Geography and Geographers of Latin America
Dr Samuel T. Brandt
This session provides an overview of Latin American geography as an academic endeavor, encouraging students to think about how geographic knowledge can contribute to Latin American studies more broadly. Questions to be addressed center on the field’s history and geography. Who are the geographers who have studied Latin America and how have they conducted their scholarship in the library, field, and classroom? With what themes have they concerned themselves and how have these themes changed over time? What is the geography of Latin American(ist) geography? Which places have been most studied, and which have been most neglected? And how has scholarship differed based on where it is pursued from?
The required readings focus on the history and practice of Latin American(ist) geography. The suggested readings allow students to explore further themes and approaches within the field.
REQUIRED READINGS MARKED WITH ASTERISK
Reflections on Doing Latin Americanist Geography
*Parsons, James J. "Geography as Exploration and Discovery." Annals of the Association of American Geographers 67, no. 1 (1977): 1-16.
*Lovell, W. George. "“Not a City but a World”: Seville and the Indies." Geographical Review 91, no. 1‐2 (2001): 239-251.
*Bell, Stephen. "Making Tracks Toward the Environmental History of Brazil: A Personal Journey in Historical Geography." Fronteiras: Journal of Social, Technological and Environmental Science 3, no. 2 (2014): 15-33.
Geographical Syntheses of Nations
*Sauer, Carl O. "The Personality of Mexico." Geographical Review 31, no. 3 (1941): 353-364.
*Brandt, Samuel T. "The Pastoral City-State: A Metaphor for the Geography of Uruguay" Journal of Latin American Geography 21, no. 1 (2022): 125-159.
History of Latin Americanist Geography
*Gade, Daniel W. "North American Reflections on Latin Americanist Geography." In Yearbook. Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers, 27 (2002): 1-44.
*Knapp, Gregory. "Benchmarking and Beyond: CLAG's Role in Evaluating Research Agendas, 1970–2020." Journal of Latin American Geography 19, no. 1 (2020): 38-45.
*Correia, Joel E. "Territories of Latin American Geography." Journal of Latin American Geography 19, no. 1 (2020): 132-140.
History of Geography from Latin America
Reboratti, Carlos E. "Human geography in Latin America." Progress in Human Geography 6, no. 3 (1982): 397-407.
Gutiérrez de MacGregor, María Teresa. "La Geografía en América Latina: visión por países." Investigaciones geográficas 69 (2009): 152-153.
Palacio Prieto, José Luis. "Los estudios de Geografía en las universidades de América Latina; desarrollo, situación actual y perspectivas." Investigaciones Geográficas 74 (2011): 107-124.
*Torres, Pedro Sergio Urquijo, and Gerardo Bocco Verdinelli. "Pensamiento geográfico en América Latina: retrospectiva y balances generales." Investigaciones Geográficas, 90 (2016): 155-175.
Textbooks and Atlases
James, Preston E. Latin America. 5th ed. Odyssey Press, 1985.
Théry, Hervé, and Neli de Mello Théry. Atlas du Brésil. La documentation française, 2003.
Halvorsen, Sam, ed. Latin American geographies. Routledge, 2025.
The Pristine Myth
Denevan, William M. "The Pristine Myth: the Landscape of the Americas in 1492." Annals of the association of American geographers 82, no. 3 (1992): 369-385.
Denevan, William M. "The “Pristine Myth” Revisited." Geographical Review 101, no. 4 (2011): 576-591.
Geography and Statecraft
Hewitt, Kenneth. "Between Pinochet and Kropotkin: State Terror, Human Rights and the Geographers: John Wiley Lecture." Canadian Geographer/Le Géographe Canadien 45, no. 3 (2001): 338-355.
Duffau, Nicolás, and Ana Frega. "Definir, organizar y representar el territorio de la nación: José María Reyes (1803-1864), topógrafo y geógrafo del Estado Oriental del Uruguay." Almanack 31 (2022): 45 pages.
Development Geography and Critical Geography
Santos, Milton. For a New Geography. University of Minnesota Press, 2021 [1978]. (See especially the introduction by Archie Davies, translator)
Ferretti, Federico. "South of the South: Political Dissidence, Exile, and Latin American Transnationalism around the “New Geography” Meetings in the Southern Cone (1960s–1970s)." Annals of the American Association of Geographers 113, no. 8 (2023): 1745-1761.
Alvarez-Veliz, Rodrigo, and Jonathan R. Barton. "The Historical Geography of an Idea: Sustainable Development in Latin America, 1972–2022." Journal of Historical Geography 86 (2024): 175-186.
German, French and Spanish Contributions to Latin Americanist Geography
García Ramón, María Dolors. “James J. Parsons, la geografía entendida como exploración y descubrimiento (1915-1997)”, Documents d’Anàlisi Geogràfica 33 (1998): 179-188.
Borsdorf, Axel. "Chile -a 'Crazy Geography'. A Development Model or just another Expression of Latin American Reality? A State-of-the-art Report based on German Language Geography." Erde 132, no. 3 (2001): 221-238.
de Lira, Larissa Alves. "Pierre Monbeig and the Formation of Geography in Brazil (1925-1957): Geohistory of Knowledge, Intellectual History and the Insertion of Brazilian Geography into the World-Science." Transversal: International Journal for the Historiography of Science 9 (2020). 18 pages.
Lois-González, Rubén. "La cambiante interpretación de la Geografía española respecto a América Latina: paternalismo, hermandad e indiferencia." Revista de Geografía Norte Grande 79 (2021): 279-302.
What is Missing in Latin Americanist Geography?
Marcus, Alan P. "Rethinking Brazil's Place within Latin Americanist Geography." Journal of Latin American Geography 10, no. 1 (2011): 131-149.
Alvarado, Nikolai A. "Where Are the Cities? On Not Excluding (Much More Than) Half of the Latin Americans in Latin Americanist geography." Journal of Latin American Geography 19, no. 1 (2020): 193-203.