Generative tensions: Undergraduates' experience of Geography in US universities

Abstract

We reflect on Geography in the US university by focusing on the paths taken by undergraduates into and beyond our classrooms. Those paths reveal aspects of Geography that appear unique to this national context, and include the structural barriers to US students' entry into Geography, from their highly uneven exposure to Geography in school to their unfamiliarity with it as a university degree. Yet many students still manage to find the field, with the troubling exception of Black and Indigenous students. We also highlight the paradox whereby graduates of this ‘invisible’ field are in high demand within government and industry, even as their training encourages them to simultaneously critique the tight coupling of Geography with those structures of power. We suggest that these are the distinctive and constitutive attributes of Geography in US universities that shape undergraduates and the geographies that they take out into the world.

Geography in the world part 2: Editorial

“…Just as Celata and Governa point out in relation to Italy, student recruitment to Geography in the United States is hampered in part by the weak reputation of Geography among the general public, which partly explains why a growing number of Geography departments have been 're-branded'. And yet Dutta and McSweeney (2024) point to the paradoxical position whereby employers often explicitly value the skills geographers offer.…”

“…Finally, a third concern in this collection is around the lack of diversity in Geography teaching programmes, and how that impacts geographers as they attempt to reach out across class, race, or ethnic lines to build alliances within and beyond the communities they find themselves in. In the US context, Dutta and McSweeney (2024) turn to undergraduates…”