Ned Taaffe

But Can She Type

I arrived at Ohio State in September, 1970 from the University of Wisconsin Whitewater unsure about my specialization and future career goals. My uncle Stan drove me to Columbus from my family home in Kenosha. I checked into Jones Tower, the graduate dorm, dropped off my uncle at the airport, and introduced myself to Ned Taaffe, the departmental chair. I was mightily impressed with the prospect of taking classes from Larry Brown, Reginald Golledge, Kevin Cox, George Demko, Howard Gauthier, and S. Earl Brown.

I was the only woman in my Year 1 class. It was pretty much the same at Whitewater so I just did my best to fit in by golfing with the guys at the Jack Nicholas course and TGIF events at the High Street taverns. I did quite a bit of baby sitting in the early years and got an inside look at how faculty members lived and balanced (or not) work and family life.

Second year graduate students were assigned offices in an old house on West 11th Street. It was a messy, decrepit place where the living room was a basketball court, and spatial analysis occurred on the upper floors. West 11th was exclusively male.

Golda Meir Poster

When I requested a transfer to West 11th to stay with my cohort, I was told that the men did not want women there. I was assigned a desk in the old map library in Hagerty Hall with Ph.D. students Vicky Rivizzgno, and Karen Walby. That was 1971 when the woman’s movement awakened our expectations and opportunities. I found the poster of Golda Meir in one of the local shops and hung it on our office door as a note of grievance and solidarity. I carried this poster with me and displayed it in my offices for the next 40 years. It was always the first thing people noticed when they came to see me, and they always wanted to talk about it.

Over the years, George Demko and Larry Brown nominated me for various leadership positions in the Association of American Geographers. When I served as President of the AAG (American Association of Geographers) in 1997-1998, I was sandwiched between Larry Brown as my predecessor and Reg Golledge as successor. I felt part of the OSU team in a way that maybe eluded me earlier. Just as Golda Meir was able to transcend the stereotype of women’s place in politics and society, I was inspired to find my full potential in the geographic profession with the help of my OSU mentors and colleagues.

Patricia Gober 11/1/2021

Patricia Gober, Research Professor

Arizona State University

Then and Now

When I was invited to blog about “then and now”, I thought about historian David McCullough’s statement: “One might also say that history is not about the past. If you think about it, no one ever lived in the past… They lived in the present.” If then is made in the now as McCullough seems to suggest, now is also a piece of then. It is in this spirit that I see then, my time at OSU in the late 1980s and early 1990s, as a source of inspiration to the making of a protean career, and a piece of now as an economic geographer.

The “boundaried” career is centered on the organization, the university.  The tenure institution focuses academics on the needs and requirements of the university early on in an individual’s career.  In the 1990s, the old social contract gave way to newer forms of social contracts arising from downsizing and the emergence of smaller and innovation-driven firms.  Such instability also occurred in academia with adjunctivization.  The less predictable work organization resulted in greater instability for the employee but the protean career also sneaked up on me.

When I graduated from The Ohio State University (OSU) in the 1990s, I was confronted with such instability. Fewer academic positions were available and quantitative economic geography was on the decline.   Unlike other students of Emilio Casetti’s (my dissertation adviser), many of whom were assuming illustrious careers in major departments, I had graduated from OSU without a publication because I had spent my time in the Economics and Sociology departments expanding my understanding of international trade and Asia. The lure towards interdisciplinarity is a big piece of now. Graduating without a publication was not my biggest challenge.  Speaking the language of the expansion method was.  I decided early on to write my papers differently, focusing on the research question than the methodology. The first paper was a hit and was subsequently selected as a classic for a regional science volume.  I went on to publish more expansion method pieces despite warnings of doom from colleagues. Part of such early adaptability was honed from animated arguments with Edward Taaffe, Nancy Ettlinger and Kevin Cox, and the audacity to pry apart Larry Brown’s hot off the press “Place, Migration and Development in the Third World”. But one of the biggest resources, graduate students in Derby Hall, fomented a training ground that was to last a lifetime. Some rejected objectivism and forced me to reflect on my intellectual biases. Others tempted me with the lure of emerging geospatial technology. Enlarging boundary has allowed me to cross disciplinary and epistemological aisles, publish using a wide range of methodological tools, and enjoy a protean career as an economic geographer.

Then was a time of learning to embrace methodological pluralism, and now is a piece of then as such pluralism has continued to define my scholarly work. This centennial celebration has provided an opportunity for reflections, OSU being the place where I began my journey across boundaries. Congratulations on your centennial anniversary.

Jessie Poon, Professor, University at Buffalo (SUNY),

Co-Editor, Environment & Planning A,

Chair, Regional Studies Association