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Over the past three decades, feminist historiography of geography has begun to situate women's contribution to the production of geographical knowledge within the histories of geography, at times against the conviction of skeptical colleagues. In this Focus Section introduction, we renew Domosh's (1991a, 1991b) call for creating more inclusive feminist histories of geography by situating the three focus section articles on the careers and contributions of women in twentieth-century geographical practice and knowledge production in the United Kingdom and the United States within wider debates about diverse, unfamiliar, and previously hidden aspects of geographical knowledge production. We argue that feminist historiography of geography and feminist historical geography could benefit from continuously diversifying inclusive and comparative research perspectives, and from unlocking diverse archives, to enhance understanding of why and how some male and some female gatekeepers have been more supportive of wom...

This report takes as its prompt John K. Wright’s 1925 ‘plea for the history of geography’ – an early call for an inclusive account of geographical thought and practice, embracing both professional and amateur ways of knowing. In reflecting on the extent to which contemporary histories of geography realize the scope of Wright’s ambition, the paper considers how external pressures, such as neoliberalism and academia’s audit culture, function to shape and constrain the writing of those histories. The paper argues for the value of ‘slow’ scholarship as an act of political resistance and as a sine qua non of nuanced and comprehensive historiography. The report concludes by examining how biographical and genealogical approaches to narrating geography’s histories have important implications for the decisions made about inclusion and exclusion, about what and who counts in geography.

This paper examines the pedagogical and practical challenges associated with teaching historical geography, and archival research specifically, in the context of the undergraduate field trip. In so doing, it draws upon students' own reflections on the experience of conducting archival research during a field trip to New York City and presents the results of an international survey of academics' views as to the current problems and future possibilities associated with the teaching of historical geography and the implications of these perspectives for future curriculum design.

This paper traces the origins and recent history of the geography of the book: an interdisciplinary focus of study for geographers, book historians and historians of science. In describing this field's twin concern with geography in books and with the geography of books, the paper examines the ways in which printed texts matter to the study of geography's discursive and disciplinary histories and the contributions that geography, in turn, can make to explaining the circulation and reception of knowledge in print. Through an attention to the making and movement of texts, the paper examines how questions of geography inform understandings of the uneven diffusion and varied reception of knowledge and ideas. In addressing geography's print culture, and in examining geographies of reading, the paper reflects on the significance of books to the making of geographical knowledge and to the significance of geography in accounting for the making of textual meaning.

Histories of geography are, by their very nature, selective enterprises. The apparent tendency of geographers to disparage particular periods of the discipline’s history, at the same time as exalting others, is characteristic of the way in which progress has been measured, relevance defined, and novelty identified. Yet, whilst other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences actively engage with their textual canons and founding figures, geographers have notoriously avoided doing so. In this paper, we consider why this has been the case and how different conceptions of canonicity have mattered to the ways in which the history of geography and its intellectual foundations have been narrated. In thinking through the significance of geography’s texts to the ways we imagine the discipline – its past, present, and future – we consider how processes of remembering and forgetting have been employed to serve certain intellectual and ideological agendas. We conclude by advocating a more serious engagement with geography’s textual legacy: one which might benefit not only disciplinary historiography but also disciplinary consciousness, and thus the future of geography itself.

In responding to the commentaries on Keighren et al. (2012), we discuss in this paper the nature of memory and forgetfulness in geography and examine what the implications of active forgetting are for the stories we tell about geography and geographers. We explore the role which fashion plays in directing the course of the discipline and what this means for our engagement with the work of past geographers. Finally, we consider how notions of inheritance and bequest can inform the ways in which we value the texts through which the discipline has defined and represented itself.

Whilst geography has formed an important yet often unacknowledged component in the description and analysis of print culture, its specific and potential contribution to understanding the making, distribution and reading of books has yet to be outlined fully. This paper seeks to describe the different ways in which Ellen Churchill Semple's 1911 volume Influences of geographic environment was received and understood – to explain why it was read both as a timely manifesto for a scientific approach to geographical research, and as a text which might damage the discipline's legitimacy. In exploring Influences’ trajectory of diffusion, I argue that it is possible to outline a geography of its reception – to reveal a locational particularity in its reading and reviewing. In so doing, I address questions relating to the epistemic and methodological bases of book geography, and describe the contribution that geography can make to explaining how knowledge and ideas, in textual form, are communicated and received.