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Beyond Description Explanation and Activity

Geog 1110

Beyond Description Activity

• The Beyond Description activity goes as follows: • Read the article

• Pre-presentation writing prompt

• Go through the presentation

• Post-presentation writing prompt

Beyond Description Activity

• In a word document, write to the following prompt…

• Write one to three paragraphs explaining what this article meant to you • What you gained from it

• What parts were interesting

• Why it was/was not important

Beyond Description by Peirce Lewis

• The basics • Peirce Lewis was a geographer at Penn State University

• He is currently an emeritus professor there (retired, alive)

• His research interests were • the American landscape

• Historical geography of American culture

• This article was his presidential address given in 1985 at the end of his one year term as the president of the Association of American Geographers (AAG)

Geography and the American public • The idea that geography is just

knowing place names on a map • “…while the public thinks

geography is an important subject, they know very little about geography as an academic or professional field” (p.466)

Geography and the American public

• Geographic illiteracy • Are you geographically illiterate?

• What you help you become geographically literate?

Geography and a passion for the Earth

• Good description of the Earth is often what drives people to be interested in geography in the first place

• Cartophilia = a love of maps • Topophilia = passion for the Earth

• Examples of exploring his dad’s maps of Ohio and his time on the Lake Michigan sand dunes

• Have you thought of geography this way before? • The human connection of it…

Geography and a passion for the Earth

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Concerning geographic description

• Aesthetic description • “…description so vivid that it moves our emotions by the sheer power of its clarity

and beauty, without any necessary attempt to move our minds” (p. 469) • National Geographic photography is a common example of what we might vividly

want to describe • Communicating geography

• Intellectual description • “…as a basis for intellectual inquiry. The excitement of geography comes from

describing the earth’s surface – and then trying to make intellectual sense of it” (p. 471)

• Doing geography

Description to nourish the mind

• “The description comes first, then we move beyond description. It is the difference between reading maps, which is usually fairly simple, and trying to interpret maps, which is sophisticated business.” (p. 471).

• “…it simply does not occur to the ordinary American intellectual that a map is more than a thing that describes location. Most Americans only vaguely understand that a map can help explain things, which is simply another way of saying that location has devastatingly important consequences. It does not occur to most Americans that a good map raises more questions that it answers – that the question of why things are located where they are raises important intellectual issues, with immediate serious implications.” (p. 471)

Talking to the public

• “We [geographers] need to make our geographic work more accessible and attractive to the general public” (p. 472)

• Good geographic education is one way to do that

Educating tomorrow’s geographer

• “We need, first and most basic of all, to insist that students pay attention to the immediate world that lies about them – in short, to use their eyes, and attach them to their brains.” (p. 473)

• “A second place…is in training our students to describe things well. Paying attention…is only half the game.” (p. 473)

• Broad training across the field of geography: physical human, geospatial techniques, and the history of the field

Some free advice for young geographers (and really everyone in school right now…) • “Your education is important, much too important to allow others to

take charge of it. Stay in charge of it yourself…if you think you need to know something – go learn it…” (p. 475)

• “Don’t let anyone chill your enthusiasm for the world…remind yourself why you went in the field in the first place and commit yourself accordingly with zeal. Of course you will make mistakes. Of course you will look foolish now and then…but those are small risks indeed if you are really serious about understanding the world.” (p. 475)

Beyond Description Activity

• Post-presentation prompt,

• write one to two paragraph explaining what this article taught you about geography

• and one paragraph over one place that you truly geographically love and why (think of Peirce’s example of his dad’s Ohio maps and the sand dunes at Lake Michigan and mine in Goblin Valley)