GeoHumanities

Geohumanities identifies a convergence of transdisciplinary thought characterized by geography's engagement with the humanities, and the humanities' integration of place and the tools of geography into its studies. With this cutting edge book, an international collaboration of scholars, architects, artists, activists, scientists and writers map this emerging intellectual terrain.
This volume explores the creative zone at the edge of the humanities' rapidly expanding engagement with geography, and the multi-methodological inquiries that analyze the meanings of place, and then reconstruct those meanings to provoke new knowledge as well as the possibility of altered political practices. It is no coincidence that the geohumanities are forcefully emerging at a time of immense intellectual and social change. The book's contributors address urgent contemporary imperatives, such as the link between creativity and place; altered practices of spatial literacy; the increasing complexity of visual representation in art, culture, and science; and the ubiquitous presence of geospatial technologies in the Information Age.

Michael Dear is Professor of City and Regional Planning at the University of California Berkeley. His interests are in comparative urbanism and the US-Mexico borderlands. Recent publications include: Urban Latino Cultures; la vida latina en L.A., The Postmodern Urban Condition, and Postborder City: cultural spaces of Bajalta California. Jim Ketchum is special projects coordinator and newsletter editor for the Association of American Geographers in Washington, D.C. A cultural geographer with interests in contemporary art and visual culture, his research examines the ways that artists use geographic perspectives and technologies in responding to war. He received his PhD from Syracuse University in 2005. Sarah Luria is Associate Professor of English at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. She is the author of Capital Speculations: Writing and Building Washington, D.C. (University of New Hampshire Press, 2006). Her current book project is a study of land surveying and property making in the work of Thomas Jefferson, Henry David Thoreau, and Robert Moses. Doug Richardson is Executive Director of the Association of American Geographers (AAG). He previously founded and was President of the firm GeoResearch, Inc., which invented, developed, and patented the first interactive GPS/GIS (global positioning system/geographic information system) technology, leading to major advances in the ways geographic information is collected, mapped, integrated, and used within geography and in society at large. He has worked closely with American Indian tribes for over twenty years on cultural and ecological issues, and is the Project Director of the AAG's National Endowment for the Humanities funded Historical GIS Clearinghouse and Online Research Forum.

Introduction Part 1: Creative Places Geocreativity 1. Creativity and Place 2. Experimental Geography: a conversation with Trevor Paglen 3. Drive-by Tijuana 4. (Fake) Fake Estates: Reconsidering Gordon Matta-Clark's Fake Estates 5. The City Formerly Known as Cambridge: a Useless Map by the Institute for Infinitely Small Things 6. Undisciplined Geography: Notes from the Field of Contemporary Art 7. Codex Profundo Part 2: Spatial Literacies Geotexts 8. 'The Stratified Record upon which we Set our Feet': The Spatial Turn and the Multilayering of History, Geography, and Geology 9. Monument of Myth: Finding Robert Moses through Geographic Fiction 10. Fate and Redemption in New Orleans; Or, Why Geographers Should Care about Narrative Form 11. Wordmaps 12. Using Early Modern Maps in Literary Studies: Views and Caveats from London 13. "Along Broadway, 2009" 14. Thoreau's Geopoetics Part 3: Visual Geographies Geoimagery 15. El otro Lado de la Línea / The other side of the line 16. The Space of Ambiguity: Sophie Ristelhueber's Aerial Perspective 17. Counter-Geographies in the Sahara 18. Laura Kurgan, September 11th, and the Art of Critical Geography 19. The Earth Exposed: How Geographers use Art & Science in their Exploration of the Earth from Space 20. Disorientation Guide: Cartography as Artistic Medium 21. Avarice and Tenderness in Cinematic Landscapes of the American West 22. Altered Landscapes Philip Govedare Part 4: Spatial Histories Geohistories 23. Mapping Time 24. Humanities GIS: Place, Spatial Storytelling and Immersive Visualization in the Humanities 25. Without Limits: Ancient History & GIS 26. History and GIS: Railways, Population Change, and Agricultural Development in Late Nineteenth Century Wales 27. Spatiality and the Social Web: Resituating Authoritative Content 28. Teaching Race and History with Historical GIS: Lessons from Mapping the Dubois Philadelphia Negro 29. Ha'ahonua: Using GIScience to Link Hawaiian and Western Knowledge about the Environment 30. What Do Humanists Want? What Do Humanists Need? What Might Humanists Get? Afterword: Historical Moments in the Rise of the Geohumanities