Advanced Placement Human Geography: Time for a Reappraisal?
Michael Solem, PhD; Dr. Richard G. Boehm, PhD; and Joann Zadrozny, PhDGilbert M. Grosvenor Center for Geographic Education, Department of Geography and Environmental Studies,Texas State University Two decades on, the Advanced Placement Human Geography (APHG) course continues its upward trajectory in student enrollment. In recent years, well over 200,000 high school students took the APHG exam, marking an impressive period of growth since it was…
Invisible and Silent No More: The Necessity of Centering Anti-Racism as We Address Inclusion and Access for Disabled Community Members
Gretchen Sneegas, PhD, Texas A&M University and Arrianna Planey, PhD, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Editor's Note: This month, we present a Perspective from AAG members Dr. Gretchen Sneegas and Dr. Arrianna Planey. Their commentary on the intersectional nature of marginalization and discrimination in terms of disability and anti-Blackness is a response to the…
Working Together for Racial and Social Justice: From Anti-Asian Racism and Violence to Anti-Racist Praxis in Geography
By Guo Chen, Associate Professor of Geography and Global Urban Studies, Michigan State University This column is the first in a new section of the AAG News called Perspectives, which offers a platform for members to discuss issues of relevance to geography. A slightly longer version of this article was first published in April as…
Researchers with disabilities in the academic system
Although researchers with disabilities are an exceptional category, they are a still very much underrepresented group in Academia worldwide. With billion people with disabilities worldwide, the percentage of academic positions filled in by academics with disabilities is surprisingly low. For example at the University of California at Berkeley, it was indicated that of 1,522 full-time…
Confessions of a Conference Thief
The views and opinions expressed in op-eds published in the AAG Newsletter are those of the author(s) and do not imply endorsement by the American Association of Geographers. The AAG accepts submissions of op-eds for AAG news content consideration. Authors must be current AAG members. The decision to publish op-eds is at the discretion of…
Civil Rights Featured Theme of 2017 Geography Awareness Week: A Call for Participation
Established by a joint resolution of the Congress in 1987, Geography Awareness Week (GAW) is observed the third week in November every year. GAW promotes what geography is, why it is important, and the relevance of a geographic education in preparing citizens to understand and debate pressing social and environmental issues and problems. This year's…
A Museum of Geography, What?
Los Angeles's Hollywood Bowl Overlook (Beau Rogers via Compfight) On October 21, 2016, the Los Angeles Museum of Geography opened its first exhibition, “The Homeless Amongst Us,” in its temporary home at 2426 SET in the West Adams district of The exhibit, designed by John May and Zeina Koreitem of Millions Architecture, consists of three…
Wither “Traditional” Geography?
Everyone who has taken a basic geography course know its Greek etymology as coined by Eratosthenes: geo, meaning “earth” and graphe, meaning to “describe.” For many centuries after, geography was synonymous with exploration and discovery, both of the physical/natural and cultural/human/social landscapes. While geographers past may have noted differences between the landscape dichotomy they practiced…
Op-Ed: Make Civil Rights a Geography Awareness Week Theme
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial By Night - Washington DC (Glyn Lowe via Compfight) We have thought for some time now that it would be educationally productive to have a Geography Awareness Week theme devoted to civil rights. Tragically, events over the summer—especially the massacre at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South…
Op-Ed: #KickOutTheKKK: Challenging White Supremacy at UNC
Figure 1. UNC students protesting for the renaming of Saunders Hall as Hurston Hall (courtesy of The Daily Tar Heel/Claire Collins) On May 28, 2015, the Board of Trustees at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill voted to rename Saunders Hall—the building in which the Geography Department is located—following months of student…
Op-Ed: A Graduate Student Perspective on Geography
Editor’s Note: This essay was written for a graduate course on “Contemporary Geographic Thought,” which is co-taught by Professors Bruce Rhoads and David Wilson at the University of Illinois. Students were asked to respond to four open-ended questions: 1) How has the course shaped your perception and understanding of geography, 2) Do you see geography…
Op-Ed: Preemption and Scalar Politics, from Living Wages to Hydraulic Fracturing
If municipal political geographies seem boring, think again. In Texas, where we study municipal oil and gas drilling ordinances with support from the National Science Foundation (and live in cities with active drilling), fundamental questions are being raised: What are state governments for? What are municipalities for? How do opposing sides frame their struggles to…