Past Place

James R. Shortridge, Department of Geography, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045-2121,

Telephone: (785) 864-5539, or E-mail

With this column I want to comment on a past issue and introduce a possible future one. First, I am happy to report that my earlier musings on the interconnections between historical geography and genealogy produced a nice round of e-mail. Blake Gumprecht, for example, told me about a classroom paper assignment having students place their family migrations within the context of broader materials from lecture and texts. Michael Ratcliffe wrote how family history had sparked personal research questions about Welsh migration and religious conversion, and Terry Jordan shared with me a first-rate example of a "family book" that intertwines historic-geographic text with standard genealogical tables.

I do not know if a cooperative book about American migration (such as I posed last time) will come about in the short run, but readers have pointed me to two superb regional studies that I can recommend as starting points for anybody interested. Bill Davidson refreshed my memory about Robert West’s wonderful Atlas of Louisiana Surnames of French and Spanish Origin (Geoscience Publications, LSU, 1986). For this study, Professor West prepared current maps for a hundred surnames using telephone directories and interpreted them via primary records and secondary genealogical and historical accounts. I also learned about Randy Widdis’s new study, With Scarcely a Ripple (McGill-Queens Univ. Press, 1998). As a part of this careful exploration of Anglo-Canadian migration into the United States and Western Canada, Randy includes a nice discussion of the pros and cons of using genealogical data and then a beautiful case study of five families in Ontario’s Bay of Quinte region.

The second issue on my mind this fall stems from the initiative for honors sessions that Ted Muller is heading up at the annual meetings. As most of you are probably aware, the one at Pittsburgh will honor Carville Earle. Ted, Artimus Keiffer, and Anne Knowles have plans in the works to vary the format for other years, including, for example, the honoring of a younger scholar who has written a groundbreaking book. All this good work has led me to think about honors in a broader framework. Recognition of accomplishment is important. Every parent knows this, of course, but pats on the back can contribute to the emotional well-being of people at all ages. Such recognition can also provide occasions to make outsiders more aware of important work being done in our subdiscipline. Everybody benefits really: the individual; his or her family and friends; the associated department, agency, or company; and the discipline as a whole.

Informal recognition, such as the sending of congratulatory notes, is an important component of the honoring process, but this courtesy has declined, I think, because of the busyness of our lives. I have meant to tell Randy Widdis how much I have enjoyed his book, for example, but probably wouldn’t have gotten around to it except for the unusual occasion of this column (congratulations at any rate, Randy). As for formal recognition, I believe a key limitation may be a lack of established venues for honors. A resolve to maintain Ted’s initiative for special AAG sessions would satisfy some of the need. Additional possibilities also exist, including one that I would like to propose here for your consideration.

Many other disciplines have a "fellow" category within their professional groups. This is a recognition of outstanding career accomplishment—a hall of fame if you will. Why not establish this honor within the HGSG? As I envision it, the category would carry no responsibilities and would give a recipient no tangible benefits except, perhaps, a small certificate. It would foster pride, however, and be a goal for younger scholars to work toward. Some societies establish an absolute maximum number of individuals who can hold the honor at any one time, others use a percentage of membership, and still others base it on quality alone. Historians and others also have opted for different ways to determine membership, but usually an honors committee does the work.

At this stage, I would like to hear comments on the general idea of "fellows." The pluses, as I see them, include a way to recognize a greater number of deserving people than the AAG as a whole is able to do with their general honors awards. Through press releases and other feature stories, the honoring process also should generate publicity for historical geography and for specific departments and other employers. Negatives exist too, I am certain, mostly issues of fairness. Should we elect to press ahead, time should be spent talking to our colleagues in other disciplines to ensure that the process works well. Send me reactions to this idea, either directly or via the listserv. I’ll report in the next newsletter.

One last thing. For reading in advance of the spring meeting at Pittsburgh, try Annie Dillard’s An American Childhood (Harper and Row, 1987). It contains a nice child’s-eye portrait of the city in the 1950s.

The HGSG is sponsoring a Distinguished Scholar session at the AAG annual meeting in Pittsburgh in April. The organizing committee of Ted Muller, Anne Knowles, and Artimus Keiffer, appointed by the HGSG in Honolulu, decided to select Carville Earle on the basis of his significant scholarship and prodigious efforts on behalf of the subdiscipline. Carville will deliver a paper entitled, "Space, Time, and the American Way: Liberalsim, Republicanism, and Geographical History," a precursor of a forthcoming book on a similar topic. Here is the abstract:

James Lemon, Anne Knowles, and Van Beck Hall (historian at the University of Pittsburgh) will provide commentary before opening the session to general discussion. HGSG expects this session to be the first of an annual series of honorific sessions at the annual meetings spotlighting the work of senior scholars, younger scholars, and scholars outside the discipline.

Personally, I remember a scant 12 years ago I was the first graduate student to do my thesis on a computer and a few year later, the first to take my comprehensive exams on one. In another 50 years, I might be considered a "pioneer," but I was just using the technology of the time. Given our rate of technological advancement (technology begetting technology), there will be unknown technology available, in a much different format that we can perceive today (given the sequence of future technology professed by sci-fi books).

We cannot, however, force everyone to accept or even use the latest technology, as is his or her right. Farmers in many parts of the world still use hand hoes to plant and harvest crops, and 50 percent of the world’s population has never even made a phone call. It is a different world we, as scholars, live and communicate in. But we are all working towards a common goal, with a more-or-less equal knowledge base. So we experience what is coined "thought convergence"—we might question or do research on the same topic but come up with different conclusions or perceptions. Much of this is due to socio-political-economic reasons but we could also cite differences in accessibility to technology. Today, where much technical discussion is Internet based, and where conventional wisdom changes hourly, it is not unusual to write something and then have someone quote your thoughts verbatim online in an e-mail exchange. Having the ability to communicate with others in realtime makes thinking an almost communal process where it is difficult to say who actually creates a concept, and who appropriates it. Ideas get transformed, analyzed, or rejected nearly instantaneously in cyberspace.

There is no doubt that any scholar who has access to the Internet (and chooses to use it) will never be isolated from other scholars or from valuable resources. As valuable as such virtual communities are, they do not take the place of, nor are they intended to replace, the flesh-and-blood communities that independent and organized scholars have formed throughout the U.S. and in other countries. Those that do choose to use them have the ability to scan and delete material and not see the connection to other postings. I do this myself. A hard copy, which arguably could be printed out, usually joins a pile of other non-descript print outs and gets lost in the shuffle. On the other hand, given the nature of a newsletter, it is intended to make the reader aware of certain activities within the group in a timely manner. A posting to an Internet list is more useful for events that are time sensitive.

Given the conventions that we are trying to establish in the newsletter and stimulate discussion, it is important that all members of the HGSG have access, which according to the AAG, would not happen in a virtual community. Although we can encourage members to visit the web site, where this newsletter will be archived, not all members have access or choose to do that. Therefore, the group should maintain a mailing list or its members and disseminate information that is thought to be provocative and challenging to them in a format that can be picked up and laid down as time permits. Also, a wider human audience will be reached, copies can be given to students, and the newsletter itself will be visible in one of the stacks of material we all keep on our desks.

This of course means more money must be spent for postage and printing. It also means that some of that money will not be given to students for incentives for presenting papers, travel, etc. But then, why do we all take time to put our thoughts on paper in the first place? Let us continue to make use of the technology of the time, and honor the technology of the past, until such a time as equal access allows equal dissemination. As historical geographers we must look to the future and use available technology while leaving discoverable artifacts in our wake. Who knows, maybe one day someone will discover an issue of the newsletter and wonder how folks so long ago could produce such technology! A.K.

In defense of electronic delivery. As I began to consider how do defend my arbitrarily assigned position in this debate, I found myself thinking, "What’s the big deal?" I receive information from a wide range of sources through a variety of media every day. Perhaps I’m just an overly accepting first child, the sort that rolls with most situations without too much questioning. I thought, "Hey, send me my newsletter however you send it. I’ll deal with it." That’s pretty much how I responded to the AAG’s change in the manner it distributes the final program and paper abstracts for the annual meeting. Where I used to get a thick, bound copy of all that material, I now have a slim cd-rom—quite impressive looking and efficient, but little more than a shiny coaster without a computer and cd-rom drive.

As I thought further, however, I started thinking about members who might not have access to e-mail or who might prefer not to receive specialty group news exclusively in an electronic format. This sympathy is not merely token considerateness on my part. Despite being from the younger half of our profession, I have not always been an eager user of technology. I am definitely not a "technophile." If anything, I have suffered from a bit of technophobia until just the last couple of years. I resisted using computers for most of my college career and only grudgingly gave in to using one to complete my thesis and dissertation in grad school.

Today I can’t honestly say what it was I feared, but I simply wasn’t interested. Even as I slowly went over to the "dark side," as I may have considered it, I resisted even peaking at the world-wide web. Finally, to humor a colleague, I gave the Internet a try a few years ago. I decided to employ the thing to search for something useful. I tried to find the then-recent results of the last referendum held in Québec. To my chagrin, I located detailed results at the riding level inside of an hour. I used the data that very afternoon in my political geography class. The rest, as they say, is history . . . or is it the future?

The usefulness of electronic delivery persuades me the most in this debate. There are clear advantages to e-mail delivery. For one, we would realize undeniable cost savings. The specialty group would all but eliminate the cost of copying 400 or so newsletters. Similarly, we would save handsomely on the postage we would not have to pay for. There would also be time savings—certainly on the parts of the editors, but also on the parts of our members at large. We would eliminate most of the delays that plague paper newsletters, namely the waiting for the newsletter to be copied, folded, sealed, sorted for mailing, and delivered. While those delays may only take a few days, coordinating those few days with the schedules of the editors, secretaries, a copy shop, and a campus mail facility is a challenge, and they can delay receipt of the newsletter by a few weeks. Going the electronic route, we would free valuable specialty group funds for more meaningful projects, like larger student paper awards or travel grants. Simultaneously, we’d get our newsletters faster.

While I don’t believe we’re faced with a take-it-electronically-or-leave-it scenario, there are distinct advantages to electronic delivery. Accordingly, I advocate distributing our newsletter via e-mail and the world-wide web. In the short run, I suggest that we phase this in by using dual-mailing lists for a couple of years, allowing members to select their preferred delivery medium. Geographers, especially historical types like us, have faced growing challenges due to technology. We’re holding steady at Number 7 in the recent rankings of specialty groups (AAG Newsletter, 34, 9:10), but the GIS, Cartography, and Remote Sensing groups are all larger. More tellingly, consider the dearth of historical job postings in the JIG amidst the flood of GIS listings. I don’t advocate overdoing it—another first-child trait—but this is clearly an occasion for us to embrace technology as a specialty group. J.K.

While we do not consider this a clear-cut, either/or issue by any means, we aren’t yet ready to conduct a comprehensive survey of the specialty group, either. We would, however, like to hear from you if you feel strongly about one of the two major options we discuss. Feel free to contact either of us . . . using any means at your disposal. Our contact information appears at the head of the newsletter.

David Robinson would like to remind those who kindly submitted biographical information some time ago to visit the HGSG webpage and send him any updates or modifications that they may wish to make to their entries. And of course he welcomes brand new bios from those who have not yet submitted anything. The web page is at: http://www.maxwell.syr.edu/geo/histgeo/bio/htm

The following is the 1998 Financial Report, filed by Cathy Kindquist, Secretary/Treasurer.

Income for 1998:

Dues $1,505.00

Other Deposits $ 750.00

Interest $ 90.04

Total Income $2,345.04

Expenses for 1998:

Security State Bank (Research Fee) $ 20.00

Heidi Nast (Awards Luncheon—AAG) $ 93.00

Blake Gumprecht (Clark Award) $ 250.00

Kate Boyer (Clark Award) $ 75.00

Peter Morris (Clark Award) $ 75.00

Michael Mercier (Brown Award) $ 250.00

Debra Alfonso (Brown Award) $ 100.00

Edward Casey (Lecture) $ 175.00

U Wisconsin–Oshkosh (Past Place) $ 204.55

Christian Axsiom (Travel Award) $ 200.00

Douglas Hurt (Travel Award) $ 200.00

Mary Beth Harquardt (Travel Award) $ 200.00

Total Expenses $1,842.55

HGSG Dues Amounts for 1998

Total Received from AAG Central Office $1,505.00

Balances

January 1, 1998 $3,497.53

December 31, 1998 $4.000.02

Eligibility for the first two awards is open to any graduate student who has or will present a paper at any professional conference beginning the day after the 1999 AAG Annual Meeting and ending the last day of the 2000 Annual Meeting. Students wishing to participate in the first two awards should send three (3) copies of a conference-length paper of no more than 11 double-spaced pages plus notes, figures, etc. to the person listed below. Students wishing to enter the Applied competition should submit three (3) copies of a project description of no more than 11 double-spaced pages plus supporting materials such as photographs, site plans, etc. to the same person listed below.

Each award carries with it a $250 First Prize. Second prizes of lesser amounts may be awarded at the discretion of the competition judges. Please note: If the paper you wish to enter for the Ralph Brown Award is based upon research conducted while you were a Master’s student, you are eligible to enter this competition, even if you are now a Ph.D. student. In evaluation the papers, preference will be given to those based on primary sources of information rather than literature reviews. Regardless of which competition you enter, please indicate in a cover letter to which one you are applying and include your e-mail address, if you have one. Deadline for receiving materials is February 25, 2000.

All mailings should be sent to, and any questions can be directed to:

The April 1998 issue included pieces by:

The October 1998 issue has essays by:

Each of these is available as a back issue from the AGS for $20 plus postage; the American Geographical Society can be contacted directly by e-mail at: amgeosoc@earthlink.net

Some of you who have been reading the GR idly, when you get to your libraries, might wish to consider subscribing—there doesn’t appear to be a letup ahead. For those considering manuscript preparation, please do familiarize yourselves with the nature and content of recent issues of the Geographical Review.

To inquire about a subscription, contact Paul Starrs, editor of the Geographical Review, and Associate Professor of Geography, University of Nevada, by e-mail at: starrs@unr.edu

History of Cartography in the Twentieth Century

The History of Cartography Project, which is producing a six-volume series published by the University of Chicago Press, invites proposals for research essays from scholars interested in cartography in the twentieth century, an area that has received comparatively little attention by historians of cartography.

With support from the National Science Foundation, the Project is initiating work on Volume Six under the leadership of Mark Monmonier, Distinguished Professor of Geography at Syracuse University. The grant provides eleven research stipends, with which we hope to encourage proven or promising scholars from a wide variety of backgrounds to research the history of cartography in the twentieth century. Participants are expected to attend a planning conference in June 2000, prepare a major research paper, present their results at a symposium in June 2002, and deliver copies of their research materials to the Project. The papers will be published in a peer-reviewed journal during 2003 and will form a foundation for Volume Six itself, to which the editors hope participants will contribute chapters or sections.

Participants will receive a research stipend of $10,000 as well as travel support to the planning conference and symposium. The stipend will be paid in installments and is contingent upon the participants meeting stated deadlines. Further information can be obtained by sending email to mon2ier@syr.edu with "Vol 6 info request" in the subject line.

The History of Cartography Project has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, and numerous private donors. General editorship is provided by David Woodward, Arthur H. Robinson Professor of Geography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Further information about the Project and the four books published thus far is available at: http://feature.geography.wisc.edu/histcart.

Conferences

The 2000 Annual Meeting of the Vernacular Architecture Forum will meet in Duluth, Minnesota, June 7-10. There are numerous interesting field trips planned. For additional information or questions regarding the conference contact:

The Pioneer America Society will hold its 2000 annual meeting in Richmond, Virginia, October 12-14. Abstracts must be received no later than Sept. 1, 2000. For more information or to submit an abstract, contact:

The annual conference of the Eastern Historical Geography Association will be held at the Bar Harbor Inn, Bar Harbor, Maine, 19-21 October 2000. The conference will include a walking tour of Bar Harbor, a presentation by noted landscape architect Patrick Chasse on the designed landscapes of Mound Desert Island, and a field trip through Acadia National Park and the eastern half of the island. The themes of the conference are early European exploration of the eastern seaboard, the historical geography of tourism, and the preservation of natural and cultural landscapes. Papers on other topics are also welcome. Abstracts of papers should be submitted by 1 August 2000 to: