This spring, we have a few vacancies to be filled for the executive board of the Cultural Geography Specialty Group. The positions are each two-year terms, except for Secretary/Treasurer, which was vacated when Dr. Emma Walcott-Wilson graciously stepped forward to serve as interim Chair last year and Dr. Ola Johansson agreed to return to the Board as interim Secretary/Treasurer. The open positions (see descriptions below) are:

• CGSG Chair
• CGSG Secretary/Treasurer (One-year term)
• CGSG Awards Director
• CGSG Graduate Student Representative (One position available)

If you wish to nominate yourself or a qualified individual for these vacancies, please notify me at marhodes@mtu.edu on or before March 2, 2023. Include contact information for your nominee as well as a brief paragraph describing their suitability for the position. All nominees will be asked to confirm their willingness to run ahead of the election. Elections will occur online March 8th-22nd, and results will be publicly announced at the annual CGSG Business Meeting on March 26th. All CGSG members are eligible to vote and serve in any position (membership is $6 or $2 for students). We ask that only graduate students be nominated for the graduate representative positions, but graduate students may also serve in any other board position.

Following previous discussions of the CGSG Board and broader membership, we would particularly encourage nominations and self-nominations from BIPOC or other underrepresented faculty members as well as from more senior faculty members. 

Description of positions, as stated in the CGSG Bylaws, that need to be filled:

The Chair will be responsible for: a) chairing the annual business meeting; b) together with the Secretary/Treasurer, the compiling and editing publication of one CGSG Newsletter each year; c) submitting to the AAG office, by 31 May of each year, an annual report of the activities, finances, and immediate objectives of the CGSG; and d) providing general stewardship for the members of the specialty group in all matters while promoting the discipline of Geography in general and cultural geography specialization in particular.

The Secretary/Treasurer will be responsible for: a) receiving and dispersing all funds of the CGSG; b) maintaining an up-to-date list of all members of the CGSG; c) keeping minutes and presenting a financial statement of the CGSG at the annual business meeting; and d) together with the Chairperson, the publication and distribution of one Cultural Geography Specialty Group Newsletter, prior to the national meeting of the AAG.

The Awards Director will determine methods by which recognition will be given for major contributions to cultural geography. Currently there are four awards that are determined on an annual basis: M.A. Paper Award, Ph.D. Paper Award (The Terry Jordan-Bychkov Award), M.A. Research Grant, and Ph.D. Research Grant (The Denis Cosgrove Award) and the Adjunct/Underemployed Faculty Conference Travel Grant. Criteria for and history of those awards is included in Appendix A of the CGSG Bylaws.

The Graduate Student Representative will be responsible for engaging student participation in the specialty group, managing the group’s social media (Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram), and, based on sufficient interest, organize and chair at least one student-only paper session at the annual AAG meeting and help to meet the needs of the students presenting papers or engaging in research. Additionally, the Student Directors will, at their discretion and availability, encourage paper sessions at regional meetings under the auspices of the CGSG. Traditionally, Grad Student Representatives have hosted a CGSG Breakfast paid for by the CGSG. In addition, Graduate Student Representatives will organize a Photo Exhibition and competition where the winning photo(s) will undergo review for publication. All AAG Meeting attendees are invited to these events. Appendix B lists the guidelines for the Photo Exhibit and Competition.

“Queer/trans ecologies: methodological considerations for critical geographical research”

Panel Session, AAG 2023, Denver
Conveners: Sage Brice (Durham University), Cleo Wölfle Hazard (University of Washington),
Austin Read (University of Bristol)
Keywords: Politics of Nature, Queer theory, Trans studies, Post-humanism
We welcome expressions of interest for a panel on Queer/Trans Ecologies at the AAG 2023 in
Denver.
“Trans-corporeality refers to the idea that our bodies are porous and perennially intermeshed with
the nonhuman, meaning that we are never ‘separate’ from the environment in which we live and are always more-than-human” (Parker, 2020)

This panel will examine geographical applications and implications of new critical and
methodological approaches emerging under the broad umbrella of queer/trans ecologies.
Queer ecology has been described as “a loose, interdisciplinary constellation of practices that aim, in
different ways, to disrupt prevailing heterosexist discursive and institutional articulations of sexuality
and nature, and also to reimagine evolutionary processes, ecological interactions, and
environmental politics in light of queer theory” (Sandilands, 2016).
In recent years, queer and trans scholarship has not confined itself to LGBT+ subjects and
communities as a ‘proper object’ of study (Beauchamp, 2019), but seeks instead to think critically
about what queer and trans sensibilities and perspectives – along with a study of the social
mechanisms that regulate and produce sex, gender, and sexuality – can teach us about broader
societal questions regarding the nature of subjectivity and subject-formation. Queer/Trans ecologies
are thus not limited to the study of queer and/or trans bodies in green spaces (e.g. Gandy 2012;
Ensor 2017), but constitute a broader call to examine the construction of certain bodies,
orientations, and identities as ‘natural’ or ‘unnatural’, and the construction of ‘nature’ along the
lines of normative hetero-reproductive logics and values (Byrd, 2020). Increasingly, too, critical
biological and environmental scientists are engaging with queer approaches to address questions of
cross-boundary and other-than-human kinship and interdependence and to disrupt settler-colonial
practices in environmental governance by centering values of justice, sovereignty, and dynamism
(Liboiron 2021, Hazard 2022). Importantly, this impetus emerges out of a desire to build
relationships across movements for social and ecological justice, including indigenous, racialised,
disabled, and abolitionist ecologies (Heynen, 2018; Clare, 2017). Queer/trans ecologies are therefore
focused on grounded considerations of method, fieldwork, and empirics.
In their dissolution of taxonomic and normative boundaries, queer/trans ecologies provoke us to
think the social as operating and moving through and across seemingly bounded bodies, identities,
and categories. Recognising this permeability of individual lives requires what Braidotti (2019) has
called an “enlarged, distributed, and transversal concept of what a subject is and of how it deploys
its relational capacities.” This panel will bring together scholars working in a queer/trans ecological
mode in a facilitated conversation, with an aim to compiling a themed special issue to assist in
developing and refining just such a transversal geographical sensibility.

To be considered for this panel please send a short statement of interest (250 words) outlining
relevant research projects and areas of interest. Expressions of interest are also invited from those
who wish to contribute in a facilitative role, for example as introducer or discussant. These and any
questions should be directed to sage.brice@durham.ac.uk by 25 October 2022.
Topics and themes may include, but are not limited to:

• Queer and trans ecologies as method in sciences, social science and humanities
• On-the-ground engagements with land/Land and species
• Abolition ecologies
• Black, Indigenous and PoC perspectives on gender and nature/culture
• Posthumanist theories of subjectivity and subject-formation
• Queer/trans ecological temporalities and landscape as archive
• Trans-gressions, trans-formations and trans-corporealities
• Critical ontologies and epistemologies of ‘nature’
• Queer/trans interventions in Western environmental and life sciences
• Kinship, reciprocity, consent, and collective action
• More-than-human intimacies
• Normativity in ecological politics
• Queer / trans strategies for imagining and cultivating freedom in the face of climate
and environmental crises

Works cited:
Beauchamp, T. (2019) Going Stealth: Transgender Politics and U.S. Surveillance Practices, Durham
NC, Duke University Press Books.
Braidotti, R. (2019) Posthuman Knowledge, Medford, MA, Polity Press.
Byrd, J. (2020) “What’s Normative Got to Do with It?Toward Indigenous Queer Relationality.” Social
Text 38, no. 4 (145): 105–23. https://doi.org/10.1215/01642472-8680466.
Clare, E. (2017) Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure, Durham, Duke University Press Books.
Ensor, S. (2017) “Queer Fallout: Samuel R. Delany and the Ecology of Cruising.” Environmental
Humanities 9(1): 149–66. https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-3829172.
Gandy, Matthew. “Queer Ecology: Nature, Sexuality, and Heterotopic Alliances.” Environment and
Planning D: Society and Space 30, no. 4 (2012): 727–47. https://doi.org/10.1068/d10511.
Hazard, C. W. (2022) Underflows: Queer Trans Ecologies and River Justice, Seattle, University of
Washington Press.
Heynen, N. (2018) ‘Toward an Abolition Ecology’, Abolition: A Journal of Insurgent Politics, no. 1, pp.
240–247.
Liboiron, M. (2021) Pollution is Colonialism, Durham and London, Duke University Press.
Parker, E. (2020) ‘The bog is in me’, in Vakoch, D. A. (ed), Transecology: Transgender Perspectives on
Environment and Nature, Routledge, pp. 17–30.
Sandilands, C. (2016) ‘Queer Ecology’, in Adamson, J., Gleason, W. A., and Pellow, D. N. (eds),
Keywords for Environmental Studies, New York University Press, pp. 169–71.

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“Drawing as Critical Geographical Method”

Panel Session, AAG 2023, Denver
Keywords: Observational drawing, Creative methods, Qualitative research, Graphic geographies, Trans-disciplinary methods
Convenors: Chan Arun-Pina, Sage Brice, Karen Paiva Henrique and Aparna Parikh

““Drawing is the opening of form. This can be thought in two ways: opening in the sense of a beginning, departure, origin, dispatch, impetus, or sketching out, and opening in the sense of an availability or inherent capacity. According to the first sense, drawing evokes more the gesture of drawing than the traced figure. According to the second, it indicates the figure’s essential incompleteness, a non-closure or non-totalizing of form” (Nancy, 2013)

We welcome expressions of interest for a panel on Drawing as Geographical Method at the AAG 2023 in Denver. Building on new and recent experimentation in the discipline, this panel brings together practitioners at the intersection of drawing with geographical enquiry to discuss the potentials and pitfalls of this emerging area of practice. How can drawing expand, deepen, and/or redirect current modes of critical geographical inquiry? How is drawing positioned in relation to text and writing? How can the discipline best integrate drawing’s non-binaristic creative-intellectual potential?

While observation and schematic drawing have historically been significant as methods of surveillance and illustration within physical geography (Sackett, 2006), and solicited or guided drawing have become well established as participatory ethnographic methods in human geography and the social sciences (Literat, 2013), relatively little attention has been paid to the possibilities of drawing as an integrated method for first-hand observation, reflection and analysis in geographical fieldwork that treats the “image as an integral component of the inquiry process” (De Cosson and Irwin, 2004). This panel will bring together scholars at the forefront of current methodological innovation, with an view to compiling a themed special issue that will help ground and orientate future use of drawing in human geography and beyond.

To be considered for this panel please send a short statement of interest (250 words) outlining relevant research projects and areas of interest. These and any questions should be directed to sage.brice@durham.ac.uk, with the subject line “Drawing as Critical Geographical Method”, by October 7, 2022.

Contributions will reflect critically on the role of drawing in relation to various aspects of geographical fieldwork and research, including but not limited to the following:

• Observation and fieldwork encounters
• Embedeness, exploration, and discovery
• Researcher positionality and critical reflexivity
• Integration of artistic practice and methodologies
• Vulnerability and knowledge co-production
• Embodied, sensory, and psycho- geographies
• Power and spatial inequality
• Identity and subject-formation
• Speculative methods and futurities
• Process ontologies and non-representational theory
• Posthumanist and decolonial methods
• Graphic methods, comics, and cartoons
• Field and research journaling
• Re-drawing, tracing, and diagramming as analysis

Works cited:
Literat, I. (2013) ‘“A Pencil for your Thoughts”: Participatory Drawing as a Visual Research Method with Children and Youth’, International Journal of Qualitative Methods, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 84–98 [Online]. DOI: 10.1177/160940691301200143.
Nancy, J.-L. (2013) The Pleasure in Drawing (trans. P. Armstrong), New York, Fordham University Press.
Sackett, C. (ed.) (2006)The True Line: The Landscape Diagrams of Geoffrey Hutchings, Axminster, Devon, Colin Sackett.
De Cosson, & Irwin, R. L. (2004). A/r/tography : rendering self through arts-based living inquiry. Pacific Educational Press.

This spring, we will have a few vacancies to be filled for the board position on the Cultural Geography Specialty Group. The positions (each two-year terms) are:

• CGSG Program Director
• CGSG Nominations Director
• Two CGSG Graduate Student Representatives

If you wish to nominate yourself or a qualified individual for these vacancies, please notify me at marhodes@mtu.edu on or before February 9, 2022. Please make sure that your nominee is willing to serve if appointed. Include contact information for your nominee as well as a brief paragraph describing their suitability for the position. Elections will occur online February 10th-24th, and results will be publicly announced at the annual CGSG Business Meeting on February 25th. All CGSG members are eligible to vote and serve in any position. We ask that only graduate students be nominated for the graduate representative positions, but graduate students may also serve in any other board position.

Following previous discussions of the CGSG Board and broader membership, we would particularly encourage nominations and self-nominations from BIPOC or other underrepresented members, as well as from more senior faculty members. 

I would like to express sincere gratitude to our current board members. Your work during this very challenging time is much appreciated. 

I look forward to seeing many of you during AAG!

Mark Rhodes

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Description of positions that need to be filled:

• The Program Director will be responsible for organizing, arranging, or sponsoring (or co-sponsoring with other specialty groups) cultural geography sessions at the annual meetings of the AAG. Also, the Chair of the Program Committee, in conjunction with the Executive Committee, will determine the speaker, the speaker’s honorarium amount, and convene the annual CGSG Marquee Presentation at the annual AAG meeting.
• The Nominations Director will conduct the annual election of officers of the CGSG Executive Committee following the procedures described in the CGSG Bylaws. 
• The Graduate Student Representative(s) will be responsible for engaging student participation in the specialty group, managing the group’s social media (Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram), and, based on sufficient interest, organize and chair at least one student-only paper session at the annual AAG meeting and help to meet the needs of the students presenting papers or engaging in research. Additionally, the Student Directors will, at their discretion and availability, encourage paper sessions at regional meetings under the auspices of the CGSG. Traditionally, Grad Student Representatives have hosted a CGSG Breakfast paid for by the CGSG. In addition, Graduate Student Representatives will organize a Photo Exhibition and competition where the winning photo(s) will undergo review for publication. All AAG Meeting attendees are invited to these events. 

Now seeking virtual poster abstract submissions for the 2022 Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers that will take place in a hybrid format from Friday February 25, 2022 to Tuesday March 1, 2022.

The focus of the session is “From Sea to City: Navigating (Extra)ordinary Landscapes of Nature, Labor, and Culture.” While we welcome any work across the depth and breadth of cultural geography and landscape studies, those whose work intersects with the meeting’s themes (https://www2.aag.org/aag-2022-nyc-themes/) of Climate Justice, Geographies of Access: Inclusions and Pathways, Ethnonationalism and Exclusion around the World, the Changing North American Continent, and Expanding the Community of Geography are particularly welcome. This session is sponsored by the Cultural Geography Specialty Group, Landscape Specialty Group, and the Study of the American South Specialty Group.

Additional topics at the cultural geographies-landscape studies nexus may include:
• Contested spaces and places
• Cultural ecology
• Cultural landscapes and ecosystem services
• Adapting and modifying landscapes and lived experiences due to COVID-19
• Habitat and ecosystem services
• Landscapes of labor, work and the workforce
• Impacts of human modifications to environmental systems
• Socioecological systems
• Material culture and place
• The role of landscape in decolonizing and land control
• Heritage and cultural histories of particular landscapes
• Landscape identities and representations
• Creative methodologies involving cultural landscapes
• Landscapes of the arts, including visual arts, theatre, film, television, music, and dance
• Spectral geographies and haunting

We welcome all interested submissions, and hope to be a supportive home for scholars, students in particular, to have a rewarding and engaging conference experience given its unique delivery and current circumstances. If we believe a submission is better suited for a different organized poster session, we will be sure to communicate that with you and connect you to that particular session’s organizers.

Posters will follow the same design principles of an in-person conference. Abstracts of less than 250 words are due to the meeting submission portal (https://aag-annualmeeting.secure-platform.com/a/) by Thursday January 6, 2022. You must be a registered AAG member and registered for the annual meeting to submit an abstract.** Posters will be uploaded prior to the conference and can remain published through the conference website for as long as the presenter would like. The poster session will take place virtually via Zoom. Each poster presenter will have their own breakout room in which they can engage with a free-flowing audience to participate in the traditional browsing and questions/answers. This session will not be recorded at the discretion of the session organizers.

After registering for the meeting and submitting your abstract, please send your PIN and poster abstract to Josh Merced at jzmerced@uncg.edu for inclusion in this virtual poster session by Friday January 7, 2022. Please reach out to him with any questions you may have about the session.

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**Resources available to alleviate registration costs (Thank you to the American Association of Geographer for providing these opportunities for vulnerable individuals such as students to be active participants in the organization and the annual meeting):

• AAG Enrichment Fund (for meeting registration costs assistance) – AAG is pleased to announce the return of the AAG Enrichment Fund. This year, the fund is enhanced to welcome applications from geographers, non-geographers, and students. The purpose of the fund is to provide financial support to those who would benefit from attending the annual meeting, but would be unable to do so without the financial support. Please see this website for more information – https://www2.aag.org/aag2022nyc. Priority deadline is November 4, 2021. Submit application here: https://geographers.wufoo.com/forms/zj1f8cx0hwc13p/.

• One-Year Fee Waiver (for AAG membership fee assistance) – As part of the AAG COVID response effort, they invite current members to apply for a one-year fee waiver if they belong to any one of these membership categories:

• Undergraduate Students
• Graduate Students and Postdocs
• Members with income at or under $75,000/year
• Members of one of the AAG Developing Regions
  Please complete this form as soon as possible before registering for the annual meeting – https://geographers.wufoo.com/forms/z1277ycj1dii06a/.

• Graduate Student Affinity Group Research and Support Award (for assistance with any related costs) – GSAG is a professional organization committed to representing graduate students within the American Association of Geographers, and to supporting their advancement in the field of Geography. Awards will be made in the amount of $250 USD, and applications will be received by the GSAG Awards Committee. This award is intended to support graduate students in their research, and your graduate student experience (whether field, university or home-based). We encourage all graduate students, Masters and Ph.D., to apply. For more information, visit this website (https://gsagaag.org/gsag-award/). Submit application by December 1, 2021 (Link to application: https://tinyurl.com/GSAGAaward)

We are inviting all AAG members to submit a photograph for the annual CGSG Photo Competition for this year’s hybrid AAG Annual Meeting to be held virtually and in New York City.

Participants are invited to submit one (1) photo of a cultural landscape with a 250 word caption. The image and caption will be judged together. The image should be of high enough quality (resolution) to fit on a 8″x10″ print out (approximately 300 dpi).

The top photograph – as judged by a panel – will be published in Material Culture: The Journal of the International Society for Landscape, Place, & Material Culture. Thus photos submitted for this competition should not be considered for publication in a journal and cannot already be formally published elsewhere.

Submission deadline is 11:59PM Pacific Time (PT) on Friday January 28, 2022.

Please visit this form to complete your submission (Alternate link: https://forms.gle/LHkPwR6HKLQNtkDt9). Direct any questions to Josh Merced at jzmerced@uncg.edu.

Please see attached document for more details.

Josh Merced, Muriel Marseille, Gabriel Espinoza Rivera
Graduate Student Representatives
Cultural Geography Specialty Group
Facebook: @culturalgeogSG | Twitter: @culturalgeogSG