Geography Books

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  Ch 22: Beyond Houses of Worship: Understanding and Exploring Alternatively Sacred Spaces

  Caitlin Finlayson

  This chapter appears in the book, Handbook of the Geographies of Religion. Edited by Lily Kong, Orlando Woods, and Justin K.H. Tse.

  Chapter abstract: This chapter investigates alternatively sacred spaces. These spaces challenge the boundaries of current definitions of “sacred space,” but at the same time, they help us to better understand notions of placemaking, sacralization, and the lived religious experience. The chapter begins with a discussion of how we might conceptualize these spaces before turning to an overview of related literature. It then presents a typology that classifies different forms of sacred spaces, making the case that geographers of religion have largely overlooked nontraditional belief systems. This chapter also offers an analysis of virtual sacred spaces during the COVID-19 pandemic, during which numerous congregations shifted from traditional services to virtual services. This shift from a traditional sacred space to an alternatively sacred space—and the varying reactions from congregants—helps shed light on the ways in which space is experienced and the role of alternatively sacred spaces in the digital domain moving forward. The chapter closes with directions for future research, exploring how the rise of religious “nones,” rather than marginalizing the role of geographers of religion, may provide fertile ground for new explorations of how we experience the world as spiritual people in modern society.

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  Quantitative Methods in Geography: A Lab Manual

  Nathan Burtch and Caitlin Finlayson

  Welcome to Quantitative Methods in Geography! This lab manual is designed to accompany undergraduate quantitative methods courses in geography and is designed to cover the most commonly used statistical techniques on a variety of software platforms. Within each section, you’ll find a brief discussion of the topic followed by lab exercises. We hope that you’ll find this text helpful!

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  Ch. 8: Engaging Group-based Exercises

  Larianne Collins, Erin Hogan Fouberg, Jody Smothers-Marcelle, Jamie L. Strickland, Caitlin Finlayson, Sunita George, Amanda Rees, and Janet Stuhrenberg Smith

  This chapter appears in the book, Teaching Human Geography: Theories and Practice in Thinking Geographically. Edited by Erin Hogan Fouberg and Janet Stuhrenberg Smith.

  Chapter abstract: This chapter contains eight exercises that each incorporates elements of geographic thinking, the development of threshold concepts and a connection to the personalization of learning. This set of exercises involve student engagement in a class setting in which students work collaboratively with other students in groups exploring topics including gender equality, sustainable development goals, global climate change, and commodity chains. Additionally, students examine different perspectives through a guided discussion/debate and by imagining their lives as either Antiguans or visiting tourists. Many of these exercises involve thinking and reasoning with images, maps, and data.

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  Introduction to Human Geography

  Caitlin Finlayson

  This is a story about us. You and me. It is a story about connections. To each other. To the land. To the world we inhabit. Human Geography is fundamentally about our human experience of being in the world. It is a study of the way we organize, inhabit, and utilize the earth. We humans haven’t always had an easy road. We grapple with pandemics and famine. We wrestle with personal decisions, everything from what to eat to how to dress to what to do with our lives – decisions that other animals seem to not have to consider. In an effort to make things simple and easier, we tend to make things more complicated and now face problems that often feel beyond our capacity to solve.

  And yet. Here we are. We come from an unbroken chain of human ancestors connecting us back to the first few people to walk this Earth. People who overcame. People who solved seemingly insurmountable problems. And so Human Geography is our collective story.

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  World Regional Geography

  Caitlin Finlayson

  World Regional Geography by Finlayson provides a concise and accessible introduction to the major concepts in Geography through an exploration of the world’s regions. This innovative textbook, which has been downloaded over 15,000 times in more than 30 countries, approaches geography as experts understand the discipline, focusing on connections between places and an in-depth understanding of core themes. This thematic approach provides students with an introduction to thinking geographically and an in-depth understanding of the geography of our world.