1st Edition
The Routledge Companion to the American Landscape
The Routledge Companion to the American Landscape provides a comprehensive overview of the American landscape in a way fit for the twenty-first century, not only in its topical and regional scope but also in its methodological and disciplinary diversity.
Critically surveying the contemporary scholarship on the American landscape, this companion brings together scholars from the social sciences and humanities who focus their work on understanding the polyphonic evolution of the United States’ landscape. It simultaneously assesses the development of the US landscape as well as the scholarly thought that has driven innovation and continued research about that landscape. Four broad sections focus on key areas of scholarship: environmental landscapes, social, cultural, and popular identities in the landscape, political landscapes, and urban/economic landscapes. A special essay, "American Landscapes Under Siege" and accompanying short case studies call attention to the legacies and realities of race in the American landscape, bridging the discussion of social and political landscapes.
This companion offers an invaluable and up-to-date guide for scholars and graduate students to current thinking across the range of disciplines which converge in the study of place, including Geography, Cultural Studies, and History as well as the interdisciplinary fields of American Studies, Environmental Studies, and Planning.
Foreword: Reading the Landscape
Richard H. Schein
Introduction: Twenty-first Century American Landscapes
Chris W. Post, Alyson L. Greiner, and Geoffrey L. Buckley
Part I: Environmental Landscapes: The American Environment
Geoffrey L. Buckley
- Changes Across Rural America: Agricultural Landscapes
Lisa M. Butler Harrington and Chris R. Laingen
2. Fluid Landscapes
Craig E. Colten
3. Energy Landscapes
Brian C. Black
4. Wastescapes
Martin V. Melosi
5. Public Landscapes
Randall K. Wilson and Yolonda Youngs
6. American Landscapes of Environmental Injustice
Ryan Holifield
Part II: Social, Cultural, and Popular Identities in the American Landscape
Alyson L. Greiner
7. "This is Not the America I Know": Reading the White Unseen Within the American Landscape
Aretina R. Hamilton
8. Gender, Sexuality, and Landscape
Christina E. Dando
9. Ethnicity and Transnationalism
Emily Skop and Stephen Cho Suh
10. Interpreting the Landscapes of a New Religious America
Samuel Avery-Quinn
11. The American Cinematic Landscape Inscribed @Work
Chris Lukinbeal
12. Music and the American Landscape: Rhythms of Continuity and Change
David J. Keeling and Thomas L. Bell
13. Sports and the American Landscape
John Lauermann
14. From Post-Scarcity Utopia to Zombie-Infested Hellscape: Continuity and Change in the Landscape of a Future North America
Fiona Davidson
Special Essay: Bridging Social and Political Landscapes: American Landscapes Under Siege: A Provocation
Joshua Inwood and Derek H. Alderman
Part III: US Political Landscapes
Chris W. Post
15. American Imperialism
Barney Warf
16. Iconographic Landscapes of US Borders and Immigration Controls
Kenneth D. Madsen
17. (De)constructing the Grid: The Public Land Survey System and the Production of Abstract Space in the Early Republic
Timothy G. Anderson
18. Landscape and Politics: The 2020 Presidential Election in the United States
Fred M. Shelley and Heather Hollen
19. America’s Contemporary Commemorative Landscapes: Themes and Practices in Memorial Mania
Erika Doss
20. Place (Re)Naming
Jordan P. Brasher
21. The Landscape of Incarceration in the United States
Matthew L. Mitchelson
Part IV: Urban and Economic Landscapes in the US
Chris W. Post
22. Urban Sustainability
Lisa Benton-Short and Melissa Keeley
23. The Ordinary-Extraordinary Automobile Landscape
Ellen Hostetter
24. Tourism in the American Landscape
Velvet Nelson
25. The Changing Rural Landscape
Andrew Husa
26. Rooted in Place—Retail on the American Landscape
Emily Fekete
27. Post-Industrial Landscapes
Mark Alan Rhodes II and Sarah Fayen Scarlett
28. Labor and the Changing Economic Landscape of the United States
Andrew Herod
29. Afterword
Bill Wyckoff
Biography
Chris W. Post is Professor of Geography at Kent State University at Stark.
Alyson L. Greiner is Professor and Head of Geography at Oklahoma State University.
Geoffrey L. Buckley is Professor of Geography and Interim Associate Dean, Ohio Honors Program, Honors Tutorial College, Ohio University.
"The remarkable volume brings together some of the most thoughtful, insightful scholars of the American landscape in a book that provides a revealing portrait into the vitality and relevance of landscape study. The book is full of thought-provoking insights into the changing American scene. It serves as a powerful reminder of why ‘reading the landscape’ is such a valuable component of efforts to understand the cultural, social, and political world we inhabit."
Alec Murphy, University of Oregon, USA.
