Name
Geosophy: the science and art of geohumanistic practice
Date & Time
Friday, May 23, 2025, 11:00 AM - 11:15 AM
Description
This paper explores the concept of “geosophy” and its theoretical and practical implications for new directions in the geohumanities. Geosophy, the subjective, philosophical, and creative understanding and practice of geography, was introduced by John Kirtland Wright in his 1946 presidential address to American Association of Geographers to develop a humanistic counterpoint to the predominantly empirical discipline that stressed the importance of perception, visualization, narrative, metaphor, cognition, and other non-scientific factors in the construction of geographical knowledge. It is exactly these subjective processes of narrative orientation and mind-mapping, claims the cultural geographer Yi Fu Tuan, that integrate physical and human geography into a meaningful symbiotic whole and transform space into place. Years of teaching World Geography at the undergraduate level have convinced me of what Jared Diamond calls, the “Power of Place.” I have seen students inspired and empowered by their growing understanding and field experience of the earth and its systems. Basic geographic concepts - materiality; flux; geologic “deep” time; scale and perspective; landscape; the human-physical nexus; cartography and wayfinding; regionalism; geopolitics; interconnection – are explored and mined for insights to both ground and liberate a new geographic literacy and imagination in the classroom and everyday life. Through a practical exploration of multicultural approaches to geography, this paper considers the literary, artistic, civic, and pedagogical possibilities of geosophy and the geohumanities.
Location Name
Canal (CB) 2202
Session Type
Oral Presentation
Abstract ID
247
Speaker Name
Michael Kilburn
Speaker Organization
Endicott College
Session Name
CS139 Geographic Thought and Practice