Southeastern Geographer Research Articles

The Global Reach of a Regional Journal: A Look at Who is Reading the Southeastern Geographer

The Global Reach of a Regional Journal: A Look at Who is Reading the Southeastern Geographer

Introduction from the Editorial Team

Introduction from the Editorial Team Selima Sultana, Paul Knapp, Ridwaana Allen, and Tyler Mitchell One of the many strengths of the Southeastern Division of the Association of American Geographers (SEDAAG) has been the broad and long-standing support of its members and their strong service commitment to ensure the vitality of the division. These contributions are best expressed during the annual meeting each November held in a variety of cities from small (e.g., Florence, Alabama) to large (e.g., Atlanta, Georgia) located within the SEDAAG region. Regardless of location, the meetings offer an opportunity for many of the attendees to travel, which is part of the enjoyment of the meeting, especially when exploration is integrated into the trip. As geographers, we know that visiting places with interesting geographical qualities can be highly educational and initiate new ideas. This travel can help satiate the wanderlust that is inherent to geographers, and when done as a group, initiate long-lasting friendships and promote great conversions. That said, the reason for the travel — to attend the meeting — is made possible by a suite of individuals who organize the event. For the 2022 meeting, we recognize the efforts of SEDAAG President Bill Graves, SEDAAG Vice President Jennifer Rahn, and local organizer Eric Spears who spent numerous hours working to create an event that was widely enjoyed. We also recognize the contributions of the State Representatives and committee members, and for the latter particularly, Phillip Schmutz, who served as Chair of the Honors Committee. The awards banquet keynote address by AAG President Marilyn Raphael made the conference even more special. Finally, the success of the meeting does not occur without participation on panels, in sessions, and in the honors competition. The exceptional contributions for 2022 are listed below: faculty • Lifetime Achievement Award: John Kupfer, University of South Carolina • Outstanding Service Award: Dawn Drake, Missouri Western State University • Undergraduate Mentoring Award: Saeideh Gharehchahi, Jacksonville State University • Research Honors Award: Joann Mossa, University of Florida; Joe Weber, University of Alabama. graduate students • Best Poster: Cooper Corey, University of Alabama • Best Master’s Paper: Mashoukur Rahaman, University of Florida [End Page 132] • John Fraser Hart Award for Best Ph.D. Student Paper: Sarah Jackson, University of South Carolina other • Best Southeastern Geographer Paper: Mary Biggs, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill • Southeastern Geographer Cover Photo: Joann Mossa, University of Florida In addition to the awards, the incoming Southeastern Geographer editors were announced at the SEDAAG meeting. Shrinidhi Ambinakudige and Brian Williams, professors at Mississippi State University, were appointed to begin their four-year term on July 1, 2023. We look forward to helping them with the transition as they assume the editorial duties during the summer. Issue 63.2 of Southeastern Geographer contains a cover essay by Joann Mossa, three articles and one geographical note that are summarized below, and one book review. As always, we encourage you to consider the journal as a publication outlet and note that beginning later this year Southeastern Geographer will have an impact factor. Finally, we thank the reviewers for their invaluable contributions that greatly improved the quality of the articles. Sugg and Weir investigate whether politics should remain a viable indicator of the public’s opinion on climate change by examining margin of victory data from the last four US presidential elections and climate change opinions. The regression models revealed that counties that voted for the Democratic candidate by wider margins were tied to higher percentages of adults who believe that climate change is mostly caused by human activity, while counties that voted for the Republican candidate by wider margins were tied to lower percentages accepting anthropogenic climate change. Moreover, climate change beliefs became increasingly polarized over time and model fit tended to improve over time, although there were some exceptions. Studies indicate that the vast majority of adults believe that climate change is occurring and most also believe that humans are the cause. Sugg and Weir suggest bypassing the contentious debate over anthropogenic climate change in favor of policy solutions with broad appeal. Friis and Habron investigate how various actors within Furman University’s socio-ecological system interact as part of the University’s placemaking efforts. Their study integrates...

Introduction from the Editorial Team

Introduction from the Editorial Team Selima Sultana, Paul Knapp, Ridwaana Allen, and Tyler Mitchell Issue 63.1 of Southeastern Geographer begins our fourth and final year as an editorial team and contains the second special issue during our term. Directed by guest editors Drs. John Kupfer (University of South Carolina) and Joe Weber (University of Alabama), this special issue contains five articles that focus on protected areas of the Southeast and an accompanying introductory editorial, a cover art essay, and two book reviews. The special issue is a fascinating collection of articles that focuses on the importance of protected areas from a spectrum of geographical viewpoints and is an outstanding source of information that is discussed in detail by the guest editors. Hunter Lewis' cover art and essay focus on the ecological wonders found within the Uwharrie Mountains and Uwharrie National Forest of central North Carolina. As Lewis notes, the steep slopes of the Uwharries provide microhabitats uncommon elsewhere within the Piedmont, allowing for the presence of disjunct plant populations such as a relict stand of eastern white pine, and pockets of old-growth montane longleaf pine. One cannot help but be interested in visiting this area after reading the essay. Finally, the two book reviews, one about the inequity of pedestrian deaths in the US (reviewed by Cade Gouin and Yujie Hu), and the other about reconsidering naturalist John Muir's travels through the South from Kentucky to Cedar Key, Florida in 1867 (reviewed by Joann Mossa) cover divergent topics yet are linked by strong geographical aspects that define our discipline. We also wish to share the great news that Southeastern Geographer will be receiving an impact factor beginning in the fall of 2023. As we noted in our announcement to SEDAAG members last summer: "Since its inception in 1961, the flagship journal of the Southeastern Division of the American Association of Geographers (SEDAAG) has published research on a wide variety of topics relating to the American South. Contributing authors have represented researchers from all career stages ranging from emerging to senior scholars. We are hopeful that with the inclusion of an impact factor, more scholars will consider Southeastern Geographer as a potential publication outlet. This milestone for Southeastern Geographer reflects a collective effort including the contributions of the past and present editorial teams, long-term support from SEDAAG, scholarly contributions from authors, and thoughtful feedback from reviewers. Finally, the University of North Carolina Press has been an advocate of Southeastern Geographer and was an influential actor in the decision to receive an impact factor. We look forward to receiving your [End Page 4] scholarly work in the upcoming year as the journal continues to publish interesting and timely articles about the geography of the American South." In conclusion, we reiterate that the success of Southeastern Geographer represents a collective effort, and we encourage you to submit your research to the journal to help continue the proud tradition of SEDAAG's flagship journal. [End Page 5] Selima Sultana University of North Carolina Greensboro Paul Knapp University of North Carolina Greensboro Ridwaana Allen University of North Carolina Greensboro Tyler Mitchell University of North Carolina Greensboro Copyright © 2023 Southeastern Division of the American Association of Geographers

Dr. Bobby Wilson and Southeastern Geographer

Dr. Bobby Wilson and Southeastern Geographer Brian Williams (bio) Professor Bobby Wilson’s enduring and paradigm-shifting influence on the geographical study of race and the United States South is evident in his longstanding engagement with the Southeastern Division of the American Association of Geographers, and his extensive contributions to this journal. The lifetime of scholarship that he leaves behind is a testament to his unwavering commitment to critically understanding and situating racism, resistance, and Black experience historically, and geographically. His scholarship is remarkable in its attention to both the everyday dimensions of racism, and the multiscalar political-economic relations that shape and reconstitute place and region. Dr. Wilson took a job at the University of Alabama-Birmingham in 1974, and published six articles in Southeastern Geographer over the next three decades (Wilson 1977, Wilson 1985, Wilson 1989, Wilson 1995, Wilson 2002a, Wilson 2007). As Dr. Wilson recounted in a 2019 interview, when he first moved to Birmingham, he frequented the public library downtown for his research. There, on a wall in the southern history section, he noticed a racial zoning map: They didn’t try to hide it…for a number of years it stayed up there. And that was a pivotal moment in my research. I finally figured out what I needed to do. And that’s where it all began. Birmingham. The industrial city of the South. Also one of the most significant places in the civil rights struggle. The dogs. The water hoses turned loose on kids remains a vivid issue in our heads today…I started from that point, I started from that particular point (Wilson 2019). His scholarly commitment to geographies of justice in the South started with place — in a library, in Birmingham, with racial zoning maps and the brazenly displayed injustice of institutionalized inequity — and tirelessly worked to situate, to reveal, to explain, and to denaturalize oppression. This anti-essentialist attention to tracing, contextualizing, and situating the geographies of racism and injustice animated his subsequent work. His project of “critically understanding race-connected practices” (Wilson 2002b, 32), as he would later term it, represented a lifetime of scholarship that transformed and enlivened both Southeastern Geographer and the discipline of geography more broadly. His first article in Southeastern Geographer looked at segregation patterns and the role of multifamily housing units and single family housing in housing opportunities for Black families in Birmingham (Wilson 1977). This article exhibited Dr. Wilson’s meticulous attention to the ways that racism takes place and shapes space. Though written in [End Page 192] the language of spatial science that dominated urban geographical scholarship in the pages of this journal at that time, this article exemplified his keen attention to the deep historical dynamics that shape racially uneven outcomes. Though in one sense modest in its scope and claims, this intervention represented a radical challenge to the work that dominated the pages of Southeastern Geographer at the time. In fact, readers of that issue of Southeastern Geographer would have first encountered Merle Prunty’s 1976 presidential address to SEDAAG, a sweeping discourse on southern industrialization, modernization, and culture, which universalizes the perspective of white southern men as the view of “the southerner” (Prunty 1977). Dr. Wilson published his second article in Southeastern Geographer at the height of the Reagan era, focusing on the history and reality of racial segregation in Birmingham, and its implications for Black residents of Birmingham (Wilson 1985). A crucial part of this history was the Medical Center Expansion Urban Renewal Project, which displaced almost 1,000 Black families to make way for the UAB medical center. Dr. Wilson only briefly mentions this fact in his article, but the brief implication of his employing institution must have represented a conscious decision, one borne of conviction and a scholarly dedication to justice. Although these first articles were couched in the conventional language of spatial science, they were strategic and important interventions, guided by his enduring commitment to people and place in Birmingham. They were also radical departures from the standard fare of Southeastern Geographer. From 1977 to 1985, the years of his first and second articles in Southeastern Geographer, there were only eight articles that focused on...

Remembering and Honoring the Life of Professor Bobby M. Wilson

Remembering and Honoring the Life of Professor Bobby M. Wilson Gerald R. Webster (bio) I want to thank Alex Andre Moulton and Derek H. Alderman for organizing the 2021 session to honor Bobby M. Wilson, a friend and former colleague, at the annual SEDAAG conference in Florence, Alabama. Also, thanks to Selima Sultana and Paul Knapp, editors of Southeastern Geographer, for their support to have the session’s commentaries published. Though very accomplished, Bobby was also quite humble and I suspect he would be both surprised and touched by these efforts to honor his life and legacy. I first became aware of Bobby in the early 1980s when I started my Ph.D. at the University of Kentucky, joined SEDAAG, and began receiving Southeastern Geographer. Bobby was a regular contributor having published six articles in the journal including a contribution to a special issue on the “Political Geography of the South” which I guest edited in 2007. Topically, Bobby focused on issues of race, politics, capitalist development, and planning, most particularly as they pertain to Birmingham, Alabama and the South generally. Given our overlapping interests I made an effort to regularly read his publications. As a junior academic I interacted with Bobby at both SEDAAG and AAG meetings in the 1980s. That interaction greatly increased when I took a job at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa in 1989, with Bobby only 60 miles up the freeway at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The move to Tuscaloosa led my work to increasingly focus on southern electoral politics with a particular emphasis on Alabama, making Bobby’s work evermore relevant to my own interests. A couple years after I arrived in Tuscaloosa I came across Bobby’s 1992 article in Antipode entitled “Structural Imperatives Behind Racial Change in Birmingham, Alabama.” I found the article fascinating, thoughtfully structured, and tightly argued. As a result, I began attending sessions at professional meetings specifically because Bobby was a presenter. In 2001, I became departmental chair at Alabama and decided to lobby my dean to consider hiring Bobby for a position in Tuscaloosa. While such a move would clearly be of personal benefit to me, I also believed that Bobby would greatly add to the department’s limited social science and planning expertise. I purchased Bobby’s two recently published books on Birmingham to share them with my dean who reacted very enthusiastically. As a result, we were able to entice Bobby to move his office from Birmingham to Tuscaloosa in the fall of 2002. It was great having Bobby in Tuscaloosa given our overlapping interests and his ability to contribute to the department’s programs. Bobby had great breadth and depth in his [End Page 207] knowledge of the diverse literature relevant to his work, as a perusal of some of his article bibliographies will underscore. A majority of Bobby’s work focused on Birmingham, but not only due to his position at UAB. When the city of Birmingham was incorporated in 1871, its African American population was minuscule, but grew dramatically as Black folks moved from the state’s agricultural areas to take jobs in developing industries including steel. As a result, Bobby’s focus on Birmingham allowed him to study how race, racial relations, and changing employment relationships between Blacks and Whites were initially structured and how they were modified through time due to structural economic changes. While chair at Alabama I made a point of having impromptu drop-by visits with faculty members in their offices on a regular basis to keep abreast of their needs and projects. Most of these visits were only ten to fifteen minutes given faculty workloads and schedules. After Bobby joined the department I quickly learned to drop in on him last because our chats typically went on an hour or more on a long list of topics including the history and development of geography as a discipline, the role of race in southern politics, residential segregation, and the transformation of electoral politics in the South including the rise of the GOP, among other topics. At the time he was working on a new book focused on the role of economic change in the structural...

Introduction from the Editorial Team

Introduction from the Editorial Team Selima Sultana, Paul Knapp, Ridwaana Allen, and Tyler Mitchell The publication of issue 62.3 (Fall) marks nearly the three-fourths point of our term as an editorial team. An advertisement for the position of the next editor(s) of Southeastern Geographer has already been disseminated with the anticipation that the new editorial team will start their responsibilities in the summer of 2023. The journal, which had its first issue published in 1961, has served as an outlet for scholarly research from early- through late-career scientists focusing on geographical studies of the American South. The journal’s principal foci have been twofold: 1) to help develop potentially interesting research to make it publishable, timely, and relevant to a broad audience; and 2) to serve as a medium that promotes and documents the activities of SEDAAG (https://sedaag.org/) members. Included in this issue is a compilation of ten essays from former colleagues and friends that recognize the scholarly work, mentoring, and kindness of the late Dr. Bobby Wilson. In reading through the essays, a great appreciation of Dr. Wilson’s contributions emerges, and it is wonderful that the journal can serve as a forum to publish these essays. This issue also includes a cover image of Atlanta and an accompanying essay about the city by Eric Spears and Jordan Brasher of Columbus State University as background information for the upcoming SEDAAG meeting that will be held in Atlanta on November 19–22, 2022. Finally, each year the Fall issue of Southeastern Geographer includes recognition of SEDAAG members for outstanding service and scholarship contributions in a summary of the previous Annual Meeting activities. We hope that the incoming editorial team will continue the traditions of Southeastern Geographer. In addition to the Forum honoring the late Dr. Bobby Wilson, issue 62.3 includes three articles, summarized below, and two book reviews. We are grateful for the contributions made by these authors and the constructively critical comments offered by the reviewers that improved these high-quality papers. As always, please consider submitting your work to Southeastern Geographer as we are committed to facilitating a thorough review process conducted in a timely manner. Based on Mississippi being one of the hardest-hit states with respect to COVID-19, Ali et al. utilized the CDC’s social vulnerability index (CDC SVI), geographic information systems (GIS), and linear regression to examine the spatial pattern of COVID-19 and its association with social determinants of health. Unlike many other studies that use the CDC SVI, Ali et al. focus on the local scale rather than the national scale, specifically by investigating COVID-19 incidence and mortality at Mississippi’s county scale. The CDC SVI offers a relative vulnerability ranking based on four subthemes. The researchers did [End Page 174] observe a spatial association between the CDC SVI and COVID-19-related health outcomes. In particular, there was a statistically significant association between the SVI and cumulative mortality, while the SVI subtheme household composition and disability predicted higher incidence. Their overall findings help illustrate the dynamic nature of pandemics and how vulnerability may change over spatiotemporal scales. Higgins and Engle examine the Appalachian Just Transition and analyze two community food initiatives within the context of the Just Transition: a community-based gardening program and a produce prescription program (PPP). They investigate whether these programs maintain existing unjust systems or strive for a more equitable, sustainable future. They employ compassionate scholarship, propose the use of an evaluative approach, and make recommendations based on their findings. Overall, the programs did strive to address the lack of access to fresh and healthy food in their communities but were limited by systemic constraints which hindered their ability to make lasting changes. Smith and Blizard quantitatively examine the relationship between municipal incorporation and Black-White segregation in the southern United States between 1990 and 2010. They utilize the U.S. Census Bureau’s definition of the South and employ two modeling techniques: difference regression and spatial lag first difference regression. They found high levels of municipal incorporation in counties within Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Alabama and increasing levels of Black-White segregation in several states...

Introduction from the Editorial Team

Introduction from the Editorial Team Selima Sultana, Paul Knapp, Ridwaana Allen, and Tyler Mitchell Our Editorial Team is grateful for the opportunity to contribute to Southeastern Geographer, the flagship journal of the Southeastern Division of the American Association Geographers (SEDAAG). We are pleased to report that the 2021 Annual SEDAAG Meeting in Florence, Alabama during November 20–22 was well attended following the virtual-format platform arrangement for the 2020 conference. The success of the SEDAAG Conference is made possible by the extensive work of numerous division members. We recognize the outstanding contributions of Lynn Resler and Jennifer Rahn for their roles as SEDAAG President and SEDAAG Vice-President, respectively, and Local Arrangement Chair, Michael Pretes during this unprecedented and challenging time. We were pleased that AAG President Emily Ye attended the meeting and presented the Keynote Address at the Awards Banquet. SEDAAG meetings offer a suite of professional development benefits and have excelled in distinguishing exceptional contributions in scholarship, instruction, and service. The recognition of awards is judged by the members of the Honors Committee, who must decide on recipients of nominated awards prior to the meeting and then spend much of the meeting evaluating student presentations. We applaud the efforts of the Committee, especially committee chair Douglas Allen, for their dedication. We note that while we list some of the 2021 awardees below, there were no nominations for the prestigious Research Honors Award. 2021 Awardees • Southeastern Geographer Award for Best Paper: Thomas Saladyga and Stockton Maxwell (A Multi-Century Fire History from the Potomac Highlands of West Virginia) and Gabe Schwartzman (POWER and the Future of Appalachia: Discursive Framings of an Economic Transition) • Southeastern Geographer Cover Art: Yin-Hsuen Chen, Old Dominion University • Lifetime Achievement Award: Bobby Wilson (posthumous) • Outstanding Service Award: Heidi J.L. Lannon, Santa Fe College • Excellence in Teaching: Ingrid Luffman, East Tennessee State University • John Fraser Hart Award, Best Ph.D. Student Paper: Savannah Collins-Key, University of Tennessee • Best Master's Paper: Avery Catherwood, University of North Carolina Greensboro [End Page 89] The conclusion of the annual meeting marks the transition of SEDAAG Officers. We thank Lynn Resler for her excellent work as President during 2019–2021 while navigating the numerous issues associated with the onset and continuation of the COVID-19 pandemic, and Treasurer, Amy Potter of Georgia Southern University. We congratulate newly elected President William (Bill) Graves of the University of North Carolina Charlotte, and Treasurer Paul McDaniel of Kennesaw State University for their two-year appointments as SEDAAG Officers. SEDAAG also welcomed newly elected State Representatives Jordan Cissell (Samford University), Johanna Engström (University of Florida), Michele Abee (Bellarmine University), Dean Hardy (University of South Carolina), and Thomas Saladyga (Concord University). We extend our warm thanks to the outgoing state representatives Caroline McClure (University of Alabama), Cynthia Simmons (University of Florida), Peggy Gripshover (Western Kentucky University), Conor Harrison (University of South Carolina), and Jamison Conley (West Virginia University) for their commitment and contributions to SEDAAG during the past two years. Please consider Southeastern Geographer as a publication outlet for work that relates to the American South. As an Editorial Team, we try to process manuscripts in a timely fashion with an average initial decision time of approximately six weeks. Manuscript submissions during the past four years have been from authors located from many locations outside of the SEDAAG region and SEDAAG membership is not a requirement to submit work to the journal. We are thankful for the contributions of authors and external reviewers that make Southeastern Geographer an outstanding journal. We are also grateful for the contributions of Joseph Weber of the University of Alabama for his role as Book Editor. Issue 62.2 (Summer) contains four papers, which we summarize below, and two book reviews. Biggs builds on cultural geography and the geographies of memory to explore how the managers at three historic sites in Durham, North Carolina attempt to manage the interests of historic preservation with present-day use and enjoyment of these sites. Rather than viewing the landscapes surrounding these sites as racially neutral backdrops, Biggs maintains that they are racialized spaces with their own histories. Specifically, the trees and grass at these sites are not...

Guest Editors' Introduction: On the Future Geographies of the South

Guest Editors' Introduction:On the Future Geographies of the South William Graves and Derek H. Alderman "The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed" —William Gibson (2001) Future-oriented discussions are not absent in geographical scholarship about the South, especially those addressing climate change and sustainability. However, too many of those discussions are buried in brief final paragraphs of papers or reduced to simple statements of further research directions on a topic. With some noted exceptions, such as the University of North Carolina's new Southern Futures initiative, we have noticed that the wider field of southern studies has largely focused on reappraising the contested nature of the South's past. While this retrospective focus is necessary to contextualize contemporary struggles over identities, spaces, and rights, it can lead us to neglect the region's prospects. Indeed, only seven articles appearing in Southeastern Geographer since 1977 have used the word "future" in their title. The relative lack of future studies comes at a problematic time as we face major environmental, economic, and social upheavals that will no doubt require substantial policy and planning responses to manage effectively. For this collection of essays, thinking about what lies ahead for the South is not an excuse to forget history (several of our contributors come from cultural memory studies). Rather, it is an analytical opportunity to put the past, present, and future in conversation with each other in thinking how the region is likely to be shaped and to evolve over the near term (e.g., 20-year horizon). Our special issue brings together contributors who explore the future trajectories of the Southeastern United States, what these futures hold for certain people and places, and to suggest possible pathways for the region to build a more sustainable and socially just future. The primary aim of the papers in this issue is to offer theoretical tools and empirical insights to identify specific changes, challenges, and possible areas of reform within the South's institutions, cultures, and behaviors that shape its future geographies. It is also our hope to cast light on how we conceptualize and carry out the study of the future – particularly in regions such as the South with strong cultural ties to the past and where uneven power relations will inevitably create alternate and conflicting regional destinies. Finally, we wish to provoke readers to consider future analysis as a professional responsibility since future studies is vital to making interventions in public decision making and elevating the responsiveness of our discipline to problems, inequalities, and issues facing the world. [End Page 291] on making southern futures We embark on this journey to reflect critically about the future geographic realities of the Southeast with a humility that such a project is inherently fraught with uncertainty and tension. We emphasize uncertainty since none of us can conjecture or reason with perfect confidence what will happen in a region marked over the past several decades by transformations and revolutions but also a stubborn persistence of certain traditions, attitudes, and inequalities. Indeed, as the nation struggles to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, eight of the ten US states with the lowest levels of vaccination are found in the Southeast, especially rural areas, and the region may be poised for a resurgence of the virus that we hope does not materialize (NPR 2021). As illustrated during this public health crisis, it is important to recognize that futures are, to a degree, a product of our making. As such, inattention to the region's future needs is likely to lead to vulnerability, injustice, and decline. While futures are produced, in part, from contemporary actions, they are also dependent upon capacities, expertise, culture and resources, and social struggles which are a product of past events. Indeed, noted southern historian James Cobb (1999) contends that the South and its cultures and landscapes are a complex mix of change and continuity. How tradition and transition mix to form the future takes on a different look and feel depending on where one is geographically and socially within the South. The idea of a future South is not universally shared but socially and geographically contingent; it may have a different...

Status of Women in Geography (SWIG) in the Southeastern Division

Status of Women in Geography (SWIG) in the Southeastern Division Heidi J.L. Lannon (bio) In honor of the women of the Southeastern Division of the American Association of Geographers (SEDAAG) and in recognition of the second consecutive female President, it is with pleasure that the cover of Southeastern Geographer is dedicated to the Status of Women in Geography (SWIG) in the Division. Women are strongly represented at the American Association of Geographers (AAG) in addition to the Southeastern Division. SEDAAG is led by President Lynn Resler of Virginia Tech, who followed Joann Mossa of the University of Florida. Women are represented on the SEDAAG Executive Board by Vice President Jennifer Rahn of Samford University, Amy Potter of Georgia Southern University as Treasurer, and Selima Sultana as Regional Councilor and Co-Editor of Southeastern Geographer. Amy Lobben of the University of Oregon served as the first virtual President of the AAG from 2020–2021. Emily T. Yeh of the University of Colorado at Boulder is serving as the second consecutive female President of the AAG from 2021–2022. The following recollections began as anecdotal observations to accompany the cover of this issue. The author was ushered to her first meeting in the early 1990s as a graduate student by her female mentor, Joann Mossa. Further research and assistance by mentors and friends Peggy Gripshover, Anne Oberhauser, and Ezra Ozdenerol (personal communications 2020) unearthed a lengthy history of female participation in SEDAAG. An exact date for the establishment of SWIG at the Division level has not been determined, and membership is not formally recorded. Meetings of women geographers have historically been over breakfast and scheduled at the uncivilized hour of 7 AM. Meetings were informal and attended by a faithful few (Figure 1). Southeastern Geographer has a tradition of publishing details of annual conference activities. From the accounts, historical activities of women in geography can be gleaned. In a 1979 report of the annual meeting, Nancy Erwin and David Lee arranged a session entitled "Questions and Answers: AAG Committee on the Status of Women" (Lineback 1980). The first acknowledgement of the SEDAAG Committee on the Status of Women in Geography was at the 1981 meeting when SWIG sponsored a discussion on "The Working Woman" (Fisher 1982). At that meeting, Jackalie Blue convened a regional meeting of the AAG Committee on the Status of Women and Susan Moorlag led two workshops on careers in geography. The award for best Ph.D. student paper that year was to a woman, Ellen Cromley of the University of Kentucky, and Jonathan Phillips of East Carolina University [End Page 281] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Enjoying breakfast together, SEDAAG meeting, Asheville, NC, 2012. Margaret "Peggy" Gripshover, Western Kentucky University; Helen Ruth Aspass, Virginia Commonwealth University (retired); Amanda Rees, Columbus State University; Heidi Lannon, Santa Fe College; Michael Brown, Northwest Florida College (retired). Image courtesy of Heidi Lannon, Eric Spears, photographer. won at the master's level. In 1982, Helen Jane Armstrong of the University of Florida led a map library workshop (Fisher 1983). At the 1984 meeting, the first Merle C. Prunty Scholarship was awarded to Jeanne Murday of the University of South Carolina. The same year Risa Palm was elected the President of AAG (Aiken 1985). She was the second female President of the AAG since 1904, after Meredith Burrill in 1965 (Wikipedia 2020). SWIG meetings are reported as being part of annual meetings beginning in 1991 (Meentemeyer 1992). At the 50th meeting of SEDAAG in Knoxville, conference highlights included that "panel sessions were organized to address current issues, including the status of women in geography" (Hartshorn 1996, 82). The 1997 meeting was reported on by Moore (1998), who wrote that two panel sessions were organized by the SWIG Committee. [End Page 282] Click for larger view View full resolution Table 1. Female Presidents of SEDAAG Click for larger view View full resolution Table 2. Female Treasurers of SEDAAG A perusal of Southeastern Geographer volumes provides a record of female participation and the activities of SWIG. Table 1 shows the six women who have served as the President (previously "Chair") of SEDAAG, since 1946, beginning with Lillian Worley Stimson of the...

Introduction from the Editorial Team

Introduction from the Editorial Team Selima Sultana, Paul Knapp, Ridwaana Allen, and Tyler Mitchell Issue 61.2 marks our sixth issue as an editorial team and is slated for production at the time when we are celebrating Black History Month, February 2021. The editorial team recognizes Black Americans’ range of identities, and their significant role in US history, and acknowledges the systemic inequality and everyday challenges Black Americans continue to experience. We acknowledge their struggles and celebrate their resilience this month and every month. The significance of this month is interwoven throughout this issue, which includes a cover-art essay, four articles, and a book review. The cover art and its associated essay are contributed by Caleb Smith, one recipient of Southeastern Geographer 2020 Cover Art Award. The cover art, which shows an empty Mississippi state flagpole next to an American flag at the Jones County Courthouse in Ellisville, Mississippi, represents a historical moment of the removal of the Confederate Battle Flag canton. Since 1861, this flag persisted as an enduring symbol of racism against Black Americans in the guise of Southern heritage in Mississippi and beyond. Historically, plantation museums have been used to romanticize planter culture and the antebellum South, often by omitting slavery from the narrative altogether. Doron and Jansson’s article argues that effectively transitioning from erasing slavery from the narrative to incorporating it meaningfully requires reflection and reflexive epistemic positionality. Without that critical reflection and self-awareness, there is a risk that the narrative will be changed, but the same tropes will be propagated in the new narrative. “Epistemic positionality” here is understood to mean how knowledge is shaped by a subject’s position in relation to systems of power. The authors focus on the Oak Alley plantation in Vacherie, Louisiana as their case study of a museum currently undergoing the transition and juxtapose that briefly with Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello plantation in Charlottesville, Virginia, which has successfully undergone this transition. Oak Alley has evolved from the “annihilation” of slavery from its narrative, to a segregated knowledge regime, to attempting to be more inclusive and integrate slavery in the narrative – a “balancing act” that appreciates the beauty of the place while acknowledging its ugly past. However, these efforts may ultimately be limited by the fact that visitors’ comfort is still prioritized over meaningful engagement with history and how that continues to manifest in the present – including through harmful narratives illustrated by plantation museums. While Monticello experienced the same transition, part of their success has come from acknowledging positionality and embracing the discomfort rather than trying to avoid it. [End Page 107] Lovelace uses Black Feminist Hauntology to investigate why Nat Turner’s freedom trail has been denied memorialization. Black Feminist Hauntology has been posited as “a theory that the memory of violence and trauma can haunt.” Lovelace underpins Black Feminist Hauntology with rememory and re-membering. “Rememory” can be thought of as “a place where images of the past can be stored,” while “re-membering” refers to “the act of using memory to reassemble that which has been broken apart.” Nat Turner’s Rebellion took place in 1831, and despite it being the largest slave rebellion to take place in the US, no official sites exist to commemorate it. Those sites that have been restored or maintained present a specific and white-centric narrative. Particularly disturbing are the normalizing and centralizing of whiteness and intentional exclusion and othering of Black people in the memory of this rebellion, which in turn shape its geography. Historical markers, Blackhead Signpost Road, and the Rebecca Vaughan House support these findings. Lovelace’s journey through Southampton County, Virginia to various sites affiliated with the rebellion reveals a “freedom trail” buried by unequal memorializations and traditional memory. These work in tandem to erase Black people from the geographies they helped to create and present a narrative of white innocence despite the inherent cruelty and brutality of chattel slavery. To combat this false narrative, these places are instead resituated through rememory and re-membering. They center Blackness and emphasize how Black spatial acts have shaped the landscapes in and beyond Southampton County. Schuch et al. investigate the concept of Latino receptivity from the...

Editors’ Introduction

Editors’ Introduction Selima Sultana and Paul Knapp Issue 60.4 marks our one-year completion as editors of Southeastern Geographer. As this issue goes to press (early August), we continue to work remotely due to the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic, which has caused more than 675,000 deaths worldwide, and more than 160,000 deaths in the US (1Point3Acres 2020). The number of COVID-19 infections and deaths is still increasing rapidly, especially in the American South, with several states recording their highest number of COVID-19 cases in recent days. We are at the fifth month since universities across the United States (and many other countries around the world) suddenly rushed to transition from face-to-face to a remote work environment. COVID-19 has impacted every facet of academia, especially in faculty research productivity—which we see has impacted our journal submission rate. Not only that faculty had to learn new technologies for teaching (which could be perhaps viewed as an opportunity), and the lack of access to library resources, but travel restrictions are probably the hardest hit for geographic research, especially for those geographers who rely heavily on field data. Likewise, many academics have been bearing a greater responsibility for family life (i.e., full-time caregiver to pre-school children, home schooling K-12 children, etc.…) while also being tremendously busy with modifying classes either online or hybrid models for the fall semester. At the same time, the stress level of geographers is high with the ongoing budget cuts, particularly given that in some places, geography programs are being scrutinized more closely due to the lack of understanding about the value of geographic education and research. The lack of manuscript submissions, however, may not be uniform along gender lines—some early research in other disciplines suggests that submission rates from women faculty are lower than prior years (Flaherty 2020). With facets of gender inequality that exist in academia, including geography, women academics—particularly early-career, non-white, and households headed by single women may have been facing a greater burden and financial stress during COVID-19 (Cardel et al. 2020, Malisch et al. 2020). Research conducted jointly by Emory University and Harvard University found that while overall publication numbers in social sciences increased by 35 percent during the ten weeks of lockdown, research published by women academics dropped 13.9 percent (Cui et al. 2020). There is no doubt that in the coming days, geographers will be engaged (or may already be engaged) in understanding the extent and regional patterns of impacts on geographers in general, including their productivity by gender, race/ethnicity, household structure etc.…during the COVID-19 pandemic. On a positive note, as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to concern us, our parent organization, the American Association of Geographers (AAG) allocated nearly $1 million [End Page 287] to support geographers, especially vulnerable geographers to address the systematic crisis that they are facing in the current climate. Similarly, we are happy to report that during the past five years (2016–2020) the number (46 percent) of publications by women as first authors in Southeastern Geographer is above the gender distributions of current (2018) female faculty (34.6 percent) and closely matches that of female graduate students (47.5 percent) in college and university geography departments (AAG 2020). We are hopeful that the gender gap in publications will continue to close in the coming days and that awareness of the relevancy of geographic work will continue to increase among decision makers and the public domain. Since the foundation of the journal in 1961, the tradition of Southeastern Geographer has been to encourage submissions from geographers spanning the spectrum of career development from graduate students, early- through late-career faculty, and even retired faculty. Case in point: in this issue of four articles, graduate students (collaborative with faculty) served as first author for two papers, one paper was written by an assistant professor and one paper was authored by two retired faculty. The quality of these articles is also excellent, and as editors we marvel at the amount of good work that is submitted to the journal and the history of publications by former AAG...

Editors' Introduction

Editors' Introduction Selima Sultana and Paul Knapp We are grateful for the excellent contributions that comprise the Spring issue of Volume 60 of the Southeastern Geographer. The four articles in this issue nicely illustrate the eclectic and diverse nature of geography yet are synchronized by their focus within the American South. Foglietti et al. examine US tornado outbreak activity during 1975–2014 and find that following exclusion of individual tornadoes, a tornado "outbreak alley" is located in the "US Midsouth" that includes southern Arkansas, northern Mississippi and northern Alabama—an area several hundred miles away from what is considered "Tornado Alley." Their work demonstrates how evaluating spatial patterns of singular tornadoes versus tornado outbreaks produces different outcomes as well as the challenges of mapping tornado outbreaks when no formal definition exists. That said, even when using a variety of tornado outbreak definitions, a similar spatial pattern emerges indicating that tornadic activity in the American South exhibits a distinct geographic character. Sherman-Morris et al. provide a novel analysis of the parasocial relationship between broadcast meteorologists and members of the public in the context of a real-world weather event. Specifically, Sherman-Morris et al. strive to provide insight on this relationship and determine whether it has any impact or effect on an individual's hurricane risk perception or protective behaviors (i.e., evacuation decisions). Their work discovers that there is no statistical relationship between an individual's parasocial relationship with their broadcast meteorologist and their hurricane risk perception or hurricane protective behavior. Their article explores the reasons for this surprising result—including changes in the media landscape, and weathercasters' different roles in different extreme weather events. Curtis et al. integrate a variety of methodologies to identify the best locations in North Carolina to convert agricultural land into sites with utility-scale photovoltaic panels, hence the term "solar farms." Using a food-water-energy approach, the authors show that the conversion of cultivated landscapes with solar farms results in both the production of a renewable energy source and improvements in water quality because of the removal of cropping. Curtis et al.'s innovative approach identifies locations where all three criteria favorable for solar farms exist. Thus, sites with an abundance of agricultural land, engaging in cropping practices most likely to result in water-quality degradation, and near transmission lines are considered the most viable for conversion. McDade et al. address the consequences of eastern hemlock mortality on large woody debris (LWD) loads in headwater stream environments of the southern Appalachians. [End Page 3] Since the introduction of the non-native hemlock woolly adelgid in 1954, eastern hemlock forests of the American South that prefer riparian zones have significantly declined and woody debris from the trees have impacted stream geomorphology. McDade et al. address this emerging issue by focusing on three headwater watersheds in North Carolina and found that greater hemlock mortality was associated with higher LWD loads but the effects of this decline on streamflow has not yet peaked. meet the team Volume 60 Issue 1 marks the beginning of our four-year term as co-editors of the Southeastern Geographer. As long-time members of SEDAAG and graduates of the University of Georgia, our appreciation of the importance of the journal is deep-rooted and we hope to continue the high standards of the journal. We are grateful for the help from the outgoing editorial team of Hilda Kurtz, Deepak Mishra, Nancy O'Hare, Christian Petterson, and Andy Walter, each whom was generous with their time assisting us through the transition. We also thank them for their numerous contributions to the journal, including implementing ScholarOne, which has substantially facilitated the review process. As they noted at the beginning of their term four years ago, serving as editors is an honor—a sentiment we share. Our role as editors will be to encourage submission of high-quality articles focusing on geographical aspects of the American South that includes both events and conditions. Likewise, we wish to continue to elevate readership and publish articles that will be cited often. In reviewing past issues of the Southeastern Geographer, we remarked on the number excellent articles on a wide variety of topics and the...

Remaking New Orleans: Beyond Exceptionalism and Authenticity ed. by Thomas J. Adams and Matt Sakakeeny

Reviewed by: Remaking New Orleans: Beyond Exceptionalism and Authenticity ed. by Thomas J. Adams and Matt Sakakeeny Eric Nost REMAKING NEW ORLEANS: Beyond Exceptionalism and Authenticity. Thomas J. Adams and Matt Sakakeeny, editors. Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 2019. 368pp.; maps, illustrations, bibliog., and index. $28.95 paper (ISBN 978-1-4780-0287-1). On March 26, 2020, the United States overtook China and Italy as the center of COVID-19 crisis and New Orleans, Louisiana (NOLA) was named a hotspot, along with New York City (Reuters Staff 2020). COVID-19 was another “world’s worst” for the city to add to a list that included world’s “prison capital” (Louisiana as a whole) and world’s fastest sinking place (NPR 2012, Marshall 2013). NOLA was exceptional, an outlier compared to most of the rest of the country, requiring a NOLA-specific explanation. Some commentators were quick to blame the Mardi Gras festivities that had taken place a month earlier (Fieldstadt 2020). However, others following in NOLA’s robust tradition of lambasting parachute journalism instead highlighted the federal government’s failure to provide the city with public health guidance (Adelson 2020, Hirsch 2020). Perhaps the situation, though dire, was not so exceptional (as would be confirmed by later surges in Detroit and rural parishes surrounding NOLA, not to mention the city’s long history of confronting epidemics) and perhaps it was not really a product of New Orleans’s distinctively spirituous and celebratory culture (Aldhous and Singer-Vine 2020, Jervis et al. 2020). Adams and Sakakeeny’s Remaking New Orleans represents a remarkable collection of stories that strike at exactly these kinds of debates, through a range of essays on historical and contemporary topics written by scholars from literature studies to anthropology and political science. Topically, the volume enriches our historical geography of the city. It provides a roving review of everything from regional wrestling circuits of the 70s and 80s to mid-century gay bars, and more recently, Vietnamese Americans’ suburban farms. [End Page 279] It also aims to shift our approach to contemporary NOLA by changing what we ask of it: how is that authenticity came to be so crucial to how we view the city? In what ways is NOLA less an exception to – and more a part of or even a forerunner to – state, national, and international socio-cultural and socioeconomic trends? The volume will interest many readers of the Southeastern Geographer, including urban and historical geographers fascinated by the city itself (see O’Hare 2018 for a summary of the journal’s literature on NOLA and Louisiana). It will also interest cultural geographers who are generally concerned with authenticity and exceptionalism as particular kinds of discourses to deconstruct. Although geographers may not be represented in the volume, (i.e., Helen A. Regis, author of chapter 6, is an anthropologist from Louisiana State University), much of the content of the book should be interest to human geographers. The key concerns of the volume are inherently geographical, even if not described as such. Its motivating questions around authenticity and exceptionalism target two different spatial levels. First, remaking NOLA’s authenticity means looking towards the city itself. In a place that is politically determined to and financially dependent upon demonstrating its distinctiveness, volume contributors ask, who is it that gets to be authentic here? Who belongs and who does not? What cultural practices have come to count as traditional? As the “Producing Authenticity” section suggests, contributors’ take on this is less “let’s settle once and for all what is real New Orleans” and more “how is it that certain things have come to be described as true to city traditions? What are the social tensions that arise from this?” For instance, Nguyen in chapter ten shows us how Vietnamese Americans used their community gardening as a way to be taken seriously as authentic residents of the city before, during, and after Katrina; and Smith describes the history of the African-American-led Zulu krewe and its continued yet contested use of blackface in carnival parades in chapter four. The second geographical approach works in the opposite direction: from the city outward. The volume considers New Orleans’s...

President’s Column/SEDAAG Report

President’s Column/SEDAAG Report Joann Mossa I am sending a warm welcome to those of you taking the time to read this short column on behalf of the Southeastern Division of the American Association of Geographers (SEDAAG). As President, I have been invited by our journal editors to share some thoughts on the past, present and future of SEDAAG and the Southeastern Geographer. Historically, SEDAAG (founded in 1947) and the Southeastern Geographer (founded in 1962) had a oneway, essentially parental, relationship, as is written in our SEDAAG by-laws that “The Division shall encourage and, as feasible, may sponsor and provide financial aid for appropriate research projects and publications.” As the journal has matured, under the guidance of the last several teams of editors, this relationship has become two-way in that the journal is enhancing SEDAAG’s international visibility and respect. This increased visibility is due in part to the diligence and leadership of our outstanding, outgoing journal co-editors of the Southeastern Geographer, Hilda Kurtz and Deepak Mishra of the Department of Geography at the University of Georgia. Despite its categorization as a “regional” journal, the journal is increasing in prominence and its content has been downloaded through Project Muse in 82 countries. Building on the agreement with Project Muse established by previous editors Derek Alderman and Scott Lecce, Hilda and Deepak began the practice of editing, or curating, virtual issues on special topics that connect with our meetings. Last year, for example, they organized two virtual issues to coincide with the AAG Annual Meeting in New Orleans: one on Geographies of Louisiana, and another on Black Geographies, which was one of the three themes of that year’s AAG meeting. In addition, they added the journal to the Twittersphere @SEGeographer, augmenting SEDAAG’s presence on Facebook and on Twitter @SEDAAG4. We credit our co-editors with elevating the stature of the journal—and in turn SEDAAG—during their four years of teamwork. I encourage all of our membership to give special thanks to Hilda Kurtz and Deepak Mishra for the excellent work in editing the journal, including in-person thanks at the annual meeting. If you are reading a hard copy of this journal, you are probably a member of SEDAAG. There are many good reasons to be a member or a student member (approximately half of our membership are students). SEDAAG hosts very enjoyable, well-attended conferences throughout our region where we get to know and talk with people, not just those in our subfields. We give the best and most student awards of all the regional divisions of the AAG. Every year, we give generous travel supplements to five MVPs from the SEDAAG Geography Bowl held at our annual conference to represent SEDAAG in [End Page 209] the national Geography Bowl coordinated by Dawn Drake at the national American Association of Geographers meeting. Students contribute to SEDAAG by fully participating in the conference by attending sessions, presenting oral papers and posters, by helping with local arrangements, and by taking on various leadership positions within the organization. Students strengthen the Southeastern Geographer by publishing research in the journal, submitting a book review, or participating in the cover art contest at the annual meeting. While the opportunity to serve as an editorial assistant for the journal is more restricted, each year two students gain valuable professional skills by serving as editorial assistants. One of our newest elected officers, the North Carolina state representative, is a student and we are excited about his involvement. Membership in SEDAAG has always been very reasonably priced, includes both a year’s subscription to the Southeastern Geographer, and a discounted registration fee for the annual SEDAAG meeting. As President, I want to thank you for your participation and membership, to extend an invitation to non-members to join, as well as follow both SEDAAG and the Southeastern Geographer on Twitter or SEDAAG on Facebook. We welcome your input and involvement to amplify our joint social media presence. The SEDAAG annual meeting is traditionally held the weekend before Thanksgiving. This year’s meeting will be held in Wilmington, North Carolina, from November 24–26, 2019. Paper and poster submission deadlines are generally...

Editors’ Introduction

Editors’ Introduction Hilda E. Kurtz and Deepak R. Mishra We are nearing the end of our term as editors of Southeastern Geographer. We are now actively working with the new team of Dr. Selima Sultana and Dr. Paul Knapp at the University of North Carolina Greensboro. The official editorial team transition date is July 1, 2019. The submission process through the Scholar-One website will remain unchanged. If you have not yet updated your Southeastern Geographer profile on ScholarOne, please do so; it will help everyone to be working with an up-to-date database. It is especially important that you assure that your contact information is correct and that you select three to four keywords for research expertise. You can easily update or join Southeastern Geographer’s Scholar-One database through our website using your email address. There is no cost, it increases your chances of being asked to review manuscripts (good for professional development), and we respect your privacy by not selling our database. We also want to thank those who filled out our questionnaires at the 2018 SEDAAG meeting at East Tennessee State University. We appreciate the kind words of survey respondents along with constructive criticisms of how we can continue to meet the expectations of the readership. Surprisingly, only about half of the respondents actively publish in or cite Southeastern Geographer (e.g. every few years). Several suggested increasing social media presence. We’re confident that the new editorial team will continue to work with SEDAAG members and officers, building on the rich tradition of the journal to keep it relevant. The President of SEDAAG, Dr. Joann Mossa, is actively working to reinforce the ties between the society and the journal (see her column, this issue). This issue of Southeastern Geographer contains four papers and two book reviews. Three of the papers touch on regional monetary issues, while the fourth paper provides innovative spatial analyses of tropical cyclones affecting the region. In Transfer Payments in Appalachia: Understanding Changes in Per Capita Transfer Payments in an Integrating Region, Ryan D. James and Autumn C. James examine the role of transfer payments—e.g. non-wage income transferred generally through governmental social support systems—in one of the historically poorest regions of the United States. Governmental transfer payments require an individual to first file as well as meet eligibility standards that may change depending upon policy initiatives of prevailing power dynamics. Do local structures (e.g. unemployment) drive transfer payments rather than the neo-classic growth perspective that transfer payments are driven by specific industries? Can Appalachia be considered a [End Page 206] homogenous region in terms of economic drivers reflected in transfer payments? What implications can be drawn to guide future policy initiatives? The authors suggest further avenues of research. Even outside of Appalachia, the implications to effectively direct governmental resources to support policy are intriguing, as well as the ways in which local structure tempers broader policy initiatives. The Appalachian region is not unique among southern States in being characterized nationally as “underdeveloped” or “poor”. Yet Atlanta is home to Delta Airline, one of the largest international airlines. Darren Purcell and Cayton Moore examine how a multi-national corporation promotes its home region in Selling Southern Places: An Examination of Delta’s Sky Magazine City. Theirs is a case study in place marketing by a magazine striving to increase regional appeal to both businesses and tourists. Unlike most other investigations of place-based marketing, Purcell and Moore do not focus on a single locale, but rather on the media outlet of international airline with more than six million passengers/readers per month that are already traveling for business or tourism. Are there related themes among the profiles of Southern cities that might indicate a selling or branding of Southern identity? What is gained or lost in homogenization of Southern city profiles? In Income Divergence Between Connecticut and Mississippi: Financialization and Uneven Development, 1970–2010, John Posey investigates the effect of financialization on economic inequality. In a synergistic study informed by scholarship financialization, world cities and uneven development, Posey problematizes neoclassical perspectives on income inequality. The comparative analysis of Mississippi, one of the poorest states, and Connecticut...

Editors’ Introduction

Editors’ Introduction Hilda E. Kurtz and Deepak R. Mishra Four years ago this month (as we write this in July), we were new to the helm of Southeastern Geographer and working hard to develop our own templates and processes. Our pitch to the Executive Board of SEDAAG had been that as a regional journal for arguably the most dynamic region in the United States, Southeastern Geographer was poised to publish geographic scholarship considered broadly relevant to diverse audiences. As we wrote to SEDAAG’s then president Skeeter Dixon in a Letter of Intent, The region’s social, cultural, economic, and political diversity and broad climate and ecosystem variability from southern Appalachian Mountains to vast Gulf Coast wetlands make it a fascinating and important object of study. In that sense, the southeastern United States is arguably a bellwether for myriad human and geophysical processes shaping our collective present and future. At the same time, the region is intricately linked to processes, flows, and conditions that extend across the country, continent, and globe. We aim to focus one or two special issues per year on scholarship that explores such relational themes. Then, just as we stepped in to run Southeastern Geographer, a White supremacist murdered nine Black members of Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina. The words in our Letter of Intent to SEDAAG took on much heavier and more sober meaning. The murders, in the sanctuary of their own church, of Depayne Middleton Doctor, Cynthia Hurd, Susie Jackson, Ethel Jackson, Reverend Clementa Pinckney, Tywanza Sanders, Reverend Dr. Daniel Simmons, Sr., Shoronda Coleman-Singleton, and Myra Thomson, were a terrible display of the racial hatred that has poisoned this region and the country as a whole for centuries. People across the country struggled to make any kind of sense out of such a heinous act. We turned to geographers from across the country and from across this wide discipline, asking them to draw on geographic thought to offer insight into the origins or implications of the massacre at Mother Emanuel or the aftermath in which Confederate flags and memorials were debated and in some cases, taken down. By late 2018, papers from the issue (56-1) in which the Special Forum on the Charleston Massacre of 2015 was published, have been downloaded through Project Muse 4,162 times. We could see the promise of the model almost immediately. The essays, by Kate Derickson, Priscilla McCutcheon, LaTonya Eaves, Derek Alderman and Josh Inwood, and Jonathan Leib and Gerald Webster, helped a wide [End Page 332] audience grapple with a complex issue. They demonstrated the relevance of geographic thought in a complex world. We followed up with a Special Forum on the Paris COP21 Climate Conference: What Does It Mean for the Southeast? in 56-2 and a Special Forum on Geographies of the 2016 Presidential Election in 56-3. Papers from that issue of Southeastern Geographer were downloaded 6,862 times by late 2018. In addition to the occasional Special Forum, we are proud to have worked with several guest editors to shepherd the production of Special Issues which offer an opportunity to showcase thematically integrated papers. The first of these was Black Geographies In and Of the United States South. Guest editors and emerging scholars Adam Bledsoe, LaToya Eaves, and Brian Williams, edited a generative set of papers (in issue 57-1) which with 1,892 downloads, was the ranked first in Project Muse downloads by issues for the 2017–2018 year. The second of these was Coastal Seagrass and Submerged Aquatic Vegetation Habitats in the Gulf of Mexico, by guest editors Patrick Biber and Hyun Cho. This issue too was well-read, with 825 downloads. The third of these—published earlier this year—explored Wild Foods (59-1), guest edited by Nancy O’Hare. We do not yet have download data. The last four years in the life of Southeastern Geographer has brought several more changes to how the journal operates. The biggest change was the conversion from email submissions to Manuscript Central’s ScholarOne Interface. We extend our thanks to the SEDAAG Executive Committee for the foresight to invest resources in updating the journal in this and other ways...

Editor’s Introduction

Editor’s Introduction Hilda E. Kurtz and Deepak R. Mishra The papers in issue 58-3 of Southeastern Geographer highlight the range of research methods that invigorates contemporary geography. Derek Alderman, Joshua Inwood and James Tyner showcase historical geography in a contextual biography of a major sports figure at the turn of the 20th century. Their analysis draws on an archival record of news reporting, as well as secondary sources at the interface of historical geography, social history and sports history. Their paper showcases the synergistic quality of geography research inflected with the sensibilities of the humanities. Noah Goyke and Puneet Dwivedi analyses of recent African American migration to the southeasatern United States continues a tradition of empirical work and quantitative analysis that shaped much of the discipline from the quantitative revolution onward. Their paper theorizes and tests a set of qualities pertaining to this particular migration stream, and opens a suite of additional research questions. Paul McDaniel’s paper is grounded in a textual analysis of public rhetoric and policy documentation of municipal programs in three major cities, showcasing the kinds of work that qualitative research methods make possible. Georgianna Strode, Victor Mesev and Julianna Maantay developed a new technique for pre-processing disaggregated census data to apply to parcels with group living situations (e.g. college dormitories, nursing homes, etc.) while correcting for mis-matched geometric alignment. Substantively, the first three papers share broad thematic interests in how members of minority racial or ethnic groups make spaces for themselves in American society, in relation to broader structural conditions and power structures. As part of their ongoing examination of Black athletes and competitors, Alderman, Inwood and Tyner’s paper explores the “dynamic and contested terrain” of the reputation of turn of the century heavyweight fighter Jack Johnson. Johnson was a Black world heavyweight boxing champion from 1908 to 1915 who challenged racist social structures through a complex reputational politics. He owned the role of black villain ascribed to him by the white establishment and used it to taunt those who refused to accept that Black people should live lives of their own choosing. Alderman et al. reflect on the implications of Johnson’s life and actions for race relations throughout the 20th century, with attention to the contemporary recuperation of Johnson’s reputation. Noah Goyke and Puneet Dwivedi’s paper theorizes and tests for differentiated migration streams of African Americans to the southeastern United States. The region [End Page 224] has been a net destination for African Americans since the 1970s. The analysis of migration from 1976 to 2015 teases out rural and urban destinations, and theorizes different rationales for migration. Goyke and Dwivedi’s empirical analysis sheds light on the dynamism of the southeastern region of the United States, and suggests multiple avenues for continued research. Paul McDaniel’s paper draws on Jamie Winder’s (2011) typology of stances toward immigrants to examine “welcoming city” programs in Atlanta, Charlotte and Nashville. The welcoming city designation signifies municipal investment in immigrant integration. McDaniel examines rhetoric and documentation of welcoming city programs in these three cities to find that such programs are motivated by and linked to somewhat different policy outlooks and agendas. The paper suggests that further study of how municipal leadership navigates cross currents in relation to immigration is critical to an analysis of urban growth in new immigrant destinations. Georgianna Strode, Victor Mesev and Julianna Maantay developed pre-processing steps to integrate cadastral parcel data and census population data. Frequently, the geometrical extents of parcel data and census population units are mismatched, and this can result in underestimating population or mis-assignment of population to parcels. These issues are especially problematic for group living situations such as college dormitories, nursing homes, correctional institutions and shelters. Precision and accuracy in dasymetric population maps has broad implications for emergency planning and response as well as modelling at-risk populations. Their three-step pre-processing methodology can be easily applied to all dasymetric areal interpolation methods to reduce error. A review of the second edition of Natural Hazards: Explanation and Integration by Burrel E. Montz, Graham A. Tobin, and Ronald R. Hagelmann III is provided by Ben Wisner. Individual chapters...

Closed for Development? Jekyll Island’s Changing Political Ecology and Geographic Space

Closed for Development? Jekyll Island’s Changing Political Ecology and Geographic Space Eric K. Spears The cover photograph for this issue of the Southeastern Geographer was captured on February 2, 2018, and depicts a blowout, or rather an erosional trough, in the dunes of Jekyll Island’s north beach, known as Driftwood Beach. This portion of Jekyll Island’s beach has encountered erosion for nearly forty years but hurricanes Matthew (October 2016) and Irma (September 2017) seriously comprised the dunes’ integrity. Irma washed over the beach dunes and inundated the adjacent salt marsh of Clam Creek. The sign depicting a washed-out bicycle path captures the after effects of these storms but also symbolizes a much larger issue on Georgia’s barrier island: how to measure geographic space within a fixed legal framework. Jekyll Island (N31° W81°) is a barrier island off the southeastern coast of Georgia. Jekyll Island is also one of Georgia’s most popular state parks and hosts an array of outdoor activities (beaches, marsh kayaking, fishing, biking and other eco-sports). Yet unlike other state parks, Jekyll Island is required to be self-sustaining through the limited economic development allowed by law. It has the typical regional barrier island geomorphology of a berm of dunes on the Atlantic shoreline followed by matrix of barrier flats, upland maritime forest, and salt marshes toward the continental side of the island. Jekyll Island is a mid-sized barrier island, measuring approximately 2,300 ha (5,700 acres). Jekyll’s elevation rests low along the South Atlantic Bight, measuring just two meters above mean high tide and marking one of the most western points of the Atlantic Ocean. Jekyll Island’s location on this coastal Atlantic recess also incurs a wide fluctuation of diurnal daily tides, ranging between 0.3 meters and 2.7 meters. The onslaught of tropical systems, such as Matthew and Irma, reflect the island’s susceptibility to moderate and strong storm surges. Changes to beaches and salt marshes demonstrate that Jekyll Island’s space evolves through the geomorphology of erosion, weathering, transport, and deposition. In fact, Jekyll’s southern beaches are growing due to deposition of longshore currents, while its northern beaches are eroding. The changing nature of Jekyll Island’s physical geography, however, has been one of political controversy over the past few years. For years, the Jekyll Island Authority (JIA), citizen environmental groups, and academics have argued over the actual size of the island’s geography. [End Page 321] A seemingly straightforward scientific measurement was marred in a politics of scale and production of space, which framed Jekyll Island’s contemporary political ecology and historical materialism. The cover image, Closed for Development?, symbolizes this recent struggle to command space, determine sustainable development, and maximize revenue. On April 14, 2014, Governor Nathan Deal (Republican) signed a law that legally codified Jekyll’s actual size and the limits to economic development on Georgia’s barrier island state park. Between 1971 and 2014, Jekyll Island’s development was governed by state law that 65 percent of the island had to remain in its ‘natural state’ and 35 percent of land could be developed (Associated Press 2014). The original 1971 legislation also recognized differences between land areas and marshland. In a February 2, 1971 letter from State Representative Mike Egan to JIA Director Horace Caldwell, Egan stated: ... I have instructed the Office of Legal Counsel to prepare a bill to provide that no more than one-third of the highland will be developed in any way and that Two-thirds of the land and all marshes will be left in the natural states (Georgia Public Records 1971). In addition, Governor Jimmy Carter determined in 1972 that Jekyll Island must be self-revenue generating in order to support its own tourism industry and environmental sustainability (Shannon 1972). The introduction of the ‘65/35’ rule and new economic management policies situated Jekyll Island within a liberal capitalist order that assumes nature is secondary to economic necessity. To borrow Swyngedouw words, Jekyll Island was placed in an ‘impossible sustainability’ scenario (Swyngedouw 2007). A state law meant to protect further development on Jekyll Island was contradicted by economic policy and practice. Unlike...

Editor’s Introduction

Editor’s Introduction Hilda E. Kurtz and Deepak R. Mishra The papers in Volume 58 Issue 4 of Southeastern Geographer each address, in some way, the passage of time. The papers operationalize attention to the passage of time in different ways. Bright et al. examine the degrees of human recovery three years after a natural hazard in Alabama. Burris et al. mine data from detailed log-books to investigate changing weather and related growing patterns over time from an antebellum Virginia plantation. Hanes’ historical geography of the oyster industry in antebellum Virginia argues for the relevance of even failed policies in the distant past for contemporary political sensibilities. Engström analyzes hydropower generation through time in three southeastern river basins with high inter-annual rainfall—with concommitant limits on ability to generate hydropower—and relates to indirect measure of development pressures surrounding the reservoirs created by the dams. In the context of a period of numerous high-profile environmental disasters, Bright, Sayre, Hanks, and Bagley’s paper “Social Vulnerability and Perceptions of Recovery from the 2011 Tuscaloosa Tornado” is timely. Bright et al. interviewed more than 200 people approximately three years after the E4 tornado affected their homes and lives to investigate the degrees of recovery achieved. They argue for parsing recovery or achieving a “new normal” into both time frame and degree of recovery. After watching the destruction from Hurricane Florence in the Carolinas and Hurricane Matthew in the Florida panhandle through September and October 2018, Bright et al.’s research results remind us the recovery time of those caught in the track of catastrophic storms is much longer than public attention, as those impacted by last year’s storms pummeling Houston and Puerto Rico will surely attest. In “Plantation Records as a Source of Historical Weather and Agricultural Data”, Burris, Elsner and Doel data mined plantation log books from the Shirley Plantation in Virginia. Before standardized instrumentation measurement, weather and related human activities were recorded in handwritten log books, in elaborate and idiosyncratic cursive. Plantation log books were important to planters’ efforts to acquire capital, because they documented the success of experimental agricultural ventures in a world and climate unfamiliar to European planters in what is now the United States. Converting hand-written log books to a searchable digital database is time-intensive and requires patience and diligence. Such records can provide broader scale (decadal) quantitative data. (Similar handwritten logs exist throughout the world for both sailing vessels and large-scale colonial enterprises well beyond the southeastern United States). [End Page 325] Significantly, the time period documented in the log books in question was a time of experimental agriculture during which growers lacked in-depth knowledge of local weather patterns. As the southeastern region of the United States experiences unfamiliar weather events, historical studies of experimental agriculture and cultivars may provide adaptive insights for present and future growers. Hanes’ historical geography of the oyster industry in Virginia considers policy attempts to regulate and stimulate segments of the state’s economy. Hanes argues for an Atlantic perspective on southern historical geography, which considers events and conditions in the southern states in the context of economic, political and cultural relations across the broader Atlantic world. Hanes examines the ways in which White fear of the relative autonomy of Black oyster fishermen shaped the trajectory of the oyster trade in Virginia, with reverberations in the present day. Engström looks at the indirect management impacts of development on the “lakes” created by damming rivers in the southern Appalachian region. Natural lakes in the region are non-existent, but reservoirs are created by dams along the many rivers flowing from the one of the oldest mountain chains in the world. The reservoirs included in the study were created along major rivers, with the primary purpose of providing hydroelectric power. Secondarily, the reservoirs created lake-front residential development opportunities marketed as second-home or full-time living. The study investigates the natural and anthropogenic drivers affecting hydropower potential. This is particularly important in a region that can have episodes of drought, which limit both hydropower generation and the access of surrounding landowners to the reservoir. The paper offers insight into how management of...

Editors’ Introduction

Editors’ Introduction Hilda E. Kurtz and Deepak R. Mishra In Volume 57, Issue 1 of the Southeastern Geographer, we are pleased to offer readers a special issue on “Black Geographies in and of the United States South” guest edited by Adam Bledsoe, LaToya Eaves and Brian Williams, with a commentary by Katherine McKittrick. The special issue showcases conceptually innovative research grounded in a Black Geographies perspective on the racialized production of physical, political and imagined space(s). This issue goes to press two days after a deeply divisive American Presidential election has made it much harder to deny the racism and xenophobia that have threaded through the fabric of the United States for centuries. The Southeastern Geographer has a long record of engagement with race, racism and xenophobia through scholarship on urban segregration, Jim Crow policies, contestation over Confederate memorials, struggle over the Confederate battle flag, regional tourism, immigration and many other empirics. Review of the 55 year archive of the journal through Project MUSE (ProjectMUSE.com) suggests that the Southeastern Geographer may have a higher proportion of work wrestling with race and racism than any other geography journal publishing today. (A thematic resource list of these papers can be accessed from sedaag.org). Conceptual and analytical approaches to race and racism in geography have changed significantly over the years, growing more critical, theoretical and supple over time; these developments are readily on view in the pages of this journal. Against this scholarly backdrop, the Black Geographies scholarship offered in this issue of Southeastern Geographer pushes the critical edge further ahead. Our hope is that these papers stimulate ever more nuanced and critical engagement with some of the most pressing issues of our time. Canadian geographer Katherine McKittrick (Queen’s University) and the late Clyde Woods (UC Santa Barbara) outlined the conceptual apparatus of Black Geographies in an edited volume published in the aftermath of the 2005 superstorm Hurricane Katrina. The lens of Black Geographies counters the ways in which predominantly white-authored scholarship tends to render black spaces and spatial practices as somehow deficient, and guides more open-ended inquiry into Black constructions of spaces that recognize complex spatial survival and resistance strategies in changing conditions of racial bias. The papers in this issue of Southeastern Geographer each contend with historical/ geographic conditions in and of the American South. We leave it to the guest editors to introduce each paper in relation to the aims and intentions of the special issue, but wish to underscore two key themes emerging from this project. First, as [End Page 4] recent turbulent and tragic events in cities across the United States clearly demonstrate, racism is a national, not a regional problem. At the same time, Southern states figure complexly in broader understandings of racialization. The textured array of research showcased here complicates the role of southern histories and geographies in relation to broader narratives of Black Geographies. Second, critical perspectives on race and racialization are vital to the ongoing enrichment of academic geography. The guest editors offer the journal’s readership the stimulating opportunity to envision how critical research agendas centered on a Black sense of place might push the proverbial envelope of critical race research in geography. It has been a great pleasure to work with the editors and authors whose work makes this an especially memorable issue of the journal. We hope that readers will find the work gathered here to informative and invigorating, as have we. Lastly, during our tenure as co-editors, we aim to balance annual special issues between research in human geography and research in physical geography. To that end, we have a special issue focused on submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) in the southeastern coastal zone in the works for next year. As always, we invite proposals for cross-cutting special issue topics. [End Page 5] Hilda E. Kurtz University of Georgia Deepak R. Mishra University of Georgia Copyright © 2017 Southeastern Division of the Association of American Geographers