From the Editors

We are pleased to present volume 48 of Historical Geography, published by the University of Nebraska Press, which comprises a variety of provocative research articles, reviews, and reflections on the field of historical geography. In a year marked by the COVID-19 pandemic, we wish to express our sincere thanks to our contributors, reviewers, editorial board members, and to our colleagues at the Press and within the Historical Geography Specialty Group of the American Association of Geographers for their patience and magnanimity as we guided this volume into publication. In particular, we wish to thank Ruth Slatter for her hard work in steering the Kirk and Moeller article—which was originally intended for a special issue of the journal—through the peer review and editorial process.

Also deserving of our special thanks this year is Arn Keeling, who will complete his term as coeditor of Historical Geography this summer. Arn's dedicated leadership has been vital for our journal. He took on the role in 2014, joining Maria Lane, and his editorial efforts span seven volumes. Keeling also facilitated Historical Geography's transition to the University of Nebraska Press in 2018. Although he originally planned to end his editorial term at the end of 2019, Arn extended his commitment to Historical Geography for an additional year last spring in order to help us complete this volume. We are grateful for Arn's indefatigable leadership and wish him all the very best as he takes on a new administrative position as chair of Memorial University's Department of Geography.

John Bauer, of the University of Nebraska at Kearney, recently joined us as our newest coeditor. John has a long relationship with our journal, having served as our book review editor since 2014. His contribution to this volume has been crucial, both in terms of his efforts guiding manuscripts through the review process and his work compiling our extensive book review section. Christina Dando, of the University of Nebraska Omaha, will be joining the team as Historical Geography's new book review editor for our next volume. We also hope to add a second book review editor in the coming year to help further expand and diversify our coverage of the field.

The public health disaster of the last year has compelled many of us to pause and consider a future increasingly punctuated with environmental disruptions. Given that backdrop, Graeme Wynn's Distinguished Historical Geographer lecture—a reflection on environmentalism and the Anthropocene—sets the tone for our 2020 volume. Blending a close reading of environmental literature with a career's worth of insights into the changing stakes of the environmental movement and its goals, Wynn's essay confronts the reality that "environmentalism," as he puts it, "is a job that lasts forever." It also offers a model for extending the insights of historical geography into discussions of political practice.

A trio of research articles also consider the relationship of historical geography to its political roles and public audiences. Gabi Kirk and Robert Moeller's essay, on the "Militarized Arboretum Walking Tour" at the University of California, Davis, illuminates how a historical geographer's walking methods can help "unsettle" colonial and white supremacist visions of campus. Likewise, Kolson Schlosser's analysis of the history of "public pedagogy" at Philadelphia's Wagner Free Institute of Science explores how educational aims have been, and remain, enacted and expressed geographically through particular places at particular moments. Turning toward Israel, Gad Schaffer's study of the Sharon Plain examines how radical transformations in land cover align with political, cultural, and economic transformations that are not so easily disentangled. The issue is completed by our book reviews.

As we look ahead to the coming year, we welcome new submissions to the journal. Informal inquiries to the editorial team about potential articles and special issues are welcome, as are contributions that take as their subject places outside North America and Great Britain. We hope to hear from you. In the meantime, happy reading!

John T. Bauer, Arn Keeling, Briony McDonagh, and Michael Wise, coeditors