Academic Excellence | Cultural Investigators

Cultural Geography: Tops in North America

In the name of science, Daniel Weir found himself on a tiny bridge in a remote corner of Mexico, with two speeding 18- wheelers bearing down on him.

Weir — at the time, a student in LSU’s cultural geography program — landed in the sticky situation in late 1999, while researching roadside shrines and memorials to those killed along some of Mexico’s most dangerous highways. Traveling some 25,000 miles, on roads with names like “The Devil’s Backbone,” Weir examined 10,000 artifacts in 7,000 different locations.

Thanks to some quick thinking and careful maneuvering, Weir managed to avoid the careening trucks and go on about his exploration. For his efforts, he ultimately earned his doctorate and, last May, became the latest recipient of the Josephine A. Roberts LSU Alumni Association Distinguished Dissertation Award in Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences. The presentation marked the third time in as many years that a geography and anthropology student garnered this honor.

It was also another mark of excellence for a department that has been building a distinguished reputation for almost a century.

The year 2003 marks the 75th anniversary of LSU’s Department of Geography & Anthropology and the department recently kicked off its celebration of this occasion with the announcement that its cultural geography program had been ranked, along with the University of Texas at Austin’s program, as the best in North America.

The Professional Geographer, an official publication of the Association of American Geographers, published a study that revealed LSU and UT Austin were viewed, by those in the profession, as the top cultural geography programs in the U.S. and Canada.

The study involved a formal survey of members of the Cultural Geography Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers. Those who responded were professors, instructors, graduate students, and retired members. Other institutions near the top of the rankings include the University of California, Berkeley; UCLA; Syracuse University; and Penn State University.

Cultural geography is defined as “the study of the distribution and impacts of social values, norms and material goods across the earth’s surface.” In broader terms, cultural geography seeks to “make sense of people and the places they occupy” by looking at languages, religion, agriculture, and “other ways that people define themselves and create the places where they live.” It is also a specialty that has grown in popularity during the past decade.

''" According to the study, the Cultural Geography Specialty Group had about 500 members in 2000, and ranked fourth overall in total membership within the Association of American Geographers.

The study also showed that LSU was one of the top doctorate producers among those in the Cultural Geography Specialty Group. LSU followed UCLA in this category.

LSU Geography & Anthropology Chair Craig Colten says that the ranking is very good news for his department.

“We are thrilled, because it highlights a part of our department that has been strong since the beginning,” he says. “It also shows the strength of our alumni.”

However, Colten points out that cultural geography is only one part of a department that maintains a balance of excellence among the major areas of the geography concentration — human, physical, and mapping sciences. He also explains that the study ranking is one of a number of the department’s achievements so far this year. For example, Professor Emeritus Bob Muller was awarded a 2003 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Climate Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers, and Plantations by the River, a book edited by Professor Jay Edwards, won the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities’ 2003 Best Book in the Humanities Award. In addition, Miles Richardson, who has been with the department for almost 40 years and who helped inspire Weir to take his journey through Mexico, published an acclaimed new book, Being in Christ and Putting Death in its Place. The book is a major anthropological study of how Christians address the question of death and amounts to a summation of Richardson’s life’s work.

On top of the recognition and awards, Colten says the ongoing 75th anniversary observance means that there is much more on the horizon for the department, including the opening of a new “technology rich” classroom for mapping science.

LSU’s Department of Geography & Anthropology traces its beginning to 1928, when Professor Richard Russell arrived from the University of California, Berkeley. According to Colten, Russell and his colleague, Fred Kniffen, are considered the founders of LSU’s Department of Geography & Anthropology. They are credited with taking a few loosely related courses and turning them into a nationally recognized department.

Over the years, the department has stayed true to its roots, while building a formidable reputation of its own. As witnessed by the results of the study in The Professional Geographer, alumni of the program whole-heartedly approve of where the department has been and where it is going. Weir is no exception.

When Weir completed his master’s degree at San Diego State University, he informed his mentors that he would pursue his doctorate at LSU. When he did, he says, they reverently called LSU “Berkeley-on-the-Bayou.”

Weir says that he believes LSU’s department is much more than that.

“It is not ‘Berkeley-On-the-Bayou.’ It is its own school of doing geography in a way that encourages multidisciplinary synthesis, sound application of the fundamentals of geographic inquiry, and intellectual innovation,” he says. “I wouldn’t trade my doctorate from LSU for one from any other geography department in the English-speaking world.”

Written by Rob Anderson | LSU Office of University Relations
Photos by Jim Zietz | LSU Office of University Relations
August 2003