Editors’ Introduction

Four years ago this month (as we write this in July), we were new to the helm of Southeastern Geographer and working hard to develop our own templates and processes. Our pitch to the Executive Board of SEDAAG had been that as a regional journal for arguably the most dynamic region in the United States, Southeastern Geographer was poised to publish geographic scholarship considered broadly relevant to diverse audiences. As we wrote to SEDAAG’s then president Skeeter Dixon in a Letter of Intent,

The region’s social, cultural, economic, and political diversity and broad climate and ecosystem variability from southern Appalachian Mountains to vast Gulf Coast wetlands make it a fascinating and important object of study. In that sense, the southeastern United States is arguably a bellwether for myriad human and geophysical processes shaping our collective present and future. At the same time, the region is intricately linked to processes, flows, and conditions that extend across the country, continent, and globe. We aim to focus one or two special issues per year on scholarship that explores such relational themes.

Then, just as we stepped in to run Southeastern Geographer, a White supremacist murdered nine Black members of Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina. The words in our Letter of Intent to SEDAAG took on much heavier and more sober meaning. The murders, in the sanctuary of their own church, of Depayne Middleton Doctor, Cynthia Hurd, Susie Jackson, Ethel Jackson, Reverend Clementa Pinckney, Tywanza Sanders, Reverend Dr. Daniel Simmons, Sr., Shoronda Coleman-Singleton, and Myra Thomson, were a terrible display of the racial hatred that has poisoned this region and the country as a whole for centuries. People across the country struggled to make any kind of sense out of such a heinous act. We turned to geographers from across the country and from across this wide discipline, asking them to draw on geographic thought to offer insight into the origins or implications of the massacre at Mother Emanuel or the aftermath in which Confederate flags and memorials were debated and in some cases, taken down.

By late 2018, papers from the issue (56-1) in which the Special Forum on the Charleston Massacre of 2015 was published, have been downloaded through Project Muse 4,162 times. We could see the promise of the model almost immediately. The essays, by Kate Derickson, Priscilla McCutcheon, LaTonya Eaves, Derek Alderman and Josh Inwood, and Jonathan Leib and Gerald Webster, helped a wide audience grapple with a complex issue. They demonstrated the relevance of geographic thought in a complex world. We followed up with a Special Forum on the Paris COP21 Climate Conference: What Does It Mean for the Southeast? in 56-2 and a Special Forum on Geographies of the 2016 Presidential Election in 56-3. Papers from that issue of Southeastern Geographer were downloaded 6,862 times by late 2018.

In addition to the occasional Special Forum, we are proud to have worked with several guest editors to shepherd the production of Special Issues which offer an opportunity to showcase thematically integrated papers. The first of these was Black Geographies In and Of the United States South. Guest editors and emerging scholars Adam Bledsoe, LaToya Eaves, and Brian Williams, edited a generative set of papers (in issue 57-1) which with 1,892 downloads, was the ranked first in Project Muse downloads by issues for the 2017–2018 year. The second of these was Coastal Seagrass and Submerged Aquatic Vegetation Habitats in the Gulf of Mexico, by guest editors Patrick Biber and Hyun Cho. This issue too was well-read, with 825 downloads. The third of these—published earlier this year—explored Wild Foods (59-1), guest edited by Nancy O’Hare. We do not yet have download data.

The last four years in the life of Southeastern Geographer has brought several more changes to how the journal operates. The biggest change was the conversion from email submissions to Manuscript Central’s ScholarOne Interface. We extend our thanks to the SEDAAG Executive Committee for the foresight to invest resources in updating the journal in this and other ways...