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

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. Keywords: history of geography, textual analysis, dissertations, digital humanities.
The essence of contemporary geography--its disciplinary DNA--is bound up in its connections to the past: rich branches of a growing family tree of Ph.D.s, advisors, and institutional homes. Many trace [...]