AAG 2024: Spatial Approaches to Applied Memory and Heritage
Co-organizers: Dr. Mark Rhodes (marhodes@mtu.edu), Dr. Michael Hawkins (mhawki11@kent.edu), or Dr. Jacque Micieli-Voutsinas (jmicielivoutsina@ufl.edu)
What do geographers contribute toward applied forms of memory and heritage? Public history, museum studies, archival studies, public art, cultural resource management, and other forms of applied memory and heritage often draw upon archaeology, anthropology, art, architecture, history, and other disciplines, but geography is rarely listed among these applied engagements with how we shape, interpret, and share our understandings of the past. Despite these perceptions, geographers have and increasingly do play key roles in the application of memory and heritage, bringing in necessary spatial contexts to inherently geographical processes rooted in space, place, landscape, and human-environment relations. We seek work which sits upon these intersections and showcases the direction, contributions, absences, and potential of geographic scholarship within the applied arenas of memory and heritage. Museums, galleries, public art, memorials, and monuments, HGIS platforms, heritage sites, national parks, archives, vernacular landscapes and heritage, and the administration of historical and cultural resources all intersect with geography, and we seek to highlight such potential.
- How have and should geographers be positioning themselves, and our students, within these spaces?
- How have geographers played key roles in the shaping and management of these landscapes?
- How has the work done within geography on space, place, landscape, and human-environment relations of historical sites accentuated the silences, exploitation, and violences which memory and heritage can cause?
- In what directions are spatial approaches to applied memory and heritage currently moving?
- What challenges do we face as a discipline or perhaps what challenges face the sub-discipline of historical geography in aligning ourselves to have political, economic, cultural, and ecological impacts upon memory and heritage decisions and institutions?
- How do we see our pedagogy intersecting with applied memory and heritage?
- What is the role of absence within applied memory and heritage work?
- Whose voices have been made absent within this work?
- What role does storytelling serve as a method for applied memory and heritage work?
Memory and heritage take place; there are always spatial relationships at play, but few geographers are behind those processes, so we envision these discussions and a resulting special issue to take stock of where we’ve been and where we should be going within the context of spatial approaches towards applied methods of memory and heritage.
We seek a range of scholarly and creative practice illustrating our concerns and questions highlighted above. Traditional research papers, shorter commentaries on practice, interviews, and other written works could be accompanied by digital products or contextualized memory or heritage applications. We hope to generate a series of hybrid AAG sessions and one discussion panel with the goal of proposing a special issue of the journal Historical Geography.
This broader theme aligns with the awarding of the 2024 Distinguished Historical Geographer Award and Lecture to Dr. RDK Herman, whose years at Towson University, the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, and founder and now Director of the Pacific Worlds Institute in Hilo, Hawai’i illustrates one such possible pathway for historical geographers. His lecture, “From Classroom to Community: Three faces of being a Historical Geographer,” and role as a discussant on our proposed panel will help propel discussion forward across the many possibilities of spatial approaches to applied memory and heritage.
Those interested in joining these sessions please send your name, affiliation, presentation title, and an abstract of no more than 250 words to any of the co-organizers, Dr. Mark Rhodes (marhodes@mtu.edu), Dr. Michael Hawkins (mhawki11@kent.edu), or Dr. Jacque Micieli-Voutsinas (jmicielivoutsina@ufl.edu) no later than November 9th.
Engaging biocultural and relational approaches to care-based stewardship
Session co-organizers: Natalia Piland, Lindsay Campbell (USDA Forest Service) and Gina McGuire (Akaka Foundation), and sponsored by the Cultural and Political Ecology Specialty Group.
Natural resource management often begins with a perspective that focuses on public authorities’ formal jurisdictions (e.g. federal, state, and local agencies) and private property owners and the parcels they manage. Yet, inclusive ecosystem management is enabled by collaborative, boundary-spanning arrangements that engage many ways of knowing and caring for the land and each other (Koontz and Thomas 2006; Ostrom 2010; Connolly et al. 2013; Kealiikanakaoleohaililani & Giardina 2016). Greater attention is needed to recognize the role of civic actors and individual residents as stewards who engage in acts of caretaking and claims-making in these ecosystems (Andersson et al. 2014). Stewardship theory has been developed through the domains of knowledge, care, and agency (Enqvist et al. 2018) and proposed social-ecological frameworks (such as Romolini et al. 2016; Muñoz-Erickson et al. 2016; and Johnson et al. 2020). In practice, stewardship groups have missions that span different domains of environmental protection and community development, where stewardship is used to advance quality of life (Svendsen and Campbell 2008; Krasny and Tidball 2015; Thomas and Romolini 2023). Thus, stewardship of place is inseparable from stewardship of people. Diverse approaches are needed to understand the stewardship practices undertaken by the numerous groups representing multiple issues, motivations, modes of action, and identities. Biocultural, relational, transformational, and other holistic approaches to stewardship elucidate the critical feedbacks between and among life and place, and their wellbeing (Gavin et al. 2015; Pascua et al. 2017; Chan et al. 2018; McMillen et al. 2020). In this session, we focus on these approaches to better understand their contributions to a theory of stewardship.
How can different theoretical frameworks and perspectives, including (but not limited to) political ecology, critical social theory, Indigenous studies, Black studies, postcolonial theory, transdisciplinarity, and relational sustainability, be brought to bear on the phenomenon of stewardship? What philosophical lineages and insights can shed new light on the knowledge, care, and agency expressed through stewardship practices? How do individuals formulate and enact their beliefs, knowledge, and practices related to stewardship? How do the rights, resources, power dynamics, and cultural norms of a place affect who can steward particular aspects of the landscape, and to what extent? Finally, how do stewards work to create, shape, and transform place, space, and systems?
This session focuses on engaging biocultural and relational approaches to care-based stewardship. We adopt multiple lenses to advance stewardship thinking in terms of: theoretical concepts, methodological innovations, and novel ways forward to support stewardship practices. Practical approaches can include but are not limited to: co-production of knowledge by scholars and activists; strategies (e.g. activism, advocacy, pedagogy) and tools (e.g. decision-support, GIS, storytelling, art) for supporting stewardship; and development of future research-and-action agendas. We invite submissions from participants who are addressing themes of stewardship at individual, group, and network-level scales in their work. We invite papers that engage artistic and embodied ways of knowing and biocultural stewardship practices towards more inclusive approaches to the land rooted in reciprocity and care. Above all, we encourage participants to consider how their papers promote the exchange of information, ideas, and experiences that support stewards and their self-determination, particularly stewards who belong to Indigenous groups and/or historically and currently marginalized communities.
This session is co-organized by Natalia Piland, Lindsay Campbell (USDA Forest Service) and Gina McGuire (Akaka Foundation), and sponsored by the Cultural and Political Ecology Specialty Group.
- To submit an abstract, please send your 200-word abstract to Natalia Piland at both e- mails natalia.piland@usda.gov and npiland.usfs@gmail.com by Nov. 6th, 2023.
- We will notify you if your paper will be selected for this session by Nov. 10th, 2023.
If accepted, you will need to register and submit your official abstract to AAG prior to the Nov. 16th, 2023, deadline and send us your abstract submission confirmation email. We will be in contact with instructions.
Material Culture and Geography (in-person session)
Session Organizer: Sara Beth Keough, PhD; Saginaw Valley State University; Editor, Material Culture
Sponsored by the Cultural Geography Specialty Group, Landscape Specialty Group, and Material Culture: The Journal of International Society for Landscape, Place, and Material Culture
This session seeks papers that examine any aspect of material culture in a geographic context. For the purpose of this in-person session, material culture is defined as any tangible or artistic aspect of culture. Contributions could include, but are not limited to, papers on folk and popular culture, the visual and performing arts, consumer goods and technology, historical and present-day analyses of human imprint on the landscape, landscapes of memory/leisure/(in)justice/agriculture, and topics in historic preservation. Regional focus is open, and papers on international topics are welcome.
Interested presenters can send abstracts for consideration by November 5, 2023 to sbkeough@svsu.edu. Once approved, presenters should register for the annual meeting and submit their abstracts through the AAG website so they can be officially added to these sessions.
Please direct comments and questions to the session organizer, Sara Beth Keough (sbkeough@svsu.edu)
Cultural Geography Specialty Group 