A geography of ghosts: the spectral landscapes of Mary Butts

The paper considers the writings of Mary Butts (1890—1937) to explore a geography of ghosts. After examining earlier geographical engagements with the spectral and magical, and outlining the terms of recent scholarly debate concerning spectrality, the paper introduces Butts' life and work, focussing on her ghostly writings in stories, novels, journals, autobiography and an essay on the supernatural in fiction. Butts' discussion of magic and place, and her accounts of the landscapes of Dorset and west Cornwall, demonstrate a version of spectral landscape conveying enchantment, secret meaning and a culturally select geography. The paper concludes by considering Butts in relation to current discussions of spectral geography

Checking the Sea: Geographies of Authority on the East Norfolk Coast, 1790-1932

This paper examines coastal defence in east Norfolk between the late-eighteenth and early-twentieth centuries. From 1802 until 1932 sea defence between Happisburgh and Winterton was the responsibility of the Commissioners of Sewers for the Eastern Hundreds of Norfolk, more commonly known as the Sea Breach Commission (SBC). This paper explores the geographies of authority shaping sea defence, with the SBC a body whose relationship to the local and national state could be uneasy. The paper outlines the SBC’s nineteenth century roles and routines, and examines its relationship to outside expertise, including its early hiring of geologist William Smith. The paper reviews challenges to the SBC’s authority following late-nineteenth century flood events, details its early-twentieth century routines, and examines disputes over development on the sandhills. The paper details the SBC’s dealings with an emerging national ‘nature state’, around issues such as coastal erosion and land drainage, matters which led to the SBC’s demise following the 1930 Land Drainage Act. The paper concludes by considering the SBC’s contemporary resonance in a time of challenges to the role of the nature state, and anxieties over coastal defence

The anthroposcenic

This paper presents the ‘Anthroposcenic’ as a geographical contribution to debates around the Anthropocene, deploying the insights of cultural and historical geography to ask how thinking through landscape and time might shape understanding. The paper begins by elaborating on the term ‘Anthroposcenic’, foregrounding the ways in which landscape becomes emblematic of environmental transformation, and reflects further on geological wordplay in science and the humanities. The role of historical enquiry in addressing the times of the Anthropocene is considered, in terms of the dating of a proposed Anthropocene epoch, and the resonance of past geological debate. The possibilities of the Anthroposcenic are then demonstrated through studies of eroding coastal landscapes, drawing on contemporary and historical material from the English coast. Landscape here becomes emblematic of the Anthropocene, and shows how processes of environmental change are articulated through different geographical scales. Coastal studies also show past landscape achieving present resonance, and thereby how the Anthroposcenic may encompass historical material anticipatory of current debate. The paper reflects too on the ways in which questions of inheritance may frame Anthroposcenic enquiry. A specific Anthroposcene serves to open and close the paper

‘An incredibly vile sport’: campaigns against otter hunting in Britain, 1900–39

Otter hunting was a minor field sport in Britain but in the early years of the twentieth century a lively campaign to ban it was orchestrated by several individuals and anti-hunting societies. The sport became increasingly popular in the late nineteenth century and the Edwardian period. This paper examines the arguments and methods used in different anti-otter hunting campaigns 1900–1939 by organisations such as the Humanitarian League, the League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports and the National Association for the Abolition of Cruel Sports

The Anthroposcenic: Landscape in the Anthroposcene

Through the “Anthroposcenic”, this paper explores how landscape becomes emblematic of processes deemed to mark an Anthropocene epoch, beginning with a detailed discussion of Simon Roberts’ photography of Somerset floods. The Anthropocene, whereby the human species is held to have made a distinctive mark on the geological record, has received extensive scientific and public commentary, and the Anthroposcenic indicates a potential point of correspondence with landscapes, both real and representational. The paper discusses the temporality of the Anthropocene, and forms of image work carried out around it. The paper then examines various forms of contemporary Anthroposcenic landscape imagery concerned with coastal erosion. Recent years have seen a proliferation of coastal art practice, with the meeting point of land and sea being an apt site for reflection on the Anthropocene and climate change. The paper also discusses imagery evoking undersea lost lands, including the North Sea’s former “Doggerland”. The paper sets current art practice alongside the imagery of scientific research, and within a genealogy of narratives of coastal change

‘Goodbye it's 1987’: generation of the new

This paper reflects on Cosgrove and Jackson's (1987) Area paper ‘New directions in cultural geography’ (Area, 19, 95–101), discussing its place within British geography in the 1980s, the associated conferences organised through the Institute of British Geographers, the continuing resonance of its themes and the nature of a ‘classic’ paper. Historical analysis is combined with personal memory to consider the paper's role in generating a ‘new’ cultural geography