The Pandemic, the Scale of ‘We’, and the Fortress-Individual: Geographies of Responsibility
Last year, now-Past President Amy Lobben titled her first newsletter column, “The Spatial Scale of ‘We,’” to reflect on the rapid shrinking of who counts as ‘we’ “to a remarkably small spatial and social scale” in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Her phrase has resonated with me over the past few weeks as I consider the global pandemic that is soon to enter its third year. As I write, the Omicron variant dominates the news. Many countries have imposed bans…
Fraught Times
This month, I am using the privilege of this space to reflect on the rising tide of nationalism, reactionary populism, and authoritarianism that has washed over the world in the last decade – from Brazil to Hungary, Russia to the Philippines, India to the US and beyond. I do so from my perspective as a Chinese…
On AAG Regions Connect, and the Geographies of Infrastructure
On October 14-16, six out of nine AAG Regional Divisions, the Applied Geography Conference, and the AAG are collaborating to put on an innovative event: a simultaneous, networked conference of annual meetings with in-person, hybrid, and virtual components. Anyone can sign up to give a paper/poster in person at one of the three in-person meetings…
Geographers and Redistricting
When I taught my Geography of China class in fall 2019, I had a student from the PRC whom I remember as being particularly open-minded and eager to learn. One day, after I lectured about the massive Hong Kong protests for universal suffrage and the principle of one-person one-vote that were occurring, he asked, nonplussed, “Why do they care so much about one-person one-vote? What’s the big deal? Why bother protesting…
Physical Geography and the AAG
Geography is the quintessential interdisciplinary discipline — or, as AAG past president Mona Domosh has described it, a ‘promiscuous discipline,’ an undisciplined discipline — a radically intradisciplinary discipline. For someone like myself whose research is in human and nature-society geography, this means that my work is in conversation not only with that of other geographers,…
Moving Forward on Climate Change and Professional Ethics
A few weeks ago, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced that atmospheric CO2 concentrations, at 419 ppm, have now reached 150% of their pre-industrial levels – the highest in more than four million years, when sea levels were about 24 meters higher, the global average surface temperature almost 4ºC warmer than today, and the first modern humans had more than three million years yet to appear on earth. The world-historical COVID-19 pandemic, still…
On Teaching, Mentoring, Balance, and Service
With summer almost here, I’m about to head into my last year as an academic. I’m “retiring” June 2022, although in truth I’ll work full time running my family’s winery and nonprofit, both built around the mission of providing training, jobs, and community for those with disabilities. As I transition from academics, Andrew and I…
Opening Up the Possibilities for an Accessible AAG
Many of us “went” to the AAG annual meeting last month, scheduled to take place in Seattle. Of course, we all attended virtually from separate isolated locations. I attended from my living room, my kitchen table, and my bedroom floor. Though just to insert some sense of the old days, for one committee meeting, I…
You Baby
“You Baby.” It’s Saturday morning. Jeffrey, who is chronologically well out of his early teenage years, but very much still there in spirit, is awake and calling to me with his favorite insult. He’s mostly non-verbal, but this particular phrase is one that he articulates well enough for anyone to understand. It’s catchy. A friend…
Want a Thriving Department? Focus on Undergraduate Success
I cannot think of a person in higher education who has not felt the pressure of maintaining and growing undergraduate enrollments. Undergraduates, who make up the large majority of the student body, are the people we devote most of our instructional efforts toward, and—as administrators constantly point out—are university’s primary source of revenue through tuition…
Advocate for Geography in Austerity – Part 2
This is Part 2 of a two-part column on what geography departments can do (and should not do) to advocate for their work in budget talks, which are all the more crucial during the COVID-19 pandemic. These points are largely derived from answers I received from geographers in upper administrative positions at universities. As I…
Advocate for Geography in Austerity
This is Part 1 of a two-part column on what geography departments can do (and should not do) to advocate for their work in budget talks, which are all the more crucial during the COVID-19 pandemic. These points are largely derived from answers I received from geographers in upper administrative positions at universities. At the…