiences to her students. She has co-published with numerous undergraduate students, and routinely includes undergraduate mentoring and collaboration in her research grants. However, her impact goes far beyond her own students.  Dr. Collins engages in numerous well-recognized community outreach projects herself, such as providing workshops for K-12 teachers and promoting geography in the media. One colleague described her as “… not only [having] impacted the field, students, and the community at large, but [she] is also a good steward of the environment, imparting those values onto others.” Similarly, another colleague describes her as a “true collaborator” with a strong “devotion to the university, our students, and her profession at large”. For all these reasons, we are pleased to recognize Dr. Jennifer Collins with the 2020 AAG Harm de Blij Award.

2020 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.

Nicholas Dunning, University of Cincinnati

Nicholas Dunning, University of Cincinnati, for his significant contributions in the areas of environmental archaeology, soils, physical geography, cultural ecology, and Latin America. Dr. Dunning’s contributions include keen insights into human ecology and the environment, especially as applied to the Ancient Maya. Dunning has three degrees in geography, yet the broader impacts of his work range far beyond geography into anthropology and archaeology, to epigraphy, soil chemistry, pre-Columbian Studies, and Latin American Studies.

He published his dissertation as the book Lords of the Hills: Ancient Maya Settlement in the Puuc Region, Mexico (Prehistory Press, 1992) and this volume remains one of the most influential and best cited works in our field. Dunning has since published more than 125 peer-reviewed papers and chapters and a dozen books, monographs, and special issues of journals, across different fields, from Culture and Agriculture in 1998 and the AAG Annals in 2002, to two articles in a special issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2012, to a paper applying LiDAR in Maya Geoarchaeology in a special issue of the journal Geomorphology.

Dr. Dunning has led his research teams and generations of students on an amazing journey, without ever thinking of rewards for himself. It is Dunning’s time to be celebrated as the most influential scholar in geoarchaeology, cultural ecology, and environmental and physical geography in our generation and many to come.

Sally Horn, University of Tennessee

Sally Horn, University of Tennessee, for her significant contributions in the area of paleoenvironmental change research in underexplored neotropical regions. Dr. Horn’s research contributes new knowledge in tropical environmental change, and in methodological advances for detecting and measuring change.

Her scholarship has been honored at university, national and international levels, including the Carl O. Sauer Award (Conference of Latin American Geographers, 2002) the AAG’s Barry Bishop Mountain Geography Award (2010), AAG’s James J. Parsons Biogeography Specialty Group Award (2014), the SEDAAG Lifetime Achievement Award (2014), and election as a AAAS Fellow in 2003.

Dr. Horn is also recognized for her enthusiastic devotion to educating the next generation of scientists, as evidenced by her many teaching and advising awards, and by her extraordinary productivity of graduate students. Dr. Horn has advised 34 Masters and 14 PhDs (including 6 in progress), and also served on the committees of 99 MA and PhD Students, in programs ranging from Geography to Anthropology to Ecology. The lasting impact of her scholarship is evidenced by her more than 150 peer-reviewed articles, book chapters and edited volumes, and by her multiple grants from such sources as NSF, the Mellon Foundation, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

The 2020 AAG-Kauffman Awards for Best Paper and Best Student Paper in Geography & Entrepreneurship

This award identifies innovative research in business, applied or community geography that is relevant to questions related to entrepreneurs and their firms as well as to practitioners and policymakers. Award winners and runners up will be invited to present their research in a session highlighting geography and entrepreneurship at the AAG Annual Meeting on Thursday, April 9, 2020.

2020 Best Paper Award

Keith Debbage, University of North Carolina – Greensboro, Non-Farm Proprietorship Employment by US Metropolitan Area

2020 Best Paper Award Runner-Up

Joseph Scarpaci, Center for the Study of Cuban Culture + Economy, Scarpaci, J.L., Coupey, E. and Reed, S. 2018; Artists as Cultural Icons: The Icon Myth Transfer Effect as a Heuristic for Cultural Branding. (Journal of Product & Brand Management. 27(3): 320-333) 

2020 Best Student Paper Award

Andreas Kuebart, Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space, Open creative labs as providers of core functions within entrepreneurial ecosystems: Using sequence analysis to explore new infrastructures for startup processes in Berlin

2020 Best Student Paper Award Runner-Up

Yue Lin, The Ohio State University, A deep learning architecture for semantic address matching

The 2020 AAG Marcus Fund for Physical Geography Award

The objective of The Mel Marcus Fund for Physical Geography is to carry on the tradition of excellence and humanity in field work espoused by Dr. Melvin G. Marcus. Grants from the Mel Marcus Fund for Physical Geography will foster personally formative participation by students collaborating with faculty in field-based physical geography research in challenging outdoor environments.

Frederick (Fritz) Nelson, Michigan State University

Project: Baseline Data for a Field-Based Critical Geomorphic Experiment in the Juneau Icefield Research Program’s Camp 29 facility on the Cathedral Massif near Atlin, British Columbia, Canada

The 2020 William L. Garrison Award for Best Dissertation in Computational Geography

This biennial award supports innovative research into the computational aspects of geographic science. The award is intended to arose a deeper general understanding of the important role that advanced computation can play in the complex problems of space-time analysis, that lie at the core of geographic science.

Taylor Anderson, Simon Fraser University, Towards the Integration of Complex Systems Theory: Geographic Information Science, and Network Science for Modelling Geospatial Phenomena

The 2020 Anne U. White Grant

This grant enables people, regardless of any formal training in geography, to engage in useful field studies and to have the joy of working alongside their partners.

Joshua Steckley, University of Toronto, will conduct community based research in Thailand with his partner, Marylynn Steckley, for their project titled: The Political Ecology of Coconut Water: how Thailand exports health, and imports obesity

2020 Dissertation Research Grant recipients ($1,000/each)

The AAG provides support for doctoral Dissertation Research in the form of grants up to $1,000 to PhD candidates of any geographic specialty.

Madeleine Hamlin, Syracuse University

Shannon Jones, University of Denver

Veronica Limeberry, American University

Maegan Miller, CUNY – Graduate Center

Audrey Smith, University of Florida

Yining Tan, Arizona State University

Greta Wells, University of Texas at Austin

2020 Research Grant recipients ($500/each):

The AAG provides small Research Grants of $500 to support direct costs for fieldwork and research.

Perry Carter, Texas Tech University

Sean Kennedy, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Aaron Malone, Colorado School of Mines

Emily Mitchell-Eaton, Bennington  College

Jennifer Rice, University of Georgia

David Trimbach, Oregon State University

2020 AAG Darrel Hess Community College Geography Scholarships

Outstanding students from community colleges, junior colleges, city colleges, or two-year educational institutions who will be transferring as geography majors to four-year universities receive support and recognition from this scholarship program, including $1,000 for educational expenses. The scholarship has been generously provided by Darrel Hess of the City College of San Francisco to 29 students since 2006.

Cassia Barnard-Royer, transferring from Santa Fe College to the University of Florida

Laurel Durbin, transferring from Shasta College to CSU Chico

Valeria Ferrufino, Irvine Valley College (awaiting responses from UCLA, UC Berkeley, UC Santa Barbara, and CSUs)

Mary Anne Flier, transferring from Grand Rapids Community College to Aquinas College

Andrew Mendez, transferring from East Los Angeles College to CSU Northridge

    Share

AAG Announces 2019 Book Awards

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 GuthmanWilted: 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.

    Share

Regional Divisions Taskforce [REPORT]

    Share

New Books: February 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 BooksDepartment 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.

February 2020

The Saguaro Cactus : A Natural History by David Yetman, Alberto Burquez, Kevin Hultine, and Michael Sanderson (University of Arizona Press 2020)

Wild Blue Media: Thinking through Seawater by Melody Jue (Duke University Press 2020)

Intimate Geopolitics: Love, Territory, and the Future on India’s Northern Threshold by Sara Smith (Rutgers University Press 2020)

Panic City: Crime and the Fear Industries in Johannesburg by Martin J. Murray (Stanford University Press 2020)

Assembling Moral Mobilities : Cycling, Cities and the Common Good by Nicholas A Scott (University of Nebraska Press 2020)

    Share

Michael Camponovo – GIS Outreach Coordinator, Tennessee

Photo of Michael Camponovo, courtesy EsriPosition: GIS Outreach Coordinator, Geography Department, University of Tennessee Knoxville

What was your favorite class in K-12? Survey of Literature with Gloria Oster at Sullivan South High School. I always liked to read but she introduced me to so many new authors and literary styles.

How did you first learn about and/or use GIS? I was an undergraduate student at TN Technological University in Cookeville, TN studying Soil Science and my advisor said I should take “one of those computer mapping classes” as an elective. I haven’t stopped learning about GIS since then.

Name one thing you love about GIS and/or geography: I love the interdisciplinary nature of GIS, I have the opportunity to work with so many talented professionals and researchers to help them answer questions and solve problems that I otherwise would never know existed.

Why did you want to volunteer as a GeoMentor? I want young people in Tennessee to know that geography and GIS are a viable career path that lead to a lot challenging and engaging opportunities.

If someone asked you why they should learn about GIS and/or geography, how would you respond in one sentence? Everything happens somewhere.

Websites:

Twitter@mcamponovo

    Share

Newsletter – February 2020

PRESIDENT’S COLUMN

Beyond the Academic 1 Percent Or How to Create a More Inclusive and Equitable Academic Culture

By David Kaplan

“Social media can be dangerous. I recently read a post on Twitter, sent by a non-geographer, which seemed to lament geography’s absence from the Ivy League and similarly selective private institutions.

If I could share an unpopular opinion, I’m glad that geography does not have a large representation in the Ivy League. Not because I do not consider geography worthy of Harvard, Yale or Princeton. Nor because I don’t think geography should be available to every college student. Rather I dislike how Ivy League institutions foster elitism in American higher education, in a manner that could distort our discipline.”

Continue Reading.

ANNUAL MEETING

2020 AAG Annual Meeting Presidential Plenary Announced

2020-Presidential-Plenary

This year’s Presidential Plenary features a panel on “Resurgent Ethnonationalism: The Politics of Purity in a World of Difference,” describing and analyzing new political movements based around more exclusive forms of national identity. The panel will be introduced and moderated by AAG President David Kaplan and feature Liah Greenfeld, Kenan Malik, Cynthia Miller-Idriss, Andreas Wimmer, and Caroline Nagel. The discussion will focus on how ethnonationalism manifests itself in different societies, whether it can coexist with civil society and cultural diversity, points of comparison and contrast among ethnonationalist movements, how ethnonationalism is expressed in attitudes and policies, and the future of this trend. The plenary takes place on Monday, April 6th from 6:20 to 7:00 p.m. in the Sheraton, Concourse Level, Plaza Ballroom A.

Learn more.

Family Activities at #aagDENVER

Focus-on-Denver-graphic

Bringing the whole family to Denver for the 2020 AAG Annual Meeting? The Mile High City has a wide variety of kid friendly activities such as the Children’s Museum of Denver, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the Firefighter’s Museum, and Dinosaur Ridge. The AAG will also continue to offer onsite, professionally managed child care at a subsidized rate. CAMP AAG will offer age-appropriate activities for children ranging from 6 months to 17 years of age, including children with disabilities. Registration for childcare is now open.

Plan your family trip.

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

AAG has negotiated a discounted block of hotel rooms at the 2020 AAG Annual Meeting headquarters hotels, the Sheraton Denver Downtown and the Hyatt Regency – Denver. This rate is available on a first come, first served basis until March 13. Now that the preliminary program has been released, rooms will start going fast.

PUBLICATIONS

NEW The Professional Geographer Issue Alert:
Articles with topics ranging from vaccine exemptions to Manuel Castells

The-PG-2017-generic-213x300-1The most recent issue of The Professional Geographer has been published online (Volume 72, Issue 1, February 2020) with 15 new articles on current geographic research. Topics in this issue include solar desalinationmental health policyintergenerational political behaviorviral mapspostqualitative analysismicrotoponymslegal geography, and US shrinking cities. Locational areas of interest include the US Great Plains, the Small Island Developing States, and Sri Lanka. Authors are from a variety of institutions including United States Military AcademyUniversity of GeorgiaNanjing University, and Universidade Estadual de Campinas.

All AAG members have full online access to all issues of The Professional Geographer through the Members Only page. Each issue, the Editors choose one article to make freely available. In this issue you can read Making the Case for Critical Q Methodology by Gretchen Sneegas for free for the next 3 months.

Questions about The PG? Contact PG [at] aag [dot] org.

NEW Winter Issue of the AAG Review of Books Published

The latest issue of the AAG Review of Books is now available (Volume 8, Issue 1, Winter 2020) with 10 book reviews on recent books related to geography, public policy, and international affairs. The Winter 2020 issue also holds four book review essays including a discussion of AAG Past President Alec Murphy’s latest work Geography: Why It Matters? led by Johnson et al.

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

Journals-newsletter-100-2In 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 — December Available

New-books1-1-3From geoengineering to industrial landscapes of Pittsburgh, there are always new titles in geography and related disciplines to be found on the New Books in Geography list. Some of these books will be reviewed in the AAG Review of Books. Persons wishing to volunteer their reviewing services for new books 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 if interested in being a reviewer.

Browse the full list of new books.

ASSOCIATION NEWS

AAG Announces Additional 2020 AAG Award Recipients

awards_hi-res-300x160-1Congratulations to the recipients of 2020 AAG Awards including the E. Willard and Ruby S. Miller Award, the Glenda Laws Award, the Wilbanks Award for Transformational Research in Geography, and the new AAG Award for Associates Program Excellence! Formal recognition of the awardees will occur during the AAG Awards Luncheon at the Annual Meeting on Friday, April 10, 2020.

Learn more about the awardees.

AAG Welcomes Spring 2020 Interns

The AAG is excited to welcome two new interns coming aboard our staff for the Spring 2020 semester! Joining us this semester are Ariel Golightly, a senior at the University of Maryland, College Park, pursuing a B.S. in Geographical Sciences with minors in Geographic Information Systems and Sustainability Studies, and Hannah Brenner, a senior at George Washington University pursuing a bachelor’s degree in geography with minors in sustainability and GIS.

Interested in interning with the AAG for Summer 2020? The AAG is accepting intern applications until March 1, 2020. Interns at the AAG are provided a weekly stipend and participate in most AAG programs and projects such as education, outreach, research, website, publications, or the Annual Meeting.

Meet the interns.

POLICY CORNER

The Census is Underway!

US_Capitol

Counting for the 2020 Census has officially started in Alaska. The first data collection began in the town of Toksook Bay. Since Alaska became a state it has always been counted first by Census workers because January offers the most favorable conditions for getting between remote villages. For the rest of the United States, April 1st is “Census Day” and serves as the kickoff for the big population count.

It is well understood that counting the population is an important undertaking, but the biggest impacts of the Census Bureau’s work are recognized once everyone has been counted and the data is put into action. The first and foremost task of the data, as charged by the Constitution, is to determine Congressional redistricting in order to keep representation in the House of Representatives as equal as possible. The manner in which new districts are drawn plays a key role in determining access to resources and apportionment of federal funds to communities in need. Furthermore, census data lives on in the work of geographers and the broader academic community as they rely on the results to inform their research. With the power of this information comes the responsibility to map Congressional districts in an equitable way that avoids advantageous population groupings and politically non competitive districts. The AAG continues to engage with thought-leaders on issues of redistricting, gerrymandering, and the fundamentally important work of the U.S. Census Bureau in empowering accurate and fair representation.

 

In the News:

  • The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) recently issued a Request for Public Comment entitled “Draft Desirable Characteristics of Repositories for Managing and Sharing Data Resulting from Federally Funded Research.” OSTP is collecting this feedback in order to develop common characteristics that agencies can use to improve the management and sharing of data from federally funded research. You can go through the Federal Register to submit comments as an individual or institution. The comment period closes March 6th, 2020.
  • Dr. Sethuraman Panchanathan has been nominated to serve as the next director of the National Science Foundation following the retirement of current director, Dr. France Córdova, in March. After going through the Senate confirmation process, Dr. Panchanathan will serve for a typical six-year term.
MEMBER NEWS

Profiles of Professional Geographers

“Understanding geography is a critical foundation to a GIS career path,” says Sean O’Brien who works as a GIS Analyst for U.S. Bank. In his work, O’Brien tackles massive databases to analyze the activity of bank customers and branches as well as advise and assist other bank departments with their geographic needs. As GIS becomes a growing necessity for business, O’Brien stresses that geographic knowledge, the ability to use Python, and networking skills are all essential pieces of a successful career.

Learn more about Geography Careers.

 

RESOURCES AND OPPORTUNITIES

AAG Seeks New Editor for the ‘AAG Review of Books’ Journal

Please consider submitting an application for the position of Editor of the AAG Review of Books. The new editor, whose responsibilities include overseeing the solicitation, review, and publication of book reviews for the journal, will be appointed for a four and a half year editorial term to start on July 1, 2020. The AAG Review of Books is published online only on a quarterly basis. Applications will be accepted until February 20, 2020.

More information on the position.

AAG Calls for Nominations for Standing and Awards Committees

The AAG Council will make appointments to several of the AAG Standing Committees at its spring 2020 meeting. These appointments will replace members whose terms will expire on June 30, 2020. If you wish to nominate yourself or other qualified individuals for one or more of these vacancies, please notify AAG Director of Operations Candida Mannozzi on or before March 1, 2020. Please make sure that your nominee is willing to serve if appointed. Include contact information for your nominee as well as a brief paragraph indicating his/her suitability for the position. Open committees include: Archives and Association History;  Committee on the Status of Women in Geography; Diversity and Inclusion Committee; Finance Committee; Membership Committee; Publications Committee; AAG Awards Committee; Fellows Selection Committee; BA/MA Program Excellence Award Committee; AAG Globe Book Award Committee; Harm de Blij Award Committee; Harold M. Rose Award Committee; Mel Marcus Fund for Physical Geography Committee; AAG Meridian Book Award Committee; AAG Research Grants Committee; and AAG Student Award and Scholarship Committee.

Click here for a description of committees.

IN MEMORIAM

William L. Graf

Past AAG President and one of the nation’s leading geomorphologists, William L. Graf, passed away on December 27, 2019 at the age of 72. With research focusing on rivers and water preservation, William Graf strongly identified as a geographer throughout his work in academia and in the US Air Force. Appointed by President Clinton to the Presidential Commission on American Heritage Rivers, Graf advocated for geographers’ roles in public policy decision making on rivers and land use.

Continue reading.

GEOGRAPHERS IN THE NEWS
EVENTS CALENDAR
    Share