Lynda JOHNSTON, University of Waikato, New Zealand
Robyn LONGHURST, University of Waikato, New Zealand
Emeritus Professor Janice Monk argues for the importance of examining “the careers of women geographers” (Monk 2004, 1) and in this presentation we turn our attention towards her own impressive career. We also turn our attention towards another woman geographer, the late Professor Dame Evelyn Stokes, who like Monk, over the course of many decades, made a rich contribution to the discipline of human geography. Both Monk and Stokes continue to influence our own scholarly journeys. We adopt an approach that Monk (2004, 2) used when examining the careers of women geographers, that is to acknowledge “the existence of multiple histories” and the importance “of recognizing differences among women as gender intersects an array of other distinctions, among them race and ethnicity, class, place, and time”. Monk and Stokes each have different histories despite both being born ‘down-under’ (Monk in Australia and Stokes in Aotearoa New Zealand) within a few months of each other (Monk in March 1937 and Stokes in December 1936). Both Monk and Stokes have ‘changed places’ through their critical scholarship and through their experiences of living down under (Stokes) and North America (Monk). Monk spent her academic career not in her country of birth but in North America, while Stokes, although she travelled to North America to undertake her PhD, upon completion returned to spend her academic career in Aotearoa New Zealand. Monk and Stokes share common ground. Both were influential in shaping critical geographies - Monk in shaping gender geography and Stokes in shaping M?ori geography. Also, both looked beyond one single axes of difference to instead focus on mutually constitutive forms of social oppression. Both were ahead of their time, engaging an intersectionality approach, and played a major role in shaping much of the debate in contemporary critical feminist and embodied geography and geographical education that came to follow.
Mots clés : women geographers|gender|M?ori|intersectionality|embodied geography
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