The Stories We Tell: Challenging Exclusionary Histories of Geography in U.S. Graduate Curriculum

Abstract

In this article, we examine how the exclusionary and problematic aspects of geography’s history are narrated, reproduced, and challenged in graduate education in the United States. Approaching introductory graduate courses as sites in the reproduction of geography as a discipline, we consider how these courses can either bolster or challenge problematic legacies of geography’s disciplinary history. To do so, we analyze thirty-two syllabi from graduate-level “introduction to geography” courses in the United States with a focus on how issues of colonialism, race and racism, and gender figure into narratives about the history of geography. In drawing attention to seemingly minor decisions about framing, content, and organization within syllabi, and connecting these decisions to broader concerns about the history of geography and its exclusions, we demonstrate that syllabi indeed play a role in disciplinary reproduction. We argue that, with some conscious effort and design, we can rework the stories that we tell in our syllabi toward more inclusive and diverse imaginaries of the geographic tradition.