Pics from Colloquium this year

Learning about Mount Kilimanjaro and Tanzania

AAG in DC.

I know lots of geog students went to the AAG in Washington DC this year, please send stories and pictures to post!

OU goes to OSU

This spring the OU's geography department took a road trip up to see our sister (the OSU geog dept) get a newly remodeled building. The facility is quite impressive!

monthly AGGS Meeting

Don't forget our monthly AGGS meeting is scheduled for Tuesday (April 5 ) at 1:30 pm.

AAG Practice

Here is the line-up for AAG Practice, hope you all can come, and good luck!

Wednesday, March 31

3:30 pm

Haya Alhusainan “Wind Resource Analysis For The State Of Kuwait”

3:50 pm

Necati Anaz and Andrew D: The casual geopolitics of facebook: online performing national identities

4:10 pm

Monica Zappa: “AAG Center for Global Geography Education: Singapore Workshop”

Friday, April 9

3:30 pm

Randy Peppler: “Knowing Which Way the Wind Blows: Weather Observation, Belief and Practice among Native Farmers in Oklahoma - First Impressions”

3:50 pm

Sadiq Khan: “Satellite remote sensing and environmental monitoring network based actual evapotranspiration estimation”

4:10 pm

Chih-Yu Lai:” Examining the Risk Perception of Nuclear Waste Shipments in South Carolina”

4:30 pm

Semi Caliskan: “Effects of solar radiation on vegetation phenology in Oklahoma using MODIS images and Mesonet measurements”

4:45 pm

James Bothwell "The effect of sampling percentage on a spatiotemporal representation".

Friday May 26 Colloquium

Calling all Facebook Friends

In the NEW and IMPROVED effort for better communication and action among AGGS grad students we have also started a Facebook page. Check it out, post your business, and join on!

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=info&ref=mf&gid=357347293073 (if this works?)

Heads-Up!

WEDNESDAY COLLOQUIUM!

Alright, geography fans: I know this is short notice, but this week's colloquium is on Wednesday, March the 10th. I'm supposed to be posting a visual reminder of said colloquium right now, but I can't figure out how to do it, so you're going to have to make do with the abbreviated text version. This week's speaker is OU's own Suzanne Moon, a colleague from the Department of The History of Science. The topic is "Technology and National Identity in Indonesian Industrialization", and as always, there will be snacks and awesomeness to spare. You've officially no excuse, so we expect to see you at 3:30pm in Sarkeys Energy Center, room A235. (3:15pm or a little before for those that need an extra dose of snacks and awesomeness.) I don't know what the happy hour plans are as yet, but I do know of at least one member of the NeoColonial Crew (maybe three) that can usually be talked into a pint or five...
...More to follow...

Flash Back!

Some old pictures from 2009 floated in. There are some familiar faces from some events last year. One was from a class field trip in the Big-D. The other was AAG (Sin City) 2009.

If anyone has more flash back pics, we would be happy to post them: send them to mozap@ou.edu

These pics are courtesy of Trung Tran Vinh (GEOG grad student)

Fall Colloquium schedule

Here is the remainder of the Spring Sustainability Seminar Series. All Colloquia are begin with snacks and socializing at 3:15 p.m. in Sarkeys Energy Center room A235

March 10, 2010

Suzanne Moon, OU Department of History and Science

Geography, Justice, And Steel: Technology and National Identity in Indonesia Industrialization

Co-Sponsored by History of Science

March 27, 2010

No Friday Colloquium, however, on Sat (Mar 27) we will travel to OSU for their dedication ceremony for their new geography building!!! Stay tuned for more details....

March 31, 2010

AAG Practice for students attending the national conference in Washington D.C.

April 23, 2010

Anne Godlewska, Queen's University, Department of Geography

The Unsustainable Nature of Ignorance: Measuring Knowledge To Effect Social Change

Co-Sponsorted by History of Science

April 28, 2010

Diana Liverman, University of Arizona

Institute of Environment

FRIDAY COLLOQUIUM!

So anyway, the Geography Department has an ongoing colloquium series, and the latest installment hits Sarkeys this Friday at 3:30pm. This week's speaker is Dr. Morgan Robertson. Here's a brief bio of Dr. Robertson (facts, figures, and most of the phrasing courtesy of the University of Kentucky website):

Morgan Robertson studies the intersection of market economics, environmental science and environmental politics and philosophy in North America and Australia. As a political ecologist with a background in social theory and wetland biogeography, he explores current attempts to create "markets in nature", such as wetland credit markets, habitat and biodiversity offset markets, and carbon credit markets. Morgan worked for two-and-a-half years at the headquarters of the US Environmental Protection Agency developing federal wetlands rules, and maintains an active role and interest in American wetlands conservation policy and the Clean Water Act. His research extends to the social constitution of "nature" as an object of desire, commodification, and scientific knowledge, and he is particularly interested in current theoretical work on the relationship between political power and scientific concepts of ecology and nature. He is also interested in the growth and economy of the restoration ecology movement in the United States and elsewhere.

Peep the bona fides: Our man got his PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in aught-four, and is currently droppin' knowledge at the University of Kentucky, where he is an Assistant Professor. For those that don't know, this gives the good doctor a top-shelf cultural lineage as well, not to mention academic connections within our own stable of esteemed profs.

Check the 'search: Here's a few of Dr. Robertson's publications, for those that have a spare minute and a touch of curiosity (OU folks should be able to access these through the Bizzell Library portal; other scholars should be able to do the same through their own institution):

"Discussing price in all the wrong places: Commodity definition and price under neoliberal environmental policy", Antipode, vol.39, no.3 (2007) pp500-526

"Performing environmental governance", Geoforum, vol.41, no.1 (2010) pp7-10

"Emerging markets in ecosystem services: Trends in a decade of entrepreneurial wetland banking", Frontiers in Ecology and Environmental Science, vol.6, no.4 (2006) pp297-302

"The nature that capital can see: Science, state and market in the commodification of ecosystem services", Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, vol.24, no.3 (2006) pp367-387

Once again, everyone is invited to this colloquium, so come on down if you're interested in sustainability, money, greed, enviropolitics, shady dealings, the light of scholarship, or even just ducks. Oh, and snacks. We always have snacks.

Stay tuned for more info on our top-notch colloquium series...

FRIDAY March 5!

There will be a gathering at Dr. Darren Purcell's house: 6 PM, at 2508 Butler Drive, Norman, OK. All students and faculty are welcome, look for details on what to bring upcoming.

some fall activities and cool views from the rooftop!

Matthew Collier (GEOG grad student) shows visitors how to find GPS coordinates on the rooftop.

Welcome

Okay, so this blog is the virtual domain of the the Association of Geography Graduate Students at the University of Oklahoma. We've colonized this particular chunk of virtual space in response to years of not having a virtual spot of our very own, and also because we decided it was lame to be without. In fact, the word on the street (virtual and physical) is that we've been lame in general for years now. No more. The A-Team has rolled into town boys and girls, and the geog peeps are ready to take this big black virtual conversion van out for a spin. So anyway, what you're gonna get out of this particular blog is a hodgepodge of geography-related geekery. To the unversed, geography equals maps, and if you're like the majority of folks out there in the A-merry-can hinterlands, the last time you had any truck with geography was in eighth grade, when you dutifully labeled and colored outlines of states and countries while Coach What's-His-Name read the newspaper behind the desk and counted the hours until he could be shut of your skinny behind and get to football practice. Well, we do like maps, so that stereotype actually holds. Beyond that, though, Geography really is a pretty neat and far-ranging discipline, and we have our nerdy fingers in any number of scholarly pies. We're the guys protesting the oil industry in the building that oil built. We're the ones that hug trees so that we can take a good solid rest with our high-powered deer rifle. We also call ourselves the Neocolonialists. You get that one? If so, you're already in the club. If not, stick around. We're all right, really. Oh, our discipline has been blamed, in a roundabout fashion, for World War II. It's complicated, but folks have a point. It's baggage, sure, but who doesn't have baggage? We've been in therapy. So anyway, if you're new to the department, the discipline, or the University, welcome. If you're a random scholar lolling about the interwebs, same to you. Regardless, we hope you enjoy our blog, and rest assured: we know where Carmen Sandiego is; we're just not telling.