Kinda-AcademicStuff that's a little more serious, but not really up to academic par.
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"The Ritual of Catharsis" (video)
It's been a long, long, LONG four years on the job market with over 100 rejection letters. I decided that it's time to fry them in a ritualistic manner, to free myself from the weight that was, for so long, an almost unimaginable burden. Read more
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Push & Pull Factors Assignment, Spring 2011
Every semester, I give students a basic assignments asking them to "Rate the States." After they do that, we work through some simple analyses as a bridge into discussing push and pull factors. Here are the results from my Spring 2011 courses at the University of Akron. Read more0
Detroit, Eminem and Chrysler's Geographic Imagination
Exploring the geographic imagination expressed in the Chrysler advertisement featuring Eminem and the city of Detroit, Michigan, as debuted during the Super Bowl XLV broadcast. Read moreOur Epic Forthcoming Journey, and My New Project
Amy and I are using our trip to 2011 AAG in Seattle as an excuse to put together a crazy cross-country overland trip with a bunch of friends. Geographers FTW. Read more0
Mapping (Geo-)Autobiography: My Mental Map of the World
At the beginning of every semester, I use a mental mapping assignment in World Geography to stress to the students that memorizing maps isn't what geography is all about. But, up until now, I'd never tried it myself. So, last night, I sat down for a few minutes and drew a map. What I came up with was, well, pretty messy and it took up parts of four sheets, but I scanned it and used Photoshop to put it together and... voila! Read more8
Mapping (Geo-)Autobiography: Travel
A lot of travelers -- and especially geographers -- like to keep track of numbers of places they've been.... countries, states, continents, capitals, everything. It's a nice way to reflect upon past experiences, and yes, of course, brag to one's friends about those travels. A couple of my colleagues, Nick Wise and Emily Fekete, produced what they called "County Life Maps" earlier this year, highlighting the counties they had visited in the United States, and urged me to do the same. I was more than willing to oblige Read more
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Geographic Literacy: Our Job Isn't Finished
Of course, we all know that maps are not the end-all, be-all of geography; far from it, maps are only a small part of what geographers do. At the same time, though, maps are useful tools that are crucial, especially to beginning students, in helping represent the world and provide a basis for understanding the more interesting aspects of our field. With all of this in mind, I'm bringing forth an activity that I do on the first day of every World Regional Geography course I teach. After we go over the syllabus, I hand each student a blank piece of Hammermill copy paper and give them the following instructions: Draw a map of the world, label what's important. Here are the results. Read more0
The United States of Pop Music
Using album sales to approximate a "popular" act to represent each of the 50 states, plus DC and Puerto Rico. Read more30
