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Ph. D. Rutgers
University, 1992
M. S. Pennsylvania State University, 1989
A. B. San Diego State University, 1987
Academic Appointments
2003- Department Chair, Syracuse University (beg. July 1)
2002- Professor, Syracuse University
1997-2002 Associate Professor, Syracuse University
1994-1997 Assistant Professor, University of Colorado
1992-1994 Instructor, University of Colorado
1996-2003 North American Editor,
Cultural Geographies
Research Interests
I am particularly interested in three areas.
The theorization and historical study of the production of landscape, particularly as it
relates to laborers and the working classes. Much of my work in this area is historical (early to mid 20th century), with the goal of reclaiming the importance of workers’ lives in the making of landscapes.
Recently I have begun to look at contemporary landscapes of migratory labor in
California.
The production and meaning of public space, particularly as it is transformed in attempts to control the behavior of homeless, other marginalized people
and protesters. Much of this work is contemporary and I have recently begun focusing specifically on the relationship between law, rights and public space.
Theories of culture, particularly
as they have been developed in Marxism and Geography. I am concerned with
examining and explaining the ways that "culture" has become a primary
arena of social struggle, and a principle means for exercising power.
Together, these three areas of study are approached through a broadly Marxist, and certainly radical and materialist, framework. I start from the position that scholarship and political commitment cannot be divorced.
Principal Publications
On Landscape and Laborers:
The Lie of the Land: Migrant Workers and the California Landscape (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1996). “California
Living, California Dying: Dead Labor and the Political Economy of Landscape,”
in K. Anderson, S. Pile, and N. Thrift (eds.), Handbook
of Cultural Geography (London: Sage, 2003), 233-248.
“Landscape,” in D. Sibley,
D. Atkinson, P. Jackson, and N. Washbourne (eds.), Critical Concepts in Cultural Geography (London: I.B. Taurus,
forthcoming).
“The Geography of Injustice: Borders and the Continuing Immiseration of
California Agricultural Labor in an Era of ‘Free Trade,’” Richmond
Journal of Global Law and Business (2002).
“The
Devil’s Arm: Points of Passage, Networks of Violence and the Political Economy
of Landscape,” New Formations
43 (2001), 44-60.
“The Scales of Justice: Localist Ideology, Large-Scale Production and Agricultural Labor’s Geography of Resistance in 1930s California,” in Andrew Herod (ed.), Organizing the Landscape: Geographical Perspectives on Labor Unionism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998).
“Writing the Western: New Western History’s Encounter with Landscape,” Ecumene 5 (1998): 7-29.
On Public Space, Radical Politics and Marginalized Peoples:
The
Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space
(New York: Guilford, 2003).
"The Liberalization of Free Speech: Or How
Protest is Silenced in Public Space,"
Stanford Agora,
September 2003. “Controlling
Space, Controlling Scale: Migrant Labor, Free Speech, and the Regional
Development in the American West in the Early 20th Century,” Journal
of Historical Geography, 28 (2002), 63-84.
Don
Mitchell and Richard Van Deusen, “Downsview Park: A Missed Opportunity for a
Truly Public Space?” in J, Czerniak (ed.) CASE:
Downsview Park (Cambridge: Harvard
School of Design/Prestel Publishers, forthcoming, 2001).
“Whose
Streets?
Whose World?” Review of Education/Pedagogy/ Cultural Studies 24
(1/2) (2002), 147-151. “Postmodern
Geographical Praxis? The Postmodern
Impulse and the War Against the Homeless in the Post-Justice City,” in Claudio
Minca (ed.), Postmodern Geography: Theory
and Praxis (Oxford: Blackwell,
2001), 57-92.
“The Annihilation of Space by Law: The Roots and Implications of Anti-Homeless Laws,” Antipode 29 (1997), 303-335.
“State Restructuring and the importance of ‘Rights Talk,’” in L.
Staeheli, J. Kodras, and C. Flint (eds.), State Devolution in America: Implications for a Diverse Society (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1997), 118-138.
“Political Violence, Order, and the Legal Construction of Public Space: Power and the Public Forum Doctrine” Urban Geography, 17 (1996), 152-178.
“The End of Public Space? People’s Park, Definitions of the Public, and Democracy,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 85 (1995), 108-133.
“Iconography and Locational Conflict from the Underside: Free Speech, People’s Park, and the Politics of Homelessness in Berkeley California,” Political Geography 11 (1992), 152-169.
On Culture, Geography, and General Trouble-Making:
Cultural
Geography: A Critical Introduction
(Oxford and Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2000). “Culture
is Not What it Used to Be: The Transformation of Anglo-American Cultural
Geography,” Jimbun-chiri (Japan), 53
(1) (2001), 36-53.
“The
End of Culture?
Culturalism and Cultural Geography in the Anglo-American ‘University of
Excellence,’” Geographische Revue
(Germany), 2 (2) (2000), 3-17.
“There’s No Such Thing as Culture: Towards a Reconceptualisation of the Idea of Culture in Geography,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 19 (1995), 102-116.
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Don
Mitchell,