Join us at this year’s conference in-person or virtually!
The American Association of Geographers 2026 Annual Meeting takes place March 16-20 in San Francisco, California. The Cultural Geography Specialty Group welcomes you to join our curious, creative, and diverse community of geographers. We are sponsoring 20 paper sessions, three panel discussions, several field visits, two workshops, a poster session, and our annual keynote address. See the details below.
2026 Cultural Geography Keynote
Thursday March 19th 12:50-2:10PM
Hilton Union Square, Imperial B, Ballroom Level
Rebecca Solnit
Rebecca Solnit is beloved for her inspirational essays and books on the environment, feminism, human rights, anti-imperialism, and social activism published by Harper’s, The Guardian, Haymarket Books, and others. The critically acclaimed Hope in the Dark (2004) and Men Explain Things to Me (2014) have empowered people to reconsider their place in the world and ability to change it for the better. Lesser known, but no less powerful are her award-winning series of urban cultural atlases published by the University of California Press. In these volumes, Solnit explores the intersection of social, historical, spatial, and environmental phenomena in and around San Francisco (2010), New Orleans (2013), and New York City (2016), in collaboration with geographers, cartographers, artists, and other local and academic partners.
Listen as Rebecca Solnit reflects upon these cultural counter-mapping efforts and their relevance to human geographers who seek to generate, delineate, and disseminate knowledge about people, space, and place. In these chaotic times, when many people feel anxious about the future, Solnit also reminds us of the long arc of progressive gains in society achieved by groups and individuals who identified injustices and worked toward solutions. This is the message of The Beginning Comes after the End – the much-anticipated follow-up to Hope in the Dark – published earlier this month. What an opportune moment for us to hear insights from this great writer as we visit her hometown.
“No writer has weighed the complexities of sustaining hope in our times of readily available despair more thoughtfully and beautifully, nor with greater nuance.” —Maria Popova
**Join us for a book signing immediately following the keynote from 2-3PM in the Exhibit Hall, at the University of California Press booth.
Join us at the Cultural Geography Specialty Group Business Meeting!
11:40AM – 12:40PM
Imperial B, Ballroom Level
(Just prior to the Keynote & in the same room!)
Come by to learn about how to get involved with the Cultural Geography Specialty Group, build connections within our community, and celebrate recent accomplishments and awardees!
The CGSG is proud to sponsor an array of fascinating field visits, work shops, and paper sessions.
Cultural Geography Specialty Group – Field Visits and Workshops
Monday, March 16
11:00AM – 3:00PM Field Visit (FV 0-1) *Field Visit Full*
Following in the Footsteps of San Francisco’s Arctic and Alaskan Connections
This immersive half-day field trip combines urban geography, historical geography, and environmental history to reveal enduring connections with the Arctic and North Pacific.
*Email meeting@aag.org to be added to the waitlist
Tuesday, March 17th
2:00 – 5:00PM Field Visit (FV 1-3)
Bay Model and North Golden Gate Bridge
Visit the Bay Model in Sausalito, a 1.5-acre three-dimensional hydraulic model of San Francisco Bay and Delta areas built in the 1950s, simulating tides and currents.
Wednesday March 18th
8:30 – 9:50AM Workshop (WS 2-1)
Mapping and Measuring Structural Racism and Discrimination in the US: Advancing Place-Based GIScience for Health Equity
Yosemite Room A, Ballroom Level, Hilton Union Square
1:10 – 4:15PM Field Visit (FV 2-4)
Smells like San Francisco: Vapors and Volatility in the City of Explosivity
This 2.6-mile mostly flat walking tour uses attention to aroma to map a slice of modernity’s march around San Francisco.
4:00 – 6:00 PM Field Visit (FV 2-5) *Field Visit Full*
Radical History, Site of Power: A Walking Tour of San Francisco Chinatown
*Email meeting@aag.org to be added to the waitlist
Friday, March 20th
2:00-4:00PM Field Visit (FV 4-5)
Tenderloin History Walking Tour
The Tenderloin is a complex and sometimes contradictory tapestry of labor history, LGBTQ history, tenant activism, social services, immigration stories, urban resilience, and the vice that earned the neighborhood its suggestive name.
2:30-3:50PM. Preregistration not required
Workshop: Imagining the Other – The Empathic Power of Music Geography
Continental 9, Ballroom Level
Chair:Michael Solem, Texas State University
Cultural Geography Specialty Group – Sponsored Sessions
The Cultural Geography Specialty Group invites you to our sponsored sessions. Thanks to all of the session organizers and chairs for their continued commitment and support of our community of cultural geographers! (All are paper sessions unless otherwise noted)
Tuesday, March 17th
12:50-2:10 PM
Scheming as a Spatiotemporal Secret: Behind the Scenes of the Conjuncture
Continental 7, Ballroom Level Hybrid & Streamed
Chair:Emily Holloway, University of Pennsylvania
2:30-3:50 PM
Frontier, Brig, School, Screen: Geographies of “Star Trek” at Sixty
Continental 7, Ballroom Level
Chair:David Seitz
4:10-5:30PM
Ethics, Creativity, and Refusal in Storytelling and Scholarship
Golden Gate 7, Lobby Level Hybrid, Streamed & Recorded
Chair:Katrina Stack, University of Tennessee
Archive as territory: Historical methods in Black geographies
Continental 7, Ballroom Level
Chair:Emily Holloway, University of Pennsylvania
Wednesday, March 18th
8:30-9:50AM
Contested Heritage in the Era of Trumpism 2.0
Franciscan A, Ballroom Level Hybrid, Streamed & Recorded
Chair: Katrina Stack, University of Tennessee
10:10-11:30AM
Contested Heritage in the Era of Trumpism 2.0
Franciscan A, Ballroom Level Hybrid, Streamed & Recorded
Chair: Katrina Stack, University of Tennessee
12:50 PM – 2:10 PM
Geographies of Care in the Age of AI: Mapping and Modeling Homelessness and Public Health with Big Data Session II
Union Square 24, 4th Floor, Tower 3
Chair: Ming-Hsiang Tsou, San Diego State
4:10-5:30 PM
Author Meets Critic: “Displacing Territory: Syrian and Palestinian Refugees in Jordan” by Karen Culcasi (Panel)
Continental 9, Ballroom Level Hybrid & Streamed
Chair: Karen Culcasi, West Virginia University
Thursday, March 19th
8:30-9:50AM
Mapping New Collectives: Ethnographic Approaches to Reconfiguring the Urban Household
Union Square 13, 4th Floor, Tower 3 Chair:Teresa Caldeira, UC Berkeley
10:10-11:30 AM
Author Meets Critics: ‘Spinoza’s Geographical Ethics’ by Joe Gerlach (Panel)
Nob Hill 4 & 5, 6th Floor, Tower 3 Hybrid & Streamed
Chair:Thomas Jellis, University of Bristol
What are we doing here? Transdisciplinary and Geographical Methodologies in Global Studies II
Union Square 14, 4th Flr, Tower 3 Hybrid, Streamed & Recorded
Chair:Jake Atienza, University of California, Irvine
11:40AM – 12:40PM
Cultural Geography Specialty Group Business Meeting (Networking)
Imperial B, Ballroom Level Tower 1, 2, 3. Hybrid & Streamed
Chair:Christabel Devadoss, Middle Tennessee State
12:50-2:10PM
AAG 2026 Cultural Geography Keynote: Rebecca Solnit (Plenary)
Imperial B, Ballroom Level Hybrid, Streamed & Recorded
Chair:Dan Bonenberger, Eastern Michigan University
2:30-3:50PM
Next-Generation Methods for Accurate and Timely Population Estimation
Nob Hill 6 & 7, 6th Floor, Tower 3 Hybrid, Streamed & Recorded
Chair:Marie Urban
Burner Geographies I: Spirituality
Franciscan A, Ballroom Level Streamed & Recorded
Chair:Elizabeth Bennett
4:10-5:30 PM
Burner Geographies II: Neopolis
Franciscan A, Ballroom Level, Tower 123 Streamed & Recorded
Chair:Elizabeth Bennett
Friday March 20th
8:30-9:50AM
Researching Across Dualistic & Dichotomous Disciplinary Boundaries (Pt 1 of 2)
Nob Hill 10, 6th Floor, Tower 3 Hybrid & Streamed
Chair:Anjan Sen, University of Delhi – India
International Migration and Mobility in an East Asian context (Pt 1)
Golden Gate 3, Lobby Level Hybrid & Streamed
Chair:Kylie Yuet Ning Poon, UCLA
10:10 AM – 11:30 AM
Researching Across Dualistic & Dichotomous Disciplinary Boundaries (Pt 2 of 2)
Nob Hill 10, 6th Floor, Tower 3 Hybrid & Streamed
Chair:Anjan Sen, University of Delhi – India
International Migration and Mobility in an East Asian context (Pt 2)
Golden Gate 3, Lobby Level Hybrid & Streamed
Chair:Yali He-Schafer, UCLA
Cultural geographies Annual Lecture, Dydia DeLyser, “Just say ‘Yes!’ Love, devotion, and learning public geography” (Plenary)
Imperial B, Ballroom Level Hybrid, Streamed & Recorded
Chair:Matthew Wilson, University of Kentucky
Beyond Liberal Emergencies: Rethinking Emergency Governance in this postliberal present
Franciscan B, Ballroom Level Streamed & Recorded
Chair:Nathaniel O’Grady, University of Manchester
12:50 PM – 2:10 PM
Beyond Liberal Emergencies: Rethinking practices of emergency governance in this postliberal moment 1
Nob Hill 4 & 5, 6th Floor, Tower 3 Streamed & Recorded
Chair:Ruth Trumble
International Migration and Mobility in an East Asian context (Pt 3)
Golden Gate 3, Lobby Level Hybrid & Streamed
Chair:Yali He-Schafer, UCLA
Reclaiming Narratives, Rooting Connections, and Healing Memory Amidst Dispossession (Panel Discussion)
Nob Hill 6 & 7, 6th Floor, Tower 3 Chair:Sherine Ebadi, UC Berkeley
2:30-3:50PM
Workshop: Imagining the Other – The Empathic Power of Music Geography
Continental 9, Ballroom Level
Chair:Michael Solem, Texas State University
Cultural Geography Specialty Group 