My scholarship bridges cultural, political, and historical geography, science and technology studies (STS), and cartography/GIS.
I started my PhD degree program in Geography in Fall of 2006 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and work with Professors Kaiser and Downey.
My PhD minor is in Science and Technology Studies (STS). I am also a Culture for History and the Environment (CHE) affiliate.
Research Interests & Projects
Wind energy and the assemblages of sustainability
The wind turbine is a powerful symbol of renewable energy, sustainable living, and the politics surrounding the contested spaces of wind farms. I ask the following questions:
- how is wind energy constituted geographically?
- how are the cultural and political meanings of wind turbines and farms stabilized and used do work within wind energy debates?
- what are the alignments and oppositions that give this emerging energy assemblage its particular form and durability?
- how are ideas of wind energy linked to scalar imaginations?
- how does the megawatt turbine become naturalized within a landscape? or how does it remain a sublime technological object out of place within a landscape?
- what are the spatial arrangements of wind turbines that constitute varying aesthetic reactions among opponents and proponents?
- how does wind energy perform boundary work between society/nature & urban/rural development?
Wind energy in Wisconsin is currently a volatile political topic. Buoyed by a growing public acceptance of climate change and the increased rhetorical power of "sustainability," new policies are being legislated to reduce the reliance on conventional fossil fuels in favor of renewable energy sources. Behind the legislation is a set of historical, cultural, and social relationships involving complex arrangements of material actors and discursive formations. I will use a proposed 100 turbine wind farm in Brown County, WI as a case study from which to explore these relationships.
the geography of emerging information technologies
Broadly speaking, I explore how technological objects and information and communication technologies (ICTs) emerge geographically, and how these objects and the pracitces associated with them help produce space and place. This scholarship is most closely aligned with that of Prof. Greg Downey.
Yoga & the affective production of space
The practice of yoga is a production of space that involves a more-than-rational, emotional, and affective knowing grounded in the materialty of the body, its connections to the Earth, and its embeddedness in its surrounding environment.
This theoretical inquiry asks the following questions:
- How to use yoga as practice to consider the affective production of space?
- How does the practice of yoga produce space?
- How does the practice of yoga illustrate or enable an interrogation of non-rep theory/affect/flat ontology?
- What is yoga?
- How does yoga access the demarcated 'other side of reason'?
- How can the visual metaphor be reclaimed within and through the body?
Critical cartography/GIS
My first couple years at UW-Madison involved a study of a sub-domain of geography known as critical cartography and the implications of the 'digital transition' on mapping practices. I've since shifted in a different direction, but the critical analysis of maps as objects of representation will continue in my thinking.
Coursework for Ph.D. in Geography and Ph.D. minor in Science and Technology Studies (STS)
Human Geography
- Geographical Inquiry and Analysis: An Introduction (Geog 765), Prof. Turner
- Geographic perspectives and analyses: history of the discipline, issues and research frontiers, interests and perspectives of Madison faculty, structure of graduate study in the department, research facilities and opportunities.
- Space and Place: Proseminar on Human Geography (Geog 501), Prof. Kaiser
- Advanced Politcal Geography (Geog 675), Prof. Kaiser
- Seminar in Human Geography - Disciplinary Edges and Futures (Geog 901), Prof. Harris
- Researching the City: Qualitative Strategies (Geog 203), Prof. Peck
- Explores, and applies, qualitative methods in the field of urban geography. An introduction to debates around the analysis and interpretation of qualitative data is provided, grounded in concrete urban research. Participation in a three-day field course is required.
Cartography and GIS
- Introduction to Cartography (Geog 370), Prof. Harrower
- A broad introduction to cartography emphasizing the theory and practice of map-making. Topics include the basics in mapping (e.g., scale, spatial reference systems, projections), data acquisition, key techniques for thematic mapping, and principles of cartographic abstraction and design.
- Introduction to Geographic Information Systems (Geog 377), Prof. Zhu
- Design, implementation and use of automated procedures for storage, analysis and display of spatial information. Covers data bases, information manipulation and display techniques, software systems and management issues. Case studies. Meets with Civil & Environmental Engineering 357.
- Graphic Design – Cartography (Geog 572), Prof. Harrower
- Study of the map as a graphic communication, the technical and perceptual aspects of its organization, symbolic coding, color and lettering.
- Animated and Web-based Mapping (Geog 575), Prof. Harrower
- Examines recent issues in cartography related to map animation, the Internet, geovisualization and on-demand mapping systems--focusing on new cartographic challenges and opportunities associated with interactive, digital mapping systems.
- Geocomputing– Introuction to Python Computing (Geog 676), Prof. Burt
Physical Geography
- Landforms and Landscapes of North America (Geog 329), Prof. Mason
- Regional variation of landforms and physical landscapes in North America; processes and forms that give character to physiographic regions.
People – Environment
- American Environmental History (Geog 460), Prof. Cronon
- Survey of interactions among people and natural environments from before European colonization to present. Equal attention to problems of ecological change, human ideas, and uses of nature and history of conservation and environmental public policy.
STS Minor
- Uncovering Information Labor: technology and work in space and time (SLIS 810), Prof. Downey
- Critical examination of selected methods of research methods and design; for example, bibliometric techniques, scale design.
- Science, Technology & Medison in Society (STS 901), Prof. Fujimora
- Designed to introduce students to key themes, issues and scholarship in the interdisciplinary fields of science and technology studies. Explores how different disciplinary perspectives contribute to and influence the questions, methods and theoretical approaches within particular fields of science studies.
- Technology and Its Critics Since World War II (HIS 339/639), Prof. Schatzberg
- Examines expert and popular criticism of technology from World War II to the present. Topics include atomic fallout, consumer society, Ralph Nader's critique of auto safety, environmentalism, the movement against nuclear power, critics in the counterculture, and appropriate technology.
Electives and Audits
- Mapping Community Information Agencies (SLIS 810), Prof. Downey
- Why should information studies professionals care about maps? Maps are everywhere in the media. From weather maps to voting maps to maps of toxic waste dumps and terrorist attacks, the way we understand and represent our community, our region, and our nation is tied to the way we draw maps. But more than that, information agencies of all types and sizes depend on maps for their functioning: demographic maps of their service areas and audiences, infrastructure maps of their facilities and technologies, and political-economic maps of the complex regulatory and funding world they operate in.
- Information Architecture (SLIS 861), Prof. Eschenfelder
- This course applies fundamental information science knowledge of the organization of information and information seeking behavior to the design of web based information resources. The course includes usability, navigation, metadata, standards compliant XHTML and CSS coding, XML, accessibility, project planning, project management, evaluation, and ongoing web information system management. Students work with existing organizations to design or redesign a web site based on client needs and management reource limitations.
