CGSG Keynote featuring Rashad Shabazz Talking about Prince this Sunday (Rescheduled)

Posted on February 21, 2022 by Tyler

Because of a scheduling crush for conference space in Manhattan that became a moot point when it pivoted to fully online for the third consecutive year, Happy Virtual AAG Week, everyone.

Though I wouldn’t have been able to get to New York anyway, I was beginning to regret missing the chance to reunite with some friends and colleagues from all over the states and some (depending on COVID-related passport restrictions) from around the globe. Granted, considering how Omicron variant numbers were skyrocketing last month and NYC tends to be a vector of disease transmission, the Association of American Geographers decided to hold this year’s meeting virtually. Despite the pandemic restrictions, I’ve been happy to serve the Cultural Geography Specialty Group as their Program Director for that time.

For our AAG 2022 Keynote, our first choice was Arizona State’s Dr. Rashad Shabazz – a name I’ve known for some time in the world of musical and critical geographies – and fortunately, he was honored to do it. He will be delivering the CGSG keynote talk on his long-going research about Prince, entitled “Prince and Place: A Premier on the Geography of Music.” I will be chairing the virtual talk along with my good friend and colleague Hannah Gunderman (CGSG Chair) this Sunday at 5:20pm ET.

As of this writing, I don’t have the precise details on how AAG digital registrants can access Rashad’s talk, but once we do, I will try to update them here, and the Cultural Geography Specialty Group will also post them (as the image says) at our website CulturalGeographySG.org along with various conduits on Twitter.

“See” everybody then! Check our Rashad’s bio below this video.

About Rashad Shabazz

Rashad Shabazz’s academic expertise brings together human geography, cultural studies, gender studies, and critical race studies. His research explores how race, gender, and cultural production are informed by geography. His most recent work, Spatializing Blackness,(University of Illinois Press, 2015) examines how carceral power within the geographies of Black Chicagoans shaped urban planning, housing policy, policing practices, gang formation, high incarceration rates, masculinity, and health.

Professor Shabazz’s scholarship has appeared in the journals Souls, The Spatial-Justice Journal, ACME, Gender, Place and Culture, Cultural Geography, Occasions, and Places. In addtion, Shabazz has also published several book chapters and book reviews. Professor Shabazz’s scholarship is also public facing. He has also appeared on local, national, and international news programs such as the BBC, Time Magazine, and 20/20. He is currently working on a book that uncovers the development of the Minneapolis music scene from its beginning in the mid-19th century to the release of Prince’s magnum opus, Sign O’ The Times, in 1987.

Submit Your Photos to the CGSG Landscape Photography Exhibit at the AAG

Posted on March 11, 2019 by Tyler

Hi, everyone. I’ve been swamped this past week, but I’ve got some great pieces of news coming soon that are all somehow connected to said swamping. For now, I need to get back to correcting a digital mountain of midterms and papers. Here’s a signal boost for one of my favorite AAG side-shows, run by a trio of the Cultural Geography Specialty Group’s grad student members (one of whom is named very similarly to one of the original Ghostbusters). Are you going to the AAG meeting in DC? Have some great landscape photos? Well, submit them here! – Ty

Greetings fellow geographers,

The upcoming AAG Annual Meeting will once again include the Cultural Geography Specialty Group’s Landscape Photography Exhibit. All registered attendees are invited to contribute a photograph of their own. We do not limit participation only to members of the CGSG.

The Landscape Photography Exhibit has been part of CGSG programming since the 2009 meeting in Las Vegas. The exhibit showcases photographs with short descriptive captions both from fieldwork and also more everyday encounters with cultural landscapes. Unique at the conference, the annual exhibit provides geographers with an opportunity to share images and stories that perhaps receive less attention in their paper presentations or panel comments.

To contribute to the CGSG Landscape Photography Exhibit, please email a high quality (at least 300 dpi) digital copy of your photograph (limit one, please) with a caption (limit of 250 words) for initial approval to Mark Rhodes (mrhode21@kent.edu) on or before March 25, 2019. Upon notification of approval, bring a printed, high-quality photograph (approximately 8×10 inches) to the conference by Thursday, April 4th. The organizers will bring copies of the captions, and you will place your photograph next to your caption on a bulletin board in a high-traffic area of the conference.

This year, as in previous years, the approved submissions will be displayed for the duration of the conference. The photographs may be in either color or black & white and must have been taken by the person submitting to the exhibition. It is the responsibility of participants to collect their photographs from the display boards before the end of the conference. (The CGSG is not responsible for lost or damaged photographs.) The winning photo will be given the opportunity to submit their work to Material Culture: The Journal of the International Society for Landscape, Place, & Material Culture.

Please circulate this call for participation among potentially interested colleagues, and feel free to contact the organizers with any questions.

With thanks,

Andrew Husa, Ian Spangler & Mark Rhodes

Open Invite to AAG GeoSlam! 2016 in San Francisco

Posted on March 23, 2016 by Tyler

In Chicago last year, I had the opportunity to present (‘perform’ may be a more operative term) at the inaugural AAG GeoSlam! event. GeoSlam is the brilliant brainchild of Pam Sertzen and Jessie Speer, colleagues working on their PhDs at Syracuse University (by the way, Go Cuse! I’d try to keep my alma mater allegiance suppressed at times, but this is my website. Moving on…) Pam and Jessie wanted to give geographers, many of whom have artistic pursuits either concurrent or outside of their academic pursuits, an opportunity to let those flags fly for a session at the annual AAG Meeting.

Despite the mid-day time slot, non-ideal fluorescent lighting, and lack of audio in the room last year, the inaugural event was a complete blast. I read my comical/wistful essay about Radon and Gainesville, my buddy Chris Petrucelli read some of his poetry, and several others shared short stories about the passions that guided their research. I eagerly offered my help in organizing the 2016 event in San Francisco, and as we prepare to bring GeoSlam II: The Slammening (okay, that title isn’t real, but again… my site) to AAG, here is this year’s call for participants. It’s like the sign-up sheet at an open mic, except it’s actually going to be something you’d want to share with your friends and loved ones. Make sure to Add the brand-new GeoSlam page on Facebook, too, and if you’re at AAG, come and check out the event!

Tune in tomorrow for an overdue retrospective on the SEMSEC Meeting I recently attended in Trinidad, as well as later this week for a preview of my appearances at the AAG meeting (outside of the free food-and-drink parties).

Cheers, Ty

Dear colleagues,

We would like to invite you to attend the second annual Geo Slam at this year’s AAG conference. In homage to San Francisco’s tradition of beat poetry, and in an effort to bridge the gap between creative and academic endeavors, the Geo Slam is a non-competitive opportunity for geographers to showcase their sensory, poetic, character-driven, and metaphoric writing. Anyone can participate and will be given 5-8 minutes to share their literary pieces.

This year, the slam is the final part of a four-part session. The first three sessions on geography and literature explore the methodological and theoretical implications of reading literary sources in geography. As a follow up to this discussion, the slam will be an opportunity for geographers to share their own literary work. The theme of this year’s slam is literature as method. Through these pieces, we want to explore the ways in which creative writing inspires new geographic ways of knowing, understanding, and interpreting the world.

Sign up to participate here: http://goo.gl/forms/upjY4ySD9d

Time: Tuesday, March 29, 2015, 4:40 PM – 6:20 PM
Place: Hilton Hotel, Imperial B, Ballroom Level

Co-sponsored by: Development Geographies Specialty Group, Cultural Geography Specialty Group, Graduate Student Affinity Group, and the AAG Subconference

In solidarity,
GeoSlam 2016 Organizers

#aagGeoSlam #GeoSlam2016

AAG 2015 in Chicago!

Posted on April 20, 2015 by Tyler

I’m extremely excited to announce here that I’ll be attending and presenting at the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers in Chicago this week. After a brief visit to see some friends and some colleagues in Wisconsin (Madison and Milwaukee are so much fun), we’ll be heading down to the Windy City this afternoon.

The Blackhawks hadn’t just scored. This picture was taken during warm-ups when they announced that the AAG was coming to town.

Here are the conference activities in which I’ll be participating, in sequential order:

1. PAPER SESSION

I’ll be presenting my paper “The Flâneur and Flânerie in Geographic Thought” in a special ‘Space and Place’ session with my friend RJ Rowley at the helm. Pasting my abstract below, from the AAG website.

Tuesday, April 21st, 8am
Burnham, Hyatt, West Tower, Silver Level

“…the ambivalence of the stranger thus represented the ambivalence of the modern world…” (Jacques Derrida, quoted by David B. Clarke in The Cinematic City).
The flâneur, a common literary and theoretical term for the apocryphal urban wanderer, has long been a commonly held analogue in sociological thought. Normally (un)settled in Paris and influenced heavily by the work of Charles Baudelaire as well as post-modernist thinkers like Jacques Derrida as ‘the hero of modernism,’ the flâneur has appeared relatively infrequently in the geographic literature. This seems to be contradictory, as the character is well suited to frame the dialogue over the interaction between individuals and the urban landscape. In light of the emphasis on interaction and detachment with the city in the concourse of twentieth century thought, this paper examines and rethinks the flâneur and flânerie through contrasting lenses of humanism, modernism, and feminism/postmodernism. While the flâneur may be essentially a “literary gloss” (according to Rob Shields, 1994), the idea of the character and conversations around him illustrate various (sometimes contradictory) perspectives on the changing role and position of the Western urban citizen over the past two centuries.

2. GEOSLAM

I will also be participating in the first-ever GEOSLAM (which is exactly what you think it is). I’ll be doing a reading talking about my obsession with punk rock and Gainesville, Florida. This will be
Tuesday, April 21st from 12:40 PM – 2:20 PM at
Skyway 260, Hyatt, East Tower, Blue Level.

A word from the organizers: “Drawing on Ruth Behar’s The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology that Breaks Your Heart, this year’s theme is “vulnerable geographies.” Through these pieces, we want to explore the ways in which we are emotionally drawn to the places and people of our research.”

No more spoilers on this one. And last, but not least…

3. SAVE THE CLOCKTOWER

It’s AAG 2015, meaning it’s time for some discussion on everyone favorite time-travel film franchise, “Back to the Future!” I’m very excited to finally have all of the contributors to Save the Clocktower (RJ Rowley, Chris Dando, Richard Waugh, Greg Pagett, Lydia Hou, Julian Barr, Ashley Allen, Stacie Townsend, and more) in one room to introduce their chapters and discuss the overall contributions that Marty McFly, Doc Brown, and their fictional town of Hill Valley still have to contribute to geography. This will help formulate an introduction to the book in honor of the film’s 30th anniversary as well as Doc, Marty, and Jennifers’ impending arrival this October. Our panel will be closing out the conference on…

Saturday, 4/25/2015, from 4:00 PM – 5:40 PM in
Skyway 282, Hyatt, East Tower, Blue Level

If you aren’t following the Clocktower 2015 project on Facebook or Twitter, here are your links. If you’re in town on Saturday, don’t miss it.

Looking forward to a great week! See you shortly, Chicago.

Attempts at (Re)photography in Florida

Posted on April 16, 2014 by Tyler

A big thank you to all of the Geographers and supporters thereof who converged on the Tampa Convention Center and Marriott for AAG last week, and a big apology in advance to all the ones who I met that won’t hear from me for a little while as I’m busy catching up on work and otherwise getting my life back in order. I had grand ambitions to do some work while in Tampa, but if you’re reading this you can probably take a wild guess as to how that turned out. As anyone who’s been to a conference like it knows, everyone’s too busy being constantly distracted in order to really accomplish anything other than make new connections and pray they remember you.

That being said, I was excited to see the book with a chapter I contributed displayed prominently at the Ashgate table in the exhibitors’ hall in such good company.

I would love to give Tampa proper some attention here*, but in the interest of time, I’ll skip right to the point. A few months ago, I posted cryptically about some antique postcards that came into my possession. Where the postcards are from will hopefully one day be under an organized-enough umbrella to present here, but for now, let’s have a quick chat about (re)photography.

The term “rephotography” (alternate “re-photography” or “(re)photography”) didn’t originate in Jason Kalin’s 2013 article (found here), but he did bring the scope of its uses to my attention last year. Considering how easy the internet has made it, our culture can barely digest content without (re)contextualization. This is both a good and a bad thing, but acting on what I hope is a good manifestation of it, I decided to set out on foot from the Tampa Convention Center to try to recreate one of my the postcards myself. The over-friendly hotel concierge** told me the Davis Islands were located a walking distance from the downtown area, though strategically disconnected from the Convention Center area proper. I suppose they didn’t want legions of drunken Lightning fans stumbling over from the Forum into their bars (which are located way too deep into the island for the casual ambler).

Anyway, here is the result of my efforts:

Not perfect, but I would have needed to defy death and stand in the middle of Bayshore Boulevard in order to get a more accurate recreation of the original artist’s perspective. Also, the bridge from Hyde Park over to Davis Islands has been remodeled, and the Davis Island residential areas of 2014 are a far cry from that of the pre-War era. Obviously, the hospital and adjacent office buildings were not there when D.P. Davis*** imagined this crazy project before building it and disappearing.

From what I can tell, the fencing by the harbor has largely retained its character, and the vegetation nearby in the foreground is even quite similar to the classic depiction. The bright yellow building depicted on the postcard can be seen at a distance to the right of the hospital today, which helps highlight how the postcard image (obviously painted to sell the city and the Davis development) is based on an off-scale interpretation. I would need to dig deeper and find archival photographs of Davis Islands in order to determine what exactly was misrepresented, and thanks largely to the conference that brought me to Tampa backing up my workload, I have no time right now. At least there’s always Google, right?

LINER NOTES (SPECIAL “IF” EDITION)

* If you’re in Tampa, though, and looking for great places to hang out, look no further than New World Brewery (Ybor City), The HUB (Downtown and if you’re okay with smoke), and the Independent (Seminole Heights, next to the wonderful money-pit Microgroove record shop). Full disclosure, we didn’t make it into the Independent since our ride downtown was leaving, but you could just tell it was awesome.

** If you’re wondering if that’s a reference, the answer is yes.

*** If you want to read one of the most fascinating accounts I’ve found about the mysterious Florida land developer, check out this history thesis by Rodney Kite-Powell. It helps explain his legacy and bizarre disappearance.

Returning to Florida Next Week

Posted on April 4, 2014 by Tyler

I'm not actually staying in this hotel. But I may need to go check it out.

I’m not actually staying in this hotel. I may need to go check it out, though.

It’s hard to believe that the AAG Conference is almost already here. I’m looking forward to seeing some old friends and making new ones over a backdrop of near-constant happy hours and pontificating.

I’m working on posting some background here about the research I will be presenting in Tampa next week. In case I’m not able to (and you’re in the Tampa Bay area), here’s where you can see me. Copied directly from the AAG Program.

2569
Geographies of Media 3: Music Geography (Sponsored by Cultural Geography Specialty Group, Communication Geography Specialty Group)
Room: Meeting Room 2, Marriott, Second Floor (Paper Session)
ORGANIZER(S): John Finn, Christopher Newport University; Joseph Palis, North Carolina State University
CHAIR(S): Tyler Sonnichsen, University of Tennessee

2:40 Tyler Sonnichsen*, University of Tennessee,
‘The Boston I Knew is Lying on the Ground’: Reinterpreting Boston Landscapes Through Song.
3:00 Rex Rowley*, Illinois State University,
Evoking Las Vegas Place Particularity and Typicality through Popular Music.
3:20 Ola Johansson*, University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown,
Lost in Translation? The Role of Place in Swedish and American Music Media.
3:40 Deborah J. Thompson, Ph.D.*, Berea College,
Performing Gender in Eastern Kentucky’s Old Time Music Community. .

Postcards from Tampa Bay, 1938 (Part One)

Posted on October 9, 2013 by Tyler

Last week was even more of a mess than the week prior to it. This week? Plenty to do, but I do have a few minutes to post a quick update on some recent activity over here.

(mush records)

First, for those who missed it, I recently contributed a column to ZME Music commemorating the tenth anniversary of the release of my favorite hip-hop album of all time, Aesop Rock’s Bazooka Tooth. Hip-hop had never cast such an anti-establishment love letter to any city as Ian Bavitz did to New York in a moment when that town desperately needed it. While what I wrote skewed heavier toward media studies and sociology than geography, there is plenty of place-based thought crammed into there. I hope you enjoy it and would love to hear your thoughts, especially if you haven’t endured the positive brain-numbing of this record yet.

Last weekend, I inherited a massive stash of postcards mailed to Brooklyn from around North America over the course of the Great Depression and the onset World War II. I am not adequately prepared to explain the significance and context of these cards here, but I am happy to provide a teaser.

In honor of the upcoming 2014 Association of American Geographers meeting in Tampa, Florida, here are a few wonderful postcards from the region in 1938, with brief descriptions. Taken as a whole, they represent a fine cross-section of the pre-Disney Florida tourism industry imagery. (h/t to Derek Alderman for this observation). All scans are mine.

Many American cities have unfortunately done away with benches like these for class and urban blight-related reasons, but the ones in St. Pete have gone through a bizarre history, now lending their heritage to the city’s finest craft brewery. Read more about the green benches here.

Until I saw this one, all I could really tell you about Bradenton was that it was the subject of a Hot Water Music song. When I saw this archival photo on the postcard, flanked by these cool 30s-Hollywood decorations on the side, I discovered Bradenton had quite the fancy landmark back in the day. The city tore the building down in 1974. You can read more about that here.

About eight decades before Dubai had everyone in the developed world talking about man-made islands, the enigmatic D.P. Davis (one of the kings of the Florida land boom of the 1920s; read about him and the boom in this masters thesis here) pumped a bunch of mud onto a pair of small grassy atolls and created one of Tampa Bay’s first upper class residential communities. More background can be found here.

Of course what better place to stop than the Hotel Floridian? It has a fairly common story: built at the height of the Jazz Age in 1926, fallen into disrepair, and restored to a modicum of its glory, and available for those who can afford rooms today. The ribbon was actually re-cut last year, so looks like it was just in time for the hordes of Geographers who probably can’t afford to stay there but will definitely pass through and take a look.

There’s more where this came from, so don’t worry. Here’s a quote from John Blacking (and a music video by a Tampa band that pretty much proves his point) to tide you all over until next time:

The value of music is, I believe, to be found in terms of the human experiences involved in its creation. There is a difference between music that is occasional and music that enhances human consciousness, music that is simply for having and music that is for being. I submit that the former may be good craftsmanship, but that the latter is art, no matter how simple or complex it sounds, and no matter under what circumstances it is produced.

– John Blacking, 1973 How Musical is Man?, University of Washington Press, (2000 Edition), p. 50.

Merchandise – Time from Id House Vid. Group on Vimeo.

Sonic Geography

The Gradually Accumulating Work of Cultural Geographer Tyler Sonnichsen

Tag Archives: Association of American Geographers