by Fox | Apr 12, 2015 | Geographers
Q&A with Craig Angus
GI: Paper or digital map?
CA: Depends on the time and place. For teaching I prefer a projectable digital map. For years we struggled finding the money to buy enough sets of large paper flip maps which ran around $400 a set. Now thousands of awesome maps are available on line for free. Maps showing the spatial distribution of just about anything and anything. I am not averse to paper maps, back in the mid-80s a group of friends and I rode our bikes across Tibet ending up in Kathmandu, our only map was a hand drawn map (the Chinese government did not like sharing maps) given to one of my mates when he was in Tibet the previous March when the country opened up for the first time. That map likely saved our lives. Currently all of my AP Human Geography students own a copy of the Geography Coloring Book. I like adding the tactile/kinesthetic sense experience to my class. Each student colors and labels the map they feel is most closely related to our current field of study with the goal being to complete the entire earth by year’s end.
GI: GPS or mental map?
CA: Mental, don’t want anyone messing with my memories and imagination.
GI: Rural, suburban or urban?
CA: I enjoy all three. I live rural, love spending time in the urban and appreciate sub-urban for what it is.
GI: Mountain, river, desert, island? In order of preference.
CA: No preference, I have activities I do in all of them that I really enjoy. Skiing, rafting and canoeing, desert camping and hiking and travels to any of the islands that makes up Japan.
GI: If pre-colonial was ‘0’, colonial ‘5’, and post-colonial ’10’ what number would you give your geographical imagination?
CA: 10
GI: By train, by foot, by bicycle or by car?
CA: Bicycle. This is the biggest drawback living out of town; I have done bike tours all over the world, no better way to see things.
GI: What is less important: Gross National Product or Gross National Happiness?
CA: GNP which doesn’t really indicate anything or measure accurately.
GI: Favorite country name? Favorite city name? Favorite small town?
CA: Burkina-Faso, Kuala Lumpur, Laramie, Wyoming.
GI: Paper notebook or laptop?
CA: Depends on the task. Notebook does fit in my pocket though and I usually carry one.
GI: What is the capital of Bhutan?
CA: How would I know?
GI: Do elk have a geography? Explain.
CA: Of course. They transhumance themselves by season without any help, living and grazing up high in the summer and down in lower elevations in the winter.
GI: Favorite geographical concept?
CA: Projecting spherical shapes/3 dimensional shapes a flat surface. I once drew myself in the Robinson Projection.
GI: Lastly, what does it mean for someone, some object, some place, some process to “have a geography”? Please explain through an example of your teaching, research or creative work.
CA: Having a geography could mean something has a spatial distribution or a story that takes place across space. I do a field study on poverty with my students in the state of Colorado where they have to show the spatial distribution of 10 economic indicators across the state and make scatter graphs.
Craig Angus is a History, geography and woodworking teacher at the Dawson School in Lafayette (Boulder County), Colorado. A seasoned world traveler, he likes thinking about the “adjacent possible” and combining unlikely ideas to come up with new and exciting ideas. His philosophy is this: The ability to reform and to have self-discipline are important but I do not believe that these things provide impassioned learning or original thinking. So the important thing is sidestep the need for these things (not all the time but a good part of the time) and provide an experience for students that is interesting to them in a really big way. The teacher provides the topic or the context and allow students to find their place within that context and to run with their idea. The teacher provides an experience where students must think and solve problems such as the problem everyone faces when they have to find an answer to a question that is consuming them.
by Fox | Apr 9, 2015 | Making
Do you design creative and imaginative lesson plans that time and again have helped students to develop and expand their geographical imaginations?
If so, I would like to include some of your best creativity in a radio show/podcast committed to the exploration of this imagination. I am looking for AP Human Geography Readers planning to be in Cincinnati this June who are interested in collaborating for an episode (or more) dedicated to pedagogy.
I understand that most, if not all, of what we do as geography teachers/professors informs our students’ geographical imaginations. However, I want to bring together a variety of voices and variety of pedagogical strategies to explore “outside the box” lessons that either explicitly open discussion of the geographical imagination as a way of knowing or lessons that introduce geographical concepts in imaginative and exciting ways. Especially welcome are ideas that foster the development of a geographical imagination with environmental, economic, social and political justice at their core.
Meetings/interviews will be conducted off-site and after work hours during the week of the reading.
If interested, check out the show here: https://www.geographicalimaginations.org/ and contact Kevin S. Fox (APHG Reader) via email at geographical.imaginations@gmail.com with any comments or questions.
by Fox | Mar 22, 2015 | Episodes
Tune in to Radio Fabrik this Saturday, March 28 at 19:06 PM Salzburg time to listen to our sixth episode entitled, “In Maria’s Footsteps.” In celebration of 50 years of The Sound of Music we will discuss with Peter Baron von Wertheim of Bob’s Special Tours the motivation for so many North American and Asian pilgrims to the landscapes–both natural and personal–of this blockbuster film. Film geographer Dr. Joseph Palis helps us contextualize this journey and make connections to some of the larger themes regarding the geographical imagination.
by Fox | Mar 7, 2015 | Geographers
Q & A with Christopher Gaffney
GI: Paper or digital map?
CG: Paper. I´ve yet to see a digital map laid out on a library table.
GI: GPS or mental map?
CG: Mental. GPS is mental anyway and I think we’re losing our ability to navigate the simplest environments with the navigation aides.
GI: Rural, suburban or urban?
CG: Definitely a preference for urban with access to the rural. Having grown up in Arlington, Texas I have had enough of suburbia for a lifetime.
GI: Mountain, river, desert, island? In order of preference.
CG: Mountainous island, with a spot on the beach where the river flows into the sea. Deserts are great to visit, but if I had a choice, the desert mountains of New Mexico and Chihuahua.
GI: If pre-colonial was ‘0’, colonial ‘5’, and post-colonial ’10’ what number would you give your geographical imagination?
CG: 8.5- the last 1.5 are very difficult to scrub out, especially living in Switzerland.
GI: By train, by foot, by bicycle or by car?
CG: Train for long trips, car for day trips, bike for everyday and touring, walking everywhere in cities.
GI: What is less important: Gross National Product or Gross National Happiness?
CG: GNP
GI: Favorite city name in Brazil?
CG: Açaílândia, Pará…always wanted to go there, the açaí must be fantastic.
GI: Paper notebook or laptop?
CG: Notebook
GI: What is the capital of Honduras?
CG: Tay-goose-see-galpa. Was once stuck in a prison there for a few hours.
GI: Does college basketball in the United States have a geography? Explain.
CG: Most definitely. There is a class and economic geography in the production and selection of players. The political-economy of the NCAA and the NBA reflect and recreate the political geography of sport in the USA. The incredible identity associations that form around college bball teams in the USA inform personal associations with place.
GI: Favorite geographical concept?
CG: Lefebvre´s production of space triad.
GI: Lastly, what does it mean for someone, some object, some place, some process to “have a geography”? Please explain through an example of your research or creative work.
CG: Habeo geographia, ergo sum. To be “written into the earth” is to leave a mark of our passing or to be mutually recognized by one’s environment. In my creative, journalistic and academic writing I have tried to express my vision of the world as a way of interacting and trying to shift it. There is no escape from geography, as far as I can tell, and to be able to recognize the ways in which our own lives are influenced by and can have influence on the way that the planet is written (or forms) is what motivates me to do my work as a geographer. Writing, teaching, and talking about the world is a means of geographic interpretation and engagement that all geographers have. Showing how things, places, ideas, flows, and processes are inextricable connected to the “geo” is what geographers are primarily engaged in. I tried to show how football stadiums are connected to the world in Temples of the Earthbound Gods and in Hunting White Elephants to demonstrate the multiple daily events that create something like the World Cup and Olympics.
Christopher Gaffney received his PhD in Geography from the University of Texas and taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 2009, Gaffney received a Fulbright Scholarship to study the urban and social impacts of the World Cup and Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. From 2010-2014 he was a Visiting Professor in the Graduate School of Architecture and Urbanism at the Universidade Federal Fluminense. Gaffney´s research has focused on social movements in the context of mega-events, the urban dynamics of Rio de Janeiro, and the political economy of football. Much of this research was tied to a three year, national scale research project hosted at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro that investigated the impacts of the World Cup in the twelve Brazilian host cities. His current research projects are focused on a mapping of social, political, and economic actors that are shaping the 2016 Olympics. Beginning in January 2015, Gaffney assumed the editorship of the Journal of Latin American Geography. He has recently moved to Zurich where he is a Senior Research Fellow in he Department of Geography. He is working on a book entitled Hunting White Elephants, based on his blog of the same name.
