Professional experiences during graduate school through the first few years of an academic appointment shape patterns of work and social behavior that prefigure the long-term success of new faculty members, including prospects for tenure and promotion. We explore these experiences through interviews and surveys with a sample of early-career faculty in postsecondary American geography. Our analysis reveals that teaching is the primary source of anxiety among new professors, many of whom begin their first academic positions with little or no preparation in learning theory, course design, or pedagogy. Many new faculty members struggle to maintain healthy personal and family lives, while adjusting to unfamiliar norms of their new institutions. New professors benefit from support offered by their department chairpersons and from working in collegial environments. Among women, we found a greater sense of self-doubt about their scholarly abilities and futures despite having records comparable in accomplishment to their male peers. Many women cope with this sense of marginalization by forming supportive mentoring relationships with other women faculty on campus and through disciplinary specialty groups. Networking with colleagues on campus and at academic conferences enhances the job performance and satisfaction of all faculty members irrespective of gender. Our findings underscore the importance of examining the social, professional, and disciplinary contexts of higher education to acquire a broader understanding of faculty development. This knowledge can help departments prepare new faculty for successful and satisfying academic careers.KEY WORDS: early-career faculty, geography in higher education, faculty development Geography faculty members are starting their careers at a time when geography is enjoying broader public recognition, increased college enrollments, and heightened status as a scientific discipline (Richardson & Solis, 2004). These faculty will also need to confront contemporary, yet in many ways historically persistent, issues including the discipline's small size relative to cognate fields, the continuing challenges of reforming K -12 teaching and learning, debates over the impact of geographic information technologies, underrepresentation of ethnic minorities in the academic workforce, and sometimes contentious relations between scholars divided by research specialty or epistemology. Geography's new faculty members also are joining the professoriate during a period of tremendous debate about the future of the American university and the
This paper examines how narratives of history are organized spatially at historical sites and memorial spaces, especially in urban settings and in places invested with a sense of collective memory. Much recent research has focused on landscape, memory, and place and how relationships of political and social power influence the representation of historical events in public spaces. Although the meaning of such sites may be hotly contested for long periods of time, we focus here on narrative theory and the related, but unexplored, issue of how such historical stories are configured on the ground at actual historical sites. We identify a number of narrative strategies which are frequently used to configure historical stories in space. Declamatory strategies using markers presenting a snapshot of an event are common, but sequential and non-sequential linear strategies are also used, as are thematic strategies that cross-cut space and time to present complex historical stories at various spatial scales. Examples are drawn from a range of historical sites in North America, Europe and Israel.
Abstract:The idea of archives as collective memory is sometimes employed as a metaphor for discussing the social and cultural role of archives. It is argued here that the idea is more than a metaphor and is supported by theories that would view collections of documents and material artifacts as means of extending the temporal and spatial range of communication. Archives, along with other communicational resources such as oral and ritual tradition, help to transfer information-and thereby sustain memory-from generation to generation. Two examples illustrate the interrelationship of archives and memory within this broadened view of communication and culture. The first arises from attempts to find ways to warn future generations of the location of radioactive waste repositories. The second revolves around pressure to efface from cultural landscapes evidence of tragic events that people wish to forget.
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