Dr. Lisa Bhungalia is a political geographer specializing in race, violence, and empire with a regional focus on the Southwest Asian and North African region. Her research explores the relationship between US empire, late modern warfare, and transnational linkages and encounters between the US and North Africa/Middle East region. 

Ruth Wilson Gilmore is professor of Earth & Environmental Sciences, and American Studies, and the director of the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics. She also serves on the Executive Committee of the Institute for Research on the African Diaspora in the Americas and the Caribbean.

Judah Schept, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the School of Justice Studies at Eastern Kentucky University. He holds a Ph.D. in Criminal Justice from Indiana University and a BA in Sociology from Vassar College. Judah’s work examines the political economy, historical geography, and cultural politics of the prison industrial complex.

"Guides for Queer Folks: Travel Guides, Maps, and Materiality"

Borrowing from scholarship in map studies, critical cartography, queer media studies. and critical bibliography, this talk examines the utility of queer geographic information as expressed through its materiality. Through an examination of queer spatial information from the 1930s to the mid-2000s—primarily travel guides and maps but also magazines, postcards, and advertising—this talk explores two main arguments. Firstly, that the physical arrangement of queer spatial media and the work individuals undertook to collect, circulate, protect, and keep up to date this information in the pre-digital era reveals this information's politics and perils. Secondly, the presentation argues that to understand these social currents there is a need for renewed attention to physical media and physical interaction during the archival research process. The talk concludes by examining the presenters’ efforts in developing an archival collection of queer spatial information.

“Seeds help me keep my proximity to all the things I don’t want to forget, through stories, flavors and recipes”

Turkish seed keeper Mehmet Öztan will discuss how seeds connect him to his memories of people, places and time; and how they helped him build relations with people of other cultural backgrounds while he is far away from his homeland and living in rural West Virginia. Öztan will also share his thoughts about racism in seed industry as an immigrant seed professional with a decade of experience in the field.

"Communal data governance: digital access and protection in indigenous territories of Oaxaca, Mexico"

With expanding internet coverage,  the issues of access to information in native languages and data protection have become increasingly important in indigenous communities in Mexico, long subject to discrimination and extractivist economic practices. This talk examines the issue of communal data governance in Oaxaca, exploring how indigenous rights and traditions of self governance are being extended into the realm of Information and Communication Technologies.  

All Geography and ENS students are invited to our Fall Celebration in the Niles Gallery on Wed., Dec. 14th, 3pm. The faculty will recognize the achievements of our students, including our graduating students, while describing the events and activities of the Spring semester.

Come for hot chocolate and cookies!

America’s Renaming Moment: On Realizing Its Reparative Possibilities

America is in the midst of place renaming moment. Names affixed to spaces across a variety of scales-- from city streets and university campuses to national parks and military bases—are being challenged and changed because they valorize historical figures associated with racism, settler colonialism, and patriarchy. In addition to this de-commemoration, communities are using place names as tools of reparative memory-work, to recover and do justice to erased indigenous ties to the land and the neglected contributions of people of color, women, and queer communities. While this renaming moment has been criticized (and rightly so to some degree) for being a performative distraction from “real issues,” such a perspective can too easily dismiss the nation’s history of place name activism along with how some members of historically marginalized groups view commemoratively named places as important to their lived experiences, identity struggles, and political-emotional wellbeing. Dr. Alderman explores the narrative, material, and affective capacities of place naming and along with what is required—intellectually and practically—to realize the full reparative possibilities of the nation’s renaming moment. Such possibilities depend upon communities responding to the violent racialized and gendered histories behind named places, recasting place naming as a public participatory and regenerative process, and recognizing how commemorative renaming works with wider place-making discourses, practices, and locations to reproduce (or resist) social inequality.

More information for this event can be found here.

About the Presenter: 

Derek H. Alderman (Ph.D., University of Georgia) is a Professor of Geography and the Betty Lynn Hendrickson Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Tennessee, where he has also served as Head of the Department of Geography & Sustainability. His teaching, research, and public outreach focus on cultural and historical geography, with a major emphasis on the African American Freedom Struggle in the Southeast. Dr. Alderman is a past President of the American Association of Geographers (AAG) and a Fellow of the AAG. He is the (co)author of over 150 articles, essays, and book chapters—many of which have helped develop the growing interdisciplinary field of critical toponymic or place naming studies. His scholarship advances understanding of the role of named places in struggles over social justice, memory, and public space in America. Dr. Alderman is a nationally recognized authority on the topic of street naming, especially for civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. In August of 2022, he was appointed by Secretary of Interior Deb Haaland to serve on a National Advisory Committee on Reconciliation in Place Names, which is charged with identifying and recommending changes to offensive terms still in use for places throughout the U.S. as well as improving existing federal naming/renaming processes. The National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities have fund Dr. Alderman’s research and pedagogical work. Committed to publically engaged scholarship, Dr. Alderman regularly assists municipal officials, community organizations, journalists, documentarians, and DEI advocates. Print, radio and television media outlets have interviewed or quoted him numerous times, including CNN, MSNBC, New York Times, CityLab, Washington Post, USA Today, and National Public Radio.

Geography Holiday Party at Kenwick Table (201 Owsley Ave, Lexington, KY 40502)