Panoptic geographies: an examination of all U.S. geographic dissertations

Abstract

The study of geography as a discipline has often employed a top‐down approach that examines the output of the field's most prominent members. In this paper, we provide a bottom‐up approach by analyzing geography dissertations. We start by assembling a database that includes the title, author, date, and university for every geographic doctoral dissertation written in the United States over the last 120 years. The database allows us to track the rise and fall of regions of interest and specific topics. It gives a broad overview of the different schools in geography and their influence within separate historical periods. And it permits a more empirically based delineation of geographical “eras” based on the commonality of words in dissertation titles. This work is at the convergence of the quantitative and qualitative; we quantify and visualize textual data to provide a more robust history of geography. The result is a new, more comprehensive way to look at the changing discipline of geography.

Considering Refugees Through 100 Years of Geographical Review

“…As Kaplan and Mapes (2015) suggest in regard to dissertations, there are existing power dynamics and perceptions of the field that definitely play a role in the publication process as well. Articles do not just randomly appear in the table of contents; instead the subject of research represents a negotiation between an editor, the author, and anonymous peer reviewers.…”

“…Whether an article will appear in the pages of the journal is often based on editorial preference, and disciplinary trends. As Kaplan and Mapes (2015) suggest in regard to dissertations, there are existing power dynamics and perceptions of the field that definitely play a role in the publication process as well. This bibliometric analysis quantifies terminology and captures trends within the discipline, but there is room for future research that creates an even more robust analysis of the data.…”

“…The NVivo database includes titles, abstracts, and entire articles for all papers that include the term "refugee*" (n=285) and we can track changes in word use through time. Like Kaplan and Mapes (2015), we ranked words by frequency of use, then examined how specific terms changed in their usage patterns over time. The eras are intended to capture some empirical periodization of broader trends around refugee research in Geographical Review.…”

“…This digital content analysis enables an in-depth analysis of word rankings and frequency in each of these different time periods. Like Kaplan and Mapes (2015), we ranked words by frequency of use, then examined how specific terms changed in their usage patterns over time. Figure 4 shows the changes in word ranking through each time period.…”

Diversity, representation, and the limits of engaged pluralism in (economic) geography

“…Keyword analysis is a technique for exploring thematic trends in scholarly research; with the advent of digitized databases of scholarly output, keyword analyses are used to discern authorial and topical trends in published social scientific research. Kaplan and Mapes (2015), for example, use keyword analysis of dissertation research undertaken by US-based geography graduate students to draw conclusions about the topical spread of the field (see also Kanai et al, 2017). We focus on keywording because it captures the major topical and theoretical foci of a piece of research.…”