Volume 6, Number 2, Winter, 1997
Editor: Harold Gulley, Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, Oshkosh, WI 54901-8642,
Telephone: (414) 424-7115 or (414) 424-4105, FAX: (414) 424-0292; E-mail: gulley@vaxa.cis.uwosh.edu
Craig E. Colten, PHR Environmental Consultants, 8555 16th Street, Suite 407, Silver Spring, MD 20910, Telephone: (301) 608-3656, FAX: (301) 608-3659, or E-mail: phrmd@ix.netcom.com
Another critical means for practicing historical geographers to participate is through publication. This is the most important method to communicate with peers. Of course, this demands considerable effort, and you must find time to produce in spite of different job circum-stances than academic geographers. In government or private sector work, it may be impossible to publish research results. I know that I have written hundreds of pages that will never see the light of day, but this does not preclude participation in the professional literature. Without sacrificing client confidenti-ality or protected work product, a consulting historical geographer might offer a discussion of methods or a critique of source material used in solving an applied problem. Typically, technical reports prepared for government entities can be mined by the author for academic articles. I would encourage those of you who produce government reports to consider announcing them on our web site. Also, it would be useful to include a section for the review of important "grey literature" reports in one of our journals. The Public Historian recently initiated reviews of limited-circulation reports. This type of public critique can only add to the quality of such reports and improve the visibility of the authors and their work.
A second line of discussion has been how to maintain and expand the role of historical geography in teaching departments. It seems to me that we can serve the specialty by taking positions tangential to our training and then creating a niche for historical geography. In recent years, I know of several situations where historical geographers have been hired to fill "environ-mental" positions. Indeed, I know of one instance where the two finalists for an environmental position were both historical geographers. This speaks well for the caliber of students emerging from graduate schools, but also indicates an infiltration of clandestine historical geographers into academic posts. We can see this as a loss or a gain. From one perspective, it means a historical geographer is lost to the tasks of teaching other subject matter and thereby is diverted from active participation in the specialty. The optimistic viewpoint, on the other hand, is that the historical geographer will establish a beachhead by infusing environ-mental courses with a long-term perspective and introducing students to temporal concepts sometimes lacking in the environmen-tal field. Those who penetrate the halls of academe as "environmen-tal" geographers must remember their backgrounds and be the resistance workers of our profession. At the very least, they can speak favorably about historical geography and request the major publications for their libraries. Or better yet, they should see that historical geography either remains or becomes a part of the curricu-lum. Proposing a course and pushing it through the channels may be time consuming, but it is essential. I know of one young, untenured geographer in a department with an applied focus who has successfully established a course on the historical geography of the American environ-ment. In my mind, this was a major coup. For once the course is on the books, the historical geographer should be able to excel while teaching the topic that stirred enough passion to see her/him through a dissertation. As the old saying goes, "you cannot win, if you do not play." Well, we cannot win students if we do not offer courses, and what can be more satisfying than teaching in our specialty? Apparently there was much talk at the Eastern Historical Geography Association meeting about the status of historical geography in the highly dynamic realm of higher education. I would encourage a discussion group on the topic at the 1998 AAG meeting in Boston so that we can all share our concerns and offer solutions.
Craig Colten’s remarks in the preceding column remind us of the ongoing debate regarding the role of historical geographers in departments that emphasize teaching. His discussion includes the point that one can simultaneously be a practicing, faithful environmental and historical geographer.
Obviously, the historical approach can also be judiciously applied in other topical and regional geography courses. In fact, introductory human or world regional geography courses that many faculty teach offer another opportunity for introducing the historical approach to large audiences of freshmen and sophomores. Applying the marketplace analogy now popular among many college administrators, we may well view those younger students as potential enrollees for advanced undergraduate courses in historical geography. Whether we accept the analogy as applicable or not, competition for students among academic departments and among courses is one aspect of teaching faculty members’ lives at many institutions. Continuing budgetary constraints make it increasingly difficult to justify offering courses with low enrollments.
In the department where I teach, I have fortunately enjoyed the support of my colleagues in offering a historical geography course, even though few students typically sign up. Currently, the course is offered on an every-other-year basis. Recently, preparation for an external review of my institution has forced each department to identify courses as appropriate "capstone" courses, which every major will be required to complete. My colleagues chose to designate four courses, and I successfully argued to include historical geography among those. We expect the course to appeal primarily to students with a traditional liberal arts orientation and probably a preference for human geography, as well as social science education majors with a geography emphasis. Arguably, historical geography is eminently suited for such students. Although I had little prior enthusiasm for this campus-wide review and assessment exercise, it provided an opportunity.
Many institutions have also begun designating courses as "writing intensive." Our including historical geography courses on such lists provides one more avenue for encouraging students to choose our courses in fulfilling university level requirements. Another approach to bolstering enrollments is to advertise by making certain that colleagues in the history department are aware of the content of courses we offer and the days and time the classes will meet.
In some cases, especially in small departments, establishing a new course in historical geography may be either a protracted process or may even seem impossible. Faculty members in such situations may nevertheless take some comfort in including lecture material and readings about historical topics. Any upper level regional course can profit from the inclusion of historical examples, and most topical courses afford similar chances to expose students to the methods and ideas that historical geographers use in their research and analysis. Maintaining our specialty amid the competition on many campuses for available resources and students presents us with a continuing challenge. Responding to that challenge presents us with opportunities to share our approaches with students and with faculty colleagues. In the process, we may even remind ourselves occasionally of some of the compelling reasons we have chosen to specialize in historical geography.
Focus Section: Geographical History and Historical Geography: The Writings and Perspectives of Edward Whiting Fox
Edward Whiting Fox, Professor Emeritus of History at Cornell University, passed away on May 19th, 1996, in Ithaca, New York, following a long illness. Fox’s work represents a lifetime of scholarship focused on understanding Europe, and, more broadly, on understanding western civilization. Fox approached his subject from the perspective of what he called "geographical history," examining the European past as it evolved in relation to space and place, and as it was influenced by movement. Fox’s work reflects concerns that are interwoven in discussions within our own discipline of historical geography.
Edward Whiting Fox earned his A.B., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University, where he served briefly as Assistant Dean from 1941 to 1945. Appointed to the U.S. Department of State by President Franklin Roosevelt, he served as Assistant Secretary of State for policy analysis in the Truman administration from 1945 to 1946. In the fall of 1946, Fox joined the department of history at Cornell. He remained active in writing, research, and professional discourse until the time of his death, almost two decades after his formal retirement.
Early in his career Edward Whiting Fox edited The Oxford Atlas of European History(1956), and The Oxford Atlas of American History (1963 and 1971). Further, he served as the editor of the Development of Western Civilization series published by Cornell University Press. Of greater interest to historical geographers are his two books: History in Geographic Perspective: The Other France, published in 1971 by W.W. Norton, and The Emergence of the Modern European World: From the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century, published in 1991 by Blackwell. These two books contain the essence of Fox’s geographic perspective on history. In the first book he offers a reinterpretation of French history in which he identifies two types of societies or two Frances: one associated with large areas of land or countryside, with subsistence farming, and with administrative forms of the state; the other focused on port cities, river and sea navigation, transportation, and commerce, and representative forms of government. The relationship between the two Frances is explored in the book, and such key events in French history as the revolution and the emergence of the core region in the country’s interior are recast and understood in this context. In the second book, Fox has refined these ideas and extends his interpretation and geographic perspective to Europe as a whole and examines the influence of European civilizations on a global scale. The Emergence of the Modern European World is the kind of history that can only be written by a mature scholar. The level of thoughtfulness, the ability to place detail in perspective - both are the expression and representation of a lifetime of scholarship, research, involvement in debate, and continuing reconceptualization and revision. Geographers will find in Fox, a kindred spirit.
The implications and significance of Fox’s work are explored in greatest depth in a volume of essays published in 1989: Geographic Perspectives in History: Essays in Honor of Edward Whiting Fox. The volume, edited by historian Eugene Genovese and sociologist Leonard Hochberg, contains a number of very interesting essays, including a concluding chapter written by Fox himself. "The Argument: Some Reinforcements and Projections" is the perhaps the clearest, most concise expression of Fox’s core ideas regarding materialism, forms of political organization, and the relations of geography and society, and environment and history. Geographic Perspectives in History contains contributions by historical geographers: James Vance’s "Transportation and the Geographical Expressions of Capitalism" and Donald Meinig’s "A Geographical Transect of the Atlantic World, ca. 1750." Both demonstrate how close the themes and concerns and models of geographical history are to those of historical geography. Other essays in the volume are written by historians, sociologists, political scientists, and others. Of certain interest to historical geographers is a chapter by Immanuel Wallerstein: "France: A Special Case? A World Systems Perspective." The essay deals centrally with the applicability of Fox’s ideas, underscoring the compatability of Fox’s "two Frances" or two societies conception, with interpretations of world history that emphasize the world systems perspective and the expansion of the world economy. An essay similar in its level of complexity is provided by Richard Rosecrance’s "The Commercial Society and International Relations," which explores the basic distinction drawn by Fox between commercial and areal societies. A unique essay is provided by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Eugene Genovese’s "Social Classes and Class Struggles in Geographic Perspective." In a chapter that brings together the personal with the professional, these two leading American historians of class and social structure explore the relevance of the geographic perspective to their own specialized investigations. Elizabeth Fox-Genovese is Edward Whiting Fox’s eldest daughter, and Eugene Genovese is his son-in-law. Their chapter reflects their engagement in dialogue with this man over the course of a lifetime. His influence on their work has been profound.
For historical geographers who are not already acquainted with the work of Edward Whiting Fox, the books and essays described above will make interesting and enjoyable reading. Fox brings together a body of ideas, with detailed knowledge of place, time, and region, in much the same manner that historical geographers do.
Focus Section assembled by Cathy E. Kindquist, with the kind assistance of Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Elizabeth Simon Fox.
Abbott, Carl. 1996. "Thinking About Cities: The Central Tradition in U.S. Urban History." Journal of Urban History 22(6):687. Arnold, Thomas Clay. 1996. "Theory, History, and the Western Waterscape: The Market Culture Thesis." Journal of the Southwest. 38(2):215.
Berlin, Ira. 1996. "From Creole to African: Atlantic Creoles and the Origins of African-American Society in Mainland North America." William and Mary Quarterly 53(2):251-288.
Chan, Sucheng. 1996. "Asian American Historiography." Pacific Historical Review 65(3):401-430.
Cohee, Melalle H. 1995. "Over 50 Years - The Conservation Movement and the Soil and Water Conservation Society." Journal of Soil and Water Conservation 50(4):343.
Crosby, Alfred W. 1995. "The Past and Present of Environmental History." American Historical Review 100(4):1177.
Demeritt, David. 1995-1996. "Visions of Agriculture in British Columbia." BC Studies 108:29-59.
Ditt, Karl. 1996. "Nature Conservation in England and Germany, 1900-70: Forerunner of Environmental Protection?" Contemporary European History 5(1):1.
Fairchild, James and Melissa Leach. 1996. ‘Enriching the Landscape’: Social History and the Transition Ecology in the Forest-Savanna Mosaic of the Republic of Guinea." Africa 66(1):14.
Flanagan, Maureen A. 1996. "The City Profitable, the City Livable: Environmental Policy, Gender, and Power in Chicago in the 1910s." Journal of Urban History 22(2):163.
Foley, Neil. 1996. "Mexicans, Mechanization, and the Growth of Corporate Cotton Culture in South Texas: The Taft Ranch, 1900-1930." Journal of Southern History 62(2):275-302.
Frost, Lionel. 1996. "The Urban History Literature of Australia and New Zealand." Journal of Urban History 22(1):114.
Goings, Kenneth W. and Raymond A. Mohl. 1995. "The Shifting Historiography of African American Urban History." Journal of Urban History 21(4):435.
Green, Nancy L. 1996. "Women and Immigrants in the Sweatshop: Categories of Labor Segmentation Revisited." Comparative Studies in Society and History 38(3):411-433.
Lemon, James T. 1996. "From Coastal Wilderness to Fruited Plains: A History of Environmental Change in Temperate North America from 1500 to the Present." Journal of Interdisciplinary History 27(2):326.
McInnis, Peter S. 1996. "Teamwork for Harmony: Labour Management Production Committees and the Postwar Settlement in Canada." Canadian Historical Review 77(3):317-352.
Merrill, Karen R. 1996. "Whose Home on the Range?" Western Historical Quarterly 27(4):433-452.
O’Brien, Claire. 1996. "‘With One Mighty Pull’: Interracial Town Boosting in Nicodemus, Kansas." Great Plains Quarterly 16(2):117-130.
Pacyga, Dominic A. 1996. "To Live Among Others: Poles and their Neighbors in Industrial Chicago, 1865-1930." Journal of American Ethnic History 16(1):55-73.
Reuss, Martin. 1995. "The Wealth of Nature: Environmental History and the Ecological Imagination." Technology and Culture 36(3):685.
Robbins, William G. 1996. "Creating a ‘New’ West: Big Money Returns to the Hinterland." Montana: The Magazine of Western History. 46(2):66-72.
Rome, Adam W. 1994. "Building on the Land: Toward an Environmental History of Residentail Development in American Cities and Suburbs, 1870-1990." Journal of Urban History 20(3):299.
Stanley, Timothy J. 1996. "‘Chinamen, Wherever We Go’: Chinese Nationalism and Guangdong Merchants in British Columbia, 1871-1911." Canadian Historical Review 77(4):475-503.
Taylor, Alan. 1996. "Unnatural Inequalities: Social and Environmental Histories." Environmental History 1(4):6-19.
Tilly, Charles. 1996. "What Good is Urban History?" Journal of Urban History 22(6):702.
Tucker, Richard P. 1996. "Nature, Culture, Imperialism: Essays on the Environmental History of South Asia." Journal of Asian Studies 55(2):485.
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Weaver, John C. 1996. "Beyond the Fatal Shore: Pastoral Squatting and the Occupation of Australia, 1826 to 1852." American Historical Review 101(4):980-1007.
Wrobel, David M. 1996. "Beyond the Frontier-Region Dichotomy." Pacific Historical Review 65(3):401-430.
Leier, Mark. 1996. "W[h]ither Labour History: Regionalism, Class, and the Writing of BC History." BC Studies 111:61-75. Palmer, Bryan D. 1996. "Class and the Writing of History: Beyond BC." BC Studies 111:76-83.
Strong-Boag, Veronica. 1996. "Moving Beyond the Tires ‘Truths’: Or, Let’s Not Fight the Old Battle." BC Studies 111:84-87.
McDonald, Robert A.J. 1996. "The West is a Messy Place." BC Studies 111:88-92.
Leier, Mark. 1996. "Response to Professors Palmer, Strong-Boag, and McDonald." BC Studies 111:93-98.
This event will be held at the California State Railroad Museum. To many people, the idea of "interpretation" in railroad preservation is daunting. How can we use the tools available to us to do a better job of preserving railroad history and technology? The purposes of the 1997 National Railway Preservation Symposium are to provide a series of useful, practical, and comprehensive definitions of interpretation which make sense for railway preservation, explain how other museums and preservation organizations have made interpretation an integral part of their programs, and show examples of "interpretation" at a variety of museums and in the academic setting--what it looks like and how it actually works in its different forms.
We have invited several distinguished speakers from academia, preservation agencies, museums, and interpretive planning and design organizations to lead us through a review of the philosophy and techniques of interpretation. Special tours have been arranged to Railtown 1897 in Jamestown, California, and the Southern Pacific Railroad Sacramento Shops for an on-site discussion of interpretation opportunities and practices at historic railroad sites. A special feature this year will be a Friday evening reception in the California State Railroad Museum Library. The reception will highlight the Museum’s Oral History Project initiated in July 1996. The reception will provide an opportunity to listen and view oral history interviews of Southern Pacific employees. The reception will be followed by a participatory interpretive presentation by the Society for the Preservation for Carter Railroad Resources, Inc.
The basic registration fee ($125) includes continental breakfasts, Friday evening reception, lunches on Saturday and Sunday, and the tour of the SP Shops on Sunday. The tour to Railtown 1897 ($30) and the Saturday evening banquet ($25) in the Museum Roundhouse are separately priced and ticketed, and require advance registration. Contact: Elizabeth Edrich, CSRM Att.: Symposium, 111 "I" Street, Sacramento, CA 95814 Telephone: (916) 322-8485, FAX: (916) 327-5655, or E-mail: csrmf@csrmf.org.
We have a formidable set of sessions planned for the 1997 meeting in Fort Worth. Quite a number of specialty group members assembled important sessions, most co-sponsored with other specialty groups. The following list is a partial inventory of sessions sponsored by the HGSG. Please refer to the AAG Meeting Program for dates and times. If you organized a session not listed here, please send the listing to David Robinson at Syracuse University for inclusion in the home page. The HGSG also plans to co-host a mixer at the AAG and will circulate word on that via the home page and at the meeting. Keep an eye out for details and make a point of enjoying the company of your friends and colleagues in Fort Worth.
This conference will occur at the European Documentation Center of the University of Navarra. Individual papers and panel proposals on all themes of world history are welcomed. The conference will especially focus on the following themes (but welcomes all proposals): World History: Theories and practice in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East (status of world history at the university and secondary levels; main themes of research and modeling); Crossroads of Global Interactions: the Mediterranean Basin (Cross-cultural contact and interchange in and beyond the Mediterranean basin; how has the Mediterranean ecumene compared with other defined ecumenes; specific analytical models for the Mediterranean; Braudel’s Mediterranean in the Age of Philip II after nearly 50 years); and Faith as Reality and Representation: Pilgrimage in Global Perspective (Varieties of pilgrimage; its function and significance in world history; the ideological and spritual in the phenomenon and its representations). Send proposals along with a short vita by March 1, 1997. Contact: Prof. Hugh R. Clark, Dept. of History, Ursinus College, Collegeville, PA 19426 Telephone: (610) 409-3595; FAX: (610) 489-0627; or E-mail: hclark@acad.ursinus.edu or Prof. Fred Spier, University of Amsterdam, Oude Hoogstraat 24, 1012 CE Amerstadam, The Netherlands Telephone: 31 20 525 2244; FAX: 31 20 525 2446; or E-mail: spier@pscw.uva.nl
The Southern Labor Studies Conference will hold its tenth biennial meeting at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This conference brings together scholars from a wide range of disciplines, labor activists, teachers, and students to learn about labor in the South and other parts of the world. The theme of the conference will be "Organizing the Unorganized: Past and Present, Locally and Globally." In seeking to fill existing panels, the Program committee seeks paper proposals in the following areas: Contingent workers: temporaries, subcontracted labor, or workers in the informal sector; workers and the law; affirmative action; child labor; the criminalization of vagrancy; and farm workers. Please submit proposals and brief biographies or CVs to Cindy Hahamovitch by February 15, 1997.
Contact: Prof. Cindy Hahamovitch, Dept. of History, P.O. Box 8795, The College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, VA 23187-8795 FAX: (757) 221-2111 or E-mail: cxhaha@mail.wm.edu
I wanted people to become familiar with the contemporary American landscape and to recognize its extraordinary complexity and beauty . . . Its commonplace aspects, the streets and houses and fields and places of work, teach us a great deal not only about American history and American society but about ourselves and how we relate to the world. It is a matter of learning how to see.
In addition to the journal Landscape and several collections of essays, Jackson touched a generation of landscape scholars. Many of us have had remarkable encounters with him and are grateful to him for helping us learn how to see the landscape.
The conference Announcement called for papers on theory and methods of historical geography, the historical geography of China, sustainable development of Beijing, and environmental change. Especially under the last category, papers ranged into subjects that American geographers are more likely to think of as physical geography, such as "The Environment of Dongting Lake in Historical Periods," "On the Study of Historical Zoogeography in China," and "Sudden Changes of the Geographical Environment for the Late Thousands of Years and the Initial Study of Their Results." There were also several smaller discussion groups, which met concurrently, and enjoyed lively discussions of topics like the current situation of historical geography in China.
Westerners were few in number: Elizabeth Leppman (University of Georgia), William Wyckoff (Montana State University) from the United States, and Alan Baker from the United Kingdom, gave papers. Anne Osborne (Rider College), Sen-dou Chang (University of Hawaii), and Liu Jianyi (Montana State) were also there.
For two days the conference adjourned to Chengde, the ancient imperial summer home and hunting ground of the imperial household, located in the mountains north of Beijing, for a field trip. Following Chinese tradition, there were opening and closing banquets; and no one could complain of being underfed at any of the conference meals! Best of all was the opportunity to meet Chinese geographers and trade ideas, experiences, and friendship with them.
Contact: Elizabeth J. Leppman, Dept. of Geography, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602-2502. Telephone: (706) 542-2856 or E-mail: eleppman@uga.cc.uga.edu
The department’s position was that they were our property (we acquired ours from a variety of sources, including the San Francisco office of Sanborn which was tossing old ones out), and we were not interested in returning them. Since then we have consulted with the University system’s legal counsel, and they agree that, in their view, we have a very good case. We have told the company that we have no intention of "returning" them. So far we have not heard back from the Company. Considering the situation, our advice is to be prepared to defend your claim to ownership of any Sanborn maps in your collection. Dig up whatever documentation you have regarding how you got your copies, and be prepared to say NO when they come asking. As far as I know, they came to us first (maybe because our collection is freqently used by EIR companies, etc.) but if, as we believe, their intention is to corner the market on this suddenly valuable resource that they were throwing in the trash 30 years ago, we should present as united a front as possible.
Contact: Elliot McIntire, Dept. of Geography, Calif. State Univ. Northridge, Northridge, CA 91330 Telephone: (818) 677-3517; FAX: (818) 677-2723; or E-mail elliot.mcintire@csun.edu
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