Making a difference: geography, feminism and everyday life—an interview with Susan Hanson

Abstract

Susan Hanson is one of the most well‐known geographers in the USA. Currently Director of the School of Geography at Clark, a position she has held since 1988, she was President of the Association of American Geographers during the year 1991–1992. Her Past‐President's address was published in the Annals in December 1992 in which she made clear her commitment to feminist scholarship in geography. Professor Hanson has strong views on teaching styles and strategies which she has developed throughout her career.

As well as an active professional career, Professor Hanson is one of the few women of her eminence in geography who have successfully combined a career with motherhood. Her university career as a geographer has been intimately bound up with her life as a wife and mother. Part of the explanation for her success lies in her long relationship with her husband Perry. For many women the attempt to combine marriage and career often leads to conflicts, but Susan and Perry seem to have been able to combine their marriage, their children, dual careers and their geographical project. This has inevitably involved compromises and a lot of luck. They married very young, as undergraduates, and had their first child when they were Peace Corps Volunteers in Kenya, before undertaking their doctoral research. In common with many career women, Susan's life history is as much a result of chance and good fortune, of making do and seizing opportunities as they arose, as it is of long‐term planning. This interview is based on a continuing conversation with Professor Hanson, squeezed around work, meetings and the family responsibilities of both of us. I talked to her about the development of her career from her time in graduate school in the late 1960s and the ways in which her views about geographical research and teaching have changed since then, her goals as President of the Association of American Geographers and her future plans.