{"product_id":"let-geography-die-isbn-9780262551595","title":"Let Geography Die","description":"\u003cb\u003eAn investigative history of the closure of Harvard University’s geography program in the mid-twentieth century due to homophobia and wider institutional politics.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eLet Geography Die \u003c\/i\u003etells the little-known and oft-misunderstood story of geographical research and education at Harvard University. In investigative fashion, Alison Mountz and Kira Williams unearth the personal and institutional secrets that drove the sudden closure of Harvard's geography program at the precise moment that it reached its apex. At the heart of this narrative are the hidden personal lives of the queer men recruited to build the geography program—the same ones who were later blamed for its demise. Chief among these figures is Derwent Whittlesey, who eventually became Harvard's last lone geography professor, once the program he had so successfully built was closed around him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe book weaves together several histories at once: the enactment of homophobic policies under McCarthyism designed to purge queer people from university campuses and government offices; a university president with little regard for the social sciences on a personal mission to dissolve geographic education; fierce, if failed, university politicking to rescue and then resuscitate the program; personal queer lives hidden in plain sight on the edge of campus; and two contemporary queer political geographers on a mission to memorialize the queer people blamed for society's ills.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eLet Geography Die\u003c\/i\u003e exposes the truth behind this important story—as well as its wider haunting of an entire discipline 75 years later—while also restoring the humanity of the central characters involved, especially Derwent Whittlesey.Continuities\u003cbr\u003ePrologue: Let Geography Die\u003cbr\u003eChapter 1 - Introduction: Investigating two deaths and subsequent hauntings\u003cbr\u003eChapter 2 - A haunting: the life, death, and (after)life of Derwent Whittlesey\u003cbr\u003eChapter 3 - “With much love, Emeline”: correspondence between “the remarkable Emeline\u003cbr\u003eMcSweeney” and Derwent Whittlesey\u003cbr\u003eChapter 4 - The rise, fall and “unfinished business” of geography at Harvard\u003cbr\u003eChapter 5 - A tragedy in three acts: Isaiah Bowman and Harvard geography\u003cbr\u003eChapter 6 - Everyone has secrets: Conant’s campaigns, contradictions, and impending\u003cbr\u003edestruction\u003cbr\u003eChapter 7 - Talking with ghosts\u003cbr\u003eChapter 8 - On secrets and afterlives\"This important work traces the impact of the 1948 decision to ‘let geography die’ at Harvard, offering new insights about Cold War–era homophobia and the feminization of human geography as a discipline.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Karen Graves, author of \u003ci\u003eAnd They Were Wonderful Teachers: Florida’s Purge of Gay and Lesbian Teachers\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“American geography remains haunted by the closure of Harvard’s Geography Department. Mountz and Williams’s book brilliantly exorcises that ghost, revealing the closeted history of the discipline by telling moving stories of three male gay geographers.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Trevor J. Barnes, Professor and Distinguished University Scholar, Department of Geography, University of British Columbia\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“At a time of elevated threats to academia and politically motivated attacks on entire fields of scholarship, this impressively researched story of the elimination of geography from the Harvard curriculum illustrates how entrenched biases of a powerful decision-maker can have long-lasting and widespread effects.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Rowan Flad, John E. Hudson Professor of Archaeology, Harvard University\u003c\/b\u003eAlison Mountz is Professor of Geography and Vice-Principal of Research \u0026amp; Innovation at the University of Toronto Scarborough. She is the author or coauthor of award-winning books, including \u003ci\u003eSeeking Asylum; Boats, Borders, and Bases; \u003c\/i\u003eand\u003ci\u003e The Death of Asylum.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eKira Williams is a political geographer and a data scientist at the University of Toronto Scarborough. Her research focuses on international migration, borders, political geography, analytical methodology, and statistics. She has published over 20 peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and an edited volume.","brand":"The MIT Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46301534159077,"sku":"NP9780262551595","price":35.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780262551595.jpg?v=1767731329","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/let-geography-die-isbn-9780262551595","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}