Sopher Awards 2012

There are  two awards ($1800) each – from the generous support of Mrs. Tressa L. Sopher & Mr. Phillip Sopher, recently deceased, older brother of longtime Syracuse Geography professor David Sopher.  

Kate Coddington: “Panic! Containment policies take shape in the 2000s”.

Kate’s writing sample represents Chapter 1 of her dissertation examining the detention of marginalized populations, including refugees and aboriginal peoples and entitled “Aboriginal and refugee geographies of containment in Darwin, Australia.”  In this chapter she sets the historical and conceptual framework for the larger dissertation through her narration of two iconic moments in the 2000s that force Australians to face a “crisis of identity”, that ultimately enables the implementation of government policies long-held necessary, but here-to-fore not acceptable to the voting public.  The policies revolve around enforced containment of “undesirable” groups, specifically aborigines and refugees. The committee was especially impressed by the clarity of the empirical and theoretical connections that Kate developed that vividly illuminate the manipulation of panic by the authorities in order to institute their pre-meditated agendas.  In sum, it was well-structured, well-written, clear, convincing and powerful.

Emily Mitchell-Eaton: “Fold-lines and Fault-lines: David Harvey and his Feminist Interlocutors (or The inheritance of Oppositionalism in Knowledge (Re)production).

Emily’s paper takes on the debate, often acrimonious, between Marxism and feminism.  Her paper is clearly structured and well-written, weaving the ideas of multiple scholars, yet leaving space to develop her own ideas and arguments. What makes Emily’s paper a clear award winner is it’s clarity, and attention to making understood some “heady” and complex theoretical ideas.  Her careful analysis of the theoretical ideas, and simply accepting them as a given, allows her to uncover the roots of the tensions between these commonly perceived antithetical approaches to critical geography.

Past Sopher Award Winners