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John Agnew

Distinguished Professor of Geography and Italian

E-mail: jagnew@geog.ucla.edu Phone: 310-825-1713 Office: 1255 Bunche Hall

John Agnew (Ph.D. Ohio State) is Distinguished Professor of Geography and Italian.  His principal field of research and teaching is political geography. His interests include place and politics in Italy, European urbanization, and the geopolitics of the world economy.  He received a Guggenheim Fellowship for his research on borders in 2003-4 and the UCLA Teaching Award in 2007. He has published on topics such as Berlusconi’s Italy: Mapping Contemporary Italian Politics (with M. Shin), 2008; Place and Politics in Modern Italy (2002); and Rome (World Cities Series), 1995. Hegemony: The New Shape of Global Power (2005) and Globalization and Sovereignty (2009) both won the Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award.  His major work in progress is Spatializing Populism: “Going to the People” in Italy since the 1990s.  Courses commonly taught: ITA/GEOG 241 Political Geography of Italy. Topics have been: Nature and Society in Modern Italy; Italy and its Regions; The Landscape of Modern Rome; and Mafias in Italian Life and Literature.

 

Featured Works

Selected Publications

Articles

With M. Shin, “Electoral dramaturgy: Insights from Italian politics about the 2015-16 campaign strategy of Donald Trump ... and beyond,”  Southeastern Geographer, 56/3 (2016): forthcoming. “La geopolitica de la austeridad europea: Ordnungspolitik y la sombra del modelo economico aleman sobre la crisis de la Eurozona,” Geopolitica(s) (Madrid Spain), 6 (2015), 179-200. “Geopolitics in an era of globalization,” Tamoios (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) (2015), 11, 2: 4-21. “Revisiting the territorial trap,” Nordea (Oulu, Finland), 44 (2015): 43-48. “Editorial: Unbundled territoriality and regional politics,” Territory, Politics, Governance, 3/2 (2015): 1-3. “US hegemony and the limits to territorial geopolitics in the  twentieth century,” Storia del Pensiero Politico (Florence, Italy) 4/3 (2015): 407-26. With S. Nian and X. Desheng, “World cities and international organizations: political global-city status of Chinese cities,” Chinese Geographical Science, 24/3 (2014): 362-74. “By words alone shall we know?” Dialogues in Human Geography, 4/3 (2014): 311-19 and “By way of response,” Dialogues in Human Geography, 4/3 (2014): 339-42. “Foreword” to Special Issue on “Catastrophic Geographies,” Geographical Review, 103 (2013): 455-57. With S. Stephenson, L. Smith, and L. Brigham, “Projected 21st-century changes to Arctic marine access,” Climatic Change, 118/3 (2013): 885-899. "Editorial: Territory, Politics, Governance" Territory, Politics, Governance, 1,1 (2013). "Is US Security Policy 'Pivoting" from the Atlantic to Asia-Pacific?" Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Tiergarten Conference (Berlin), September 12 2012. "Looking Back to Look Forward: Chinese Geopolitical Narratives and China's Past," Eurasian Geography and Economics, 53/3 (2012), 301-14. With Scott Stephenson et al. "Projected 21st Century Changes to Arctic Marine Access," Climatic Change (2013), forthcoming. "Arguing with Regions," Regional Studies (2013). "Rethinking Popular Sovereignty in Light of the Arab Awakening," Arab World Geographer, 15/1 (2012), 82-90. "Putting Politics into Economic Geography," in T. Barnes et al. (eds.) Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Economic Geography (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012). "The Big Seducer: Berlusconi's Image at Home and Abroad and the Future of Italian Politics," California Italian Studies, 2/1 (2011). "Space and Place," in John A. Agnew and David N. Livingstone (eds.) Sage Handbook of Geographical Knowledge (London: Sage Publications, 2011). With M. Shin, "Spatial Regression for Electoral Studies: the Case of the Italian Lega Nord," in B. Warf and J. Leib (eds.) Revitalizing Electoral Geography (Farnham, England: Ashgate, 2011) With Scott Stephenson and Laurence Smith, "Divergent Long-Term Trajectories of Human Access to the Arctic," Nature Climate Change, 1 (2011). "Dualisme contre polyphonie dans la gouvernance territoriale contemporaine," in Giuseppe Bettoni (ed.) Gouverner les territoires: antagonismes et partenariats entre acteurs publics (Paris: IGPDE, Ministry of Finance, 2011). "Waterpower: Politics and the Geography of Water Provision," Annals of the Association of American Geographers," 101/3 (2011), 463-76. "Emerging China and Critical Geopolitics: Between World Politics and Chinese Particularity," Eurasian Geography and Economics, 51/5 (2010), 569-82. “Deus Vult: the geopolitics of the Catholic Church,” Geopolitics, 15 (2010), 39-61. “Italian Labyrinth,” Journal of Cultural Geography 27 (2010), 261-73. “‘Ghosts of Rome’: the haunting of Fascist efforts at remaking Rome as Italy’s capital city,” Annali d’Italianistica, 28 (2010), 179-97. “Money games: currencies and power in the contemporary world economy,” Antipode 41 s1 (2010), 214-38. “Making the strange familiar: geographical analogy in global geopolitics,” Geographical Review, 99/3 (2009), 426-43. "Borders on the Mind: Re-Framing Border Thinking," Ethics and Global Politics, 1/4 (2008), 1-17. With T.W. Gillespie, J. Gonzalez, and B. Min, "Baghdad Nights: Evaluating the US Military 'Surge' Using Nighttime Light Signatures," Environment and Planning A, 40 (2008), 2285-95. "Know-Where: Geographies of Knowledge of World Politics," International Political Sociology, 1/2 (2007), 138-148. "No Borders, No Nations: Making Greece in Macedonia," Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 97/2 (2007), 398-422. "Remaking Italy? Place Configurations and Italian Electoral Politics under the 'Second Republic,'" Modern Italy, 12/1 (2007), 17-38. "Sovereignty Regimes: Territoriality and State Authority in Contemporary World Politics," Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 95/2 (2005), 437-461.

Reviews

 “Review Forum: K.R. Cox, Making Human Geography,” editor and contributor, AAG Review of Books, 3/2 (2015). Classics in Human Geography Revisited: Frederick Boal’s ‘Territoriality on the Shankill-Falls divide, Belfast,’ Irish Geography 6 (1969). “Flagging places,” Progress in Human Geography, 38 (2014): 2-3. “Reading John Agnew’s and Luca Muscara’s ‘Making Political Geography’: Response to critics: fashion, determinism and context in the making of a textbook.” Political Geography, 38 (2013): 52-53. "Of Canons and Fanons," Dialogues in Human Geography, 2, 3 (2012), 321-3.

Book Edits

Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Political Geography (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2015, co-edited with Virginie Mamadouh, Anna Secor and Joanne Sharp), 592 pp. With David N. Livingstone (eds.) Sage Handbook of Geographical Knowledge (London: Sage Publications, 2011) With James S. Duncan (eds.) Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Human Geography (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011) Co-edited with Katharyne Mitchell and Gerard Toal, A Companion to Political Geography (Oxford:Blackwell, 2003).