Property and Propriety: Jewish Landlords in Early Twentieth-Century Toronto

Drawing on literatures on the social construction of place and identity, and on the changing nature of urban property ownership, this paper examines Jewish immigrants to Toronto as housing landlords, situating their activities in the context of wider changes in the city's housing market and of their needs to raise capital, achieve status and foster group identity. Using archival and newspaper evidence to reconstruct the behaviour of individual landlords, it is argued that ownership of inner-city property fulfilled numerous functions, especially related to other aspects of business proprietorship, but that it also accentuated the geographical concentration of poorer Jews, with critical implications for their relations with non-Jews.     

Online methods in geography educational research

South Africa's higher education system has undergone significant change since the end of apartheid. A central theme in the debates on higher education transformation has been the tension between the global imperatives of development and the need for universities to respond to the legacy of apartheid. This paper explores this tension by considering recent changes in geographical teaching and research. The paper argues that many of the tensions evident in higher education between the global and the local, which are as yet unresolved, find expression within South African geographical scholarship.     

Curriculum development and society: West German geographers respond to the American high school geography project

Abstract

Industrial geography courses at the Historically Black Universities (HBUs) and the Historically White Universities (HWUs) in South Africa are a true reflection of apartheid education designed by the government in the 1950s. The education system offers whites good and quality education, while blacks receive poor education. The nature and history of the HBUs have affected the content and the teaching of industrial geography. Unlike the HWUs industrial geography courses at the HBUs do not contain much of the recent changes in the subject.     

‘Partially provided’: geography at the University of Toronto, 1844–1935

In universities, as in everyday life, there is a fundamental need for geographical knowledge, even when no formal departments exist to provide instruction. This need was true in the University of Toronto during the decades before Griffith Taylor was appointed in 1935 to the first university Chair in geography in English‐speaking Canada. Using matriculation and annual university course examinations, university calendars and the papers of President Falconer and Professors James Mavor and Harold Innis, I trace the development of geography at the University of Toronto from the mid‐nineteenth century to the arrival of Taylor. Courses taught in selected aspects of physical and human geography in the Departments of Geology, Political Economy and History are particularly significant. Underlying this instruction, and also the desire to establish a geography department, was an acute awareness of the fundamental importance of geography to help understand a large regionally complex homeland, and a wider world.     

A tale of two scenes: civic capital and retaining musical talent in Toronto and Halifax

Un conte de deux scènes: le capital civique et le maintien des talents musicaux à Toronto et à Halifax Même si depuis plusieurs décennies Toronto trône au sommet de l’industrie canadienne de la musique, des entretiens récents font apparaître le poids de la restructuration de cette industrie sur les décisions des musiciens quant à l’endroit où vivre et travailler. En cette époque de production indépendante de musique contemporaine, certaines régions urbaines de taille réduite comme Halifax en Nouvelle‐Écosse recèlent un potentiel pour attirer des musiciens. La principale question abordée dans cet article est de savoir dans quelle mesure les dynamiques économique et sociale des régions urbaines ont une incidence sur les choix de localisation des musiciens. Ces derniers sont bien conscients des possibilités économiques qu’une ville de la taille de Toronto peut leur offrir, mais les artisans de la scène musicale la dépeignent comme un milieu de travail extrêmement compétitif et ardu. En revanche, du côté d’Halifax, les répondants évoquent la solidarité et le soutien apportés par la collectivité dans l’accueil des nouveaux arrivants, l’appui à l’organisation de spectacles, et la promotion de la créativité. Dans un tel contexte contemporain, les musiciens indépendants déploient de nouvelles stratégies de valorisation de leur métier et les collectivités qui sont dotées d’un capital civique supérieur sont plus en mesure d’attirer et de retenir les personnes talentueuses.     

Beginnings: women and geography at Northwestern in the 1960s

This brief article attempts to paint a picture of the social and intellectual atmosphere in which Susan Hanson's postgraduate education took place and then discusses her particular experiences in the Geography Department at Northwestern University. It describes the sexist characteristics of American geographical university education in the 1960s and the competitive and male-dominated environment of Northwestern. It suggests that Susan's experiences at Northwestern were an important influence on her subsequent values, skills and interests as a feminist academic.     

Towards a critical service learning in geography education: exploring challenges and possibilities through testimonio

There has been an increasing interest in exploring the transformational possibilities of experiential learning approaches like service learning, across post-secondary education, including geography. At the same time, scholars caution that such initiatives can entrench neoliberalism, white supremacy and other power structures and call for implementing a critical service learning (CSL) approach that is rooted in action against injustice. In response, this paper uses testimonio methodology to explore the experiences of a student and instructor engaging in a graduate geography course that implements CSL. We demonstrate how CSL is a complex process that is mired in the very power structures and institutional barriers it attempts to disrupt. Nonetheless, CSL creates opportunities for social change in the classroom and community, which make it a promising pedagogical strategy for geographers aiming to create alternative teaching approaches in their classrooms.     

Educating geographers in Spain: geography teaching renewal by implementing the European Higher Education Area

This article discusses the current state of the geography discipline in Spanish Universities after putting into action the European Higher Education Area. After decades of geography teaching, following theoretical and expository discourse models, the so-called Bologna Process has been a great opportunity to reflect what geography should be taught, how geography should be taught and why geography should be taught. Aspects such as competences, employability, learning methodologies, assessment, Geographical Information Systems domain have been incorporated into the renewal of geography teaching in Spanish higher education, which has contributed to the strengthening of geography in a context of geospatial technologies revolution and public awareness of spatial challenges.     

Please mind the gap: students' perspectives of the transition in academic skills between A-level and degree-level geography

This paper explores first-year undergraduates' perceptions of the transition from studying geography at pre-university level to studying for a degree. This move is the largest step students make in their education, and the debate about it in the UK has been reignited due to the government's planned changes to A-level geography. However, missing from most of this debate is an appreciation of the way in which geography students themselves perceive their transition to university. This paper begins to rectify this absence. Using student insights, we show that their main concern is acquiring the higher level skills required for university learning.     

Three geographers in an archive: positions, predilections and passing comment on transient lives

Despite the existence of research conducted by geographers eschewing or professing religious faith, the influence of researchers and their methods have yet to receive critical attention within the study of religion. The experience of three geographers working on a three-year research project suggests that it is vital to reflect upon the inter-subjective relationships and methodologies used to reconstruct the religious past. How do different subject positions influence our selections from historical records? We also consider whether the spatialities of putatively 'religious' archives, whether formally or informally constituted, make a difference to the construction of historiographical knowledge. In attempting to answer these questions, the paper argues that developing an awareness of different types of positionality, vis-à-vis religious faith and practice, combined with reflexivity, vis-à-vis methodology, can enrich the interpretative reconstruction of the religious past.     

Jules Sion,Alan Grant Ogilvie and the college des Ecossais in Montpellier: A network of geographers

The ‘new geography’ propounded by Vidal de La Blache in the early years of the 20th century was diffused by his protégés in France and abroad. Field classes played a significant role in the process, with the Collège des Ecossais, established by Patrick Geddes at Montpellier, providing an ideal base for British students to study the natural and cultural landscapes of the component pays of southern France. The careers of Jules Sion and Alan Grant Ogilvie are explored in this article, and practical links between French and British geographers are exemplified through experiences of fieldwork in the Languedoc before and after World War II. Networks of professional contact and friendship are vital in understanding how the practice of modern geography has been shaped.     

Time,place, and the lifeworlds of feminist geographers: the US in the 1970s

The 1970s, the decade in which Susan Hanson took up an academic appointment in American geography, was a period of marked growth in women's representation and political activism in the discipline and of the emergence of feminist research and teaching. Susan's career illustrates the changes in consciousness, resiliency in the face of setbacks, and creativity of the times. Inspired by the women's movement, and exemplifying collegiality, women geographers identified masculine biases in scholarship and professional practices, initiated research and teaching on women and gender, and worked to enter the leadership of the Association of American geographers. Their efforts were the genesis of the feminism in the profession that has since flourished in the United States. It is fitting that Susan Hanson's leadership and contributions in this arena are widely recognized and honored.     

Charting the development of social and cultural geography in Mainland China: voices from the inside*

This article provides an overview of the recent development of social and cultural geography in China. It discusses six major bodies of work: cultural areas, cultural diffusion and cultural integration; geographies of ethnic cultures; cultural landscape and cultural economy; place and place-based cultural politics; marginal social groups; and geographies of social injustice. Although social and cultural geography is still located on the periphery of the disciplinary landscape of Chinese human geography, it is nonetheless developing into a noteworthy field of research. We start this review by calling attention to some problems in epistemologies and analytical approaches. Social and cultural geography in China often suffers from an analytical separation between environment and culture as ontologically enclosed entities. Also, it pays insufficient attention to the mutually constitutive relations between the social and the spatial. However, more recent studies have begun to engage with constructionist/poststructuralist approaches, and develop less positivist interpretations of space, social relations and cultural meanings. This review suggests that social and cultural geography in China needs to develop broader research scopes and strengthen theoretical frameworks. It concludes by calling for constructive dialogues between Chinese and Western human geographical scholarships.     

International geography field courses: practices and challenges

Abstract

This paper introduces a special issue of the Journal of Geography in Higher Education on the practices and challenges associated with taking undergraduate geography students abroad on field courses. I argue that geography is positioned to benefit from both the internationalization of higher education and the demand by students for global experiences. The papers in this special issue focus on three aspects of international field courses: curriculum design and international partnerships, student engagement during short-duration field courses, and how encounters with place can be aided through reflection and play. I conclude with suggestions for future research on international field courses.     

Gender geography in Japan: the trajectory,fruits of research and future challenges

Abstract

The indication by female geographers outside of Japan that, due to the original dearth of female geographers, a gender perspective had been missing from geography held true for Japan as well. In 1993, Yoshida was the first person to discuss the importance of a gender perspective in a Japanese journal of geography. Nearly 25 years have passed since its publication, and the aim of this paper is to investigate what developments have taken place in Japanese geography on gender research. As the accomplishments of feminist geography in English-speaking countries was merely ‘imported’ to Japan around 1990, there is no firm starting point of ‘feminist’ geography, which originated in women’s liberation movement of the 1970s, in the country. Rather, it can be said that Japanese geographers, regardless of sex, undertake gender geography, which does not limit a particular sex as the sole subject and/or object of research. The results of research on gender geography by men geographers began to appear from the year 2000. The use of life history method emerged as a trend in research since 2000. While there has been gradual progress in research on gender geography in Japan, the number of researchers are still by no means large. While Japanese geography has hitherto involved a one-way absorption of the fruits of overseas research on gender/feminist geographies, at least based on studies that have already accumulated in Japan, it is now necessary that Japanese study results also be communicated to overseas.     

Names and their meanings: teaching cultural geography with the poem the names of migrant workers

ABSTRACT

This paper introduces a new teaching method, poetry, into the geography classroom, accompanied by an out-of-class discussion on a blog, and finds that its effects are rather different from those of traditional teaching methods, as it allows new perspectives on instructional content related to migrant workers’ lives and identities in China. The method enables students to analyse content from the perspective of cultural geography, in which poetry acts as an art form that connects people’s identities and social spaces. On the basis of this, we also provide some suggestions to engage students in critical analysis of poetry, from the perspective of cultural geography, through interactive online platforms such as blogs.     

Learning to teach geography for primary education: results of an experimental programme

Students training to become primary school teachers appear to have little awareness of the core concepts of geography (teaching). To ensure that future primary school teachers are able to develop their pupils’ geographical awareness, a six weeks programme was developed. The characteristics of this programme – named Consciously Teaching Geography (CTG) – are: principles of good geography teaching, conjunction and a recurrent structure during training, modelling and reflection. In a quasi-experimental research design the question is answered what the effects are of CTG on the development of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) for the subject of geography of first year primary student teachers. The results indicated that the programme has a positive effect on the domain-specific PCK development in the short term.     

Gender and geography in the Netherlands: from separation to integration

Abstract

This article reports on the development of feminist geography in the Netherlands in the past forty years. In response to critical feminist students, feminist geography originally developed in a strategy of separation with the appointment of university lecturers specialized in ‘women’s studies’, the introduction of elective courses and research projects, and the creation of national networks. Gender is currently more and more integrated in core geography teaching and mainstream geographical research and separate networks are dissolved. Although feminist geographers in the Netherlands are successful in teaching, publishing and acquisition of research funding, gender issues and perspectives are still not firmly rooted in geography curricula and research programs. Integration is highly dependent on the feminist commitment of individual lecturers and researchers and gender perspectives are at risk of marginalisation or disappearance. Feminist geographers in the Netherlands must still be vigilant to preserve the achievements of forty years of Dutch feminist geography.     

Innovations in the afterlife of the Cold War: German-language human geography

This commentary will coalesce around two main points. First, the articles by Markus Hesse on urban geography, by Annika Mattissek and Georg Glasze on recent developments in discourse-analytic approaches, and by Ulrich Best on the genealogy of radical–Marxist or critical German-language geography all support the contention that key features of Germanophone human geography still mark it out as a ‘Cold War’ human geography. As will become clear, this contention goes well beyond noting the marginality (until recently) of radical–Marxist positions (Belina, B., Best, U., & Naumann, M. (2009). Critical geography in Germany: From exclusion to inclusion via internationalization. Social Geography, 4, 47–58). Second, I will argue that although this configuration has had real costs, including both analytic and ‘civic’ deficits, it has also allowed the development of distinctive strengths and innovative emphases in human geographic research that can and should be engaged by other sub-communities in the international discourse.