Let geography die : chasing Derwent's ghost at Harvard / Alison Mountz, Kira Williams.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mountz, Alison

Contributor:

Williams, Kira.

Series:

The MIT Press

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Whittlesey, Derwent Stainthorpe, 1890-1956.

Whittlesey, Derwent Stainthorpe.

Harvard University--History.

Harvard University.

Geography--Study and teaching (Higher)--Massachusetts--Cambridge--History.

Geography.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (232 pages).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : The MIT Press, [2025]

Summary:

An investigative history of the closure of Harvard University's geography program in the mid-twentieth century due to homophobia and wider institutional politics. Let Geography Die tells 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. The 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. Let Geography Die 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.

Contents:

Prologue. Let geography die

Introduction. Love and loss in the archives

A haunting : the life, death, and (after)life of Derwent Whittlesey

"With much love, Emeline" : correspondence between "the remarkable Emeline McSweeney" and Derwent Whittlesey

The rise, fall, and "unfinished business" of geography at Harvard

A tragedy in three acts : Isaiah Bowman and Harvard geography

Everyone has secrets : Conant's campaigns and contradictions

Talking with ghosts

On secrets and afterlives.

Notes:

Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.

OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.

ISBN:

9780262381949

026238194X

OCLC:

1467251266