Coffee Hour with Richard Schein in memory of Peirce Lewis

IMAGE OF THE WEEK

Nature-Society Panel

The Department of Geography hosted the eighth Nature-Society Workshop on September 21–22 with Syracuse, Rutgers, Clark, Cornell, West Virginia, and Temple universities. Pictured above, Panel 1, moderated by Jenn Baka, explored land and resource geographies.

GOOD NEWS

Megan Baumann has received a position as a visiting student with a research internship at the Universidad National de Colombia, sede Bogotá (National University of Colombia at Bogotá) within the College of Agricultural Sciences, working with Dr. Álvaro Acevedo Osorio, agronomist and agroecologist. The UNAL is known as the country’s premier public university. Baumann will be there until early August 2019.

On October 4, Dr. Christina Hupy, Director of Education and Training at Boundless Geospatial (https://boundlessgeo.com), will give a presentation at noon EST. Students may participate in person at 413 Earth and Environmental Systems Building or online. The online zoom room is https://psu.zoom.us/j/812983558.

On October 9, Lise Nelson will give a talk on “Affluence and the Production of Illegality,” sponsored by the Humanities Institute. The talk is at noon in 124 Sparks Building. (Light lunch served at 11:45 a.m.)

COFFEE HOUR

Richard Schein
Aphorisms for Reading the Landscape: Lecture in Memory of Peirce Lewis

Peirce Lewis published “Axioms for Reading the Landscape” in 1979, in a small but important volume titled The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes (D.W. Meinig, ed.). Lewis remarked in that essay that (f)or most Americans, cultural landscape just is, before he suggested to the contrary that all human landscape has cultural meaning. This talk posits Lewis’s “Axioms” and the Meinig volume as a watershed moment for U.S. landscape study. It moves from a brief genealogy of the landscape idea in Geography to focus on the post-empiricist landscape imperative that takes seriously Lewis’s claim by asking what is it that landscapes do. What landscapes might do will be presented through a set of aphorisms—concise statements that try to capture important critical-theoretical engagements with the idea of landscape. Some of those aphorisms for reading the landscape will be presented through case studies and examples in what Lewis so famously called the tangible, visible scene.

  • 3:30 Coffee and refreshments, 319 Walker Building
  • 4:00 Lecture, 112 Walker Building
  • Coffee Hour To Go Webcast
  • 5:00 Reception in the Joel M. Myers Weather Center (sixth floor, Walker Building) with hors d’oeuvres and wine/beer and time for people to share their stories and memories

NEWS

‘Women in Geospatial Sciences, Building Leaders for Tomorrow’ workshop

Penn State and Syracuse University will host two 1-and-a-half-day workshops to identify challenges women currently face in U.S. universities, and provide recommendations to retain women leaders in the geospatial sciences, through active engagement and building of peer-mentorship networks within departments, and also across the university and between universities.

RECENTLY PUBLISHED

Urban National Politics in the United States (book chapter)

Joshua F. J. Inwood
The City as Power: Urban Space, Place, and National Identity edited by Alexander C. Diener, Joshua Hagen
http://a.co/d/7igtMmZ

Does Effectiveness of Weight Management Programs Depend on the Food Environment?

Tarlov, E. , Wing, C. , Gordon, H. S., Matthews, S. A., Jones, K. K., Powell, L. M. and Zenk, S. N.
Health Services Research
doi:10.1111/1475-6773.13043
To estimate the causal effects of a population‐scale behavioral weight management program and to determine whether the program’s effectiveness depends on participants’ geographic access to places to purchase healthy and less healthy foods. Secondary data from U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs clinical and administrative records (2008–2014), retail food environment measures from commercial databases (2008–2014), and the American Community Survey (2009–2014). We estimated the effect of the VA’s MOVE! weight management program on body mass index after 6 months using difference‐in‐difference regressions to compare participants with a propensity score‐matched control group. We estimated treatment effects overall and in subgroups with different access to supermarkets, fast‐food restaurants, and convenience stores. MOVE! reduced BMI by about 0.71 units among men and 0.70 units among women. The program was slightly less effective for men living near fast‐food restaurants or convenience stores. We found no evidence that treatment effects varied with the food environment among women. The residential food environment modestly alters MOVE! effectiveness among men. A greater understanding of environmental barriers to and facilitators of intentional weight loss is needed. This study highlights important potential intersections between health care and the community.

 

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