Mark Rhodes

"Every artist, every scientist, must decide NOW where they stand. They have no alternative. There is no standing above the conflict on Olympian heights. There are no impartial observers. Through the destruction-in certain countries-of the greatest of human literary heritages, through the propagation of false ideas of racial and national superiority, the artist, the scientist, the writer is challenged. The struggle invades the formerly cloistered halls of our universities and other seats of learning. The battlefront is everywhere. There is no sheltered rear. The artist must take sides. They must elect to fight for freedom or slavery. I have made my choice. I had no alternative."
—Paul Robeson, 1958, Here I Stand

Contact

marhodes@mtu.edu
906-487-2459
Schedule an Appointment

Personal Affirmation to Work for Racial and Social Justice

Assistant Professor of Geography

PhD, Geography, Kent State University
MA, Geography, Kent State University

Research Interests

Post-Industrial Geographies & Heritage
National Identity in the 21st Century
Cultural Sustainability and Sustainable Tourism
Political Ecology, Place, & Memory
Critical Geographies & Memorial Landscapes

Areas of Expertise

Memory and Memorialization
Heritage Institutions
Cultural Landscape
Welsh Studies
Historical Geography
Cultural Geographies

Recent Publications

Rhodes, M, W. Price, and A. Walker. 2021. Geographies of Post-Industrial Place, Memory, and Heritage. Routledge. ISBN: 9780367440909.
Rhodes, M., C. Quayle, and N. Indish. 2022. “Post-Industrial Barbarians”: Star Trek, the Other, and the Apocalypse. Literary Geographies 8 (1):1-21.
Rhodes, M. 2021. Cardiff and the Contentious Landscapes of Postindustrial, Urban, and Transnational Memory Work. Fennia: International Journal of Geography 199 (2): 203-225. (OA)
Rhodes, M. 2021. The Absent Presence of Paul Robeson in Wales: Appropriation and Philosophical Disconnects in the Memorial Landscape. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. DOI: 10.1111/tran.12442
Rhodes, M. 2021. The nation, the festival, and institutionalized memory: Transoptic landscapes of the Welsh National Eisteddfod. GeoHumanities. DOI:10.1080/2373566X.2021.1903812
Rhodes, M. 2021. Dancing around the Subject: Memory Work of Museum Landscapes at the National Waterfront Museum. Professional Geographer.
Post, C. and M. Rhodes. 2021. Refraining on Necropolitics: Lyrical Geographies of Labor Music. Journal of Cultural Geography.
Price, W. and M. Rhodes. 2020. Coal Dust in the Wind: Interpreting the Industrial Past of South Wales. Tourism Geographies. DOI: 10.1080/14616688.2020.1801825
Rhodes, M. 2020. Music Work: Geographies of traditional Cambodian music and state-building under the Khmer Rouge regime. Asia Pacific Viewpoint. DOI: 10.1111/apv.12261
Rhodes, M. 2020. Landscapes of Multicultural Memory and Heritage in Wales. Focus on Geography 63. DOI:10.21690/foge/2020.63.2p
Rhodes, M. 2019. Paul Robeson’s Place in YouTube: A social spatial network analysis of representation and audience engagement in digital heritage. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 34 (1): 174-188. DOI: 10.1093/llc/fqy027
Rhodes, M. 2018. Exhibiting Memory: Temporary, mobile, and participatory memorialization and the Let Paul Robeson Sing! exhibition. Memory Studies. DOI: 10.1177/1750698018794771
Hannum, K. and M. Rhodes. 2018. Public art as public pedagogy: Memorial landscapes of the Cambodian genocide. Journal of Cultural Geography 35 (3): 334-361.
Rhodes, M. 2017. Alternate Pasts, Presents, and Futures in Star Trek: Historical engagement and representation through popular culture. The Geographical Bulletin 58 (1): 29-39.
Rhodes, M. 2016. Performing History: Remembering Paul Robeson and the Peekskill Riots though Tayo Aluko’s Call Mr. Robeson. Excellence in Performing Arts Research 3 (1): 1-17.
Tyner, J., M. Rhodes, and S. Kimsroy. 2016. Music, Nature, Power, and Place: An Ecomusicology of Khmer Rouge Songs.GeoHumanities 2 (2): 395-412.
Rhodes, M. 2016. Placing Paul Robeson in History: Understanding His Philosophical Framework. Journal of Black Studies 47 (3): 235-257.

Recent Funding

Rhodes, M. 2020. Michigan Technological University. Research Excellence Fund – Research Seed Grant. Community-Engaged Post-Industrial Geographies of World Heritage in Wales. [$46,400]. Awarded.

MacLennan, C. and Rhodes, M. 2020. Keweenaw Heritage Grant for the Keweenaw County Historical Society and Historical School at Gay Museum. Copper Milling at Gay: A Lake Superior Story. [$31,645]. Awarded.

Presentations and Panels

Living Memories and Food Heritage: Foodways and Memoryways of Paul Robeson, Stephen Biko, and Red Cloud. Royal Geographical Society (RGS) Annual Meeting, online, September 2021 with E. Wuepper.
Session Organizer (with J. Brasher, D. Alderman, and R. Sheehan) Memory and Geography (I): Narratives in Space and Place; (II): Ruins and Rights – Urban Memory Politics; (III): Racial Justice; (IV): Innovations and Intersections. Memory Studies Association (MSA) Annual Conference, online, July 2021.
More-Than-Human Heritage: Political Ecologies of the Paul Robeson Tomato. Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers (AAG), online, April 2021.
Session Organizer Cultural Geographies Poster Session. AAG, online, April 2021.
Panel Participant Critical Geographies and Science and Engineering Education. AAG, online, April 2021.
Geographies of Post-Industrial Place, Memory, and Heritage. IA Online Session 7. Society for Industrial Archeology. November 2020 with W. Price and A. Walker.
‘The Proud Valley’ – Paul Robeson and Wales. 2020 Summer Online Event Series. Llafur (Welsh People’s History Society). August 2020 with Beverley Humphreys and Tayo Aluko.
Coal Dust in the Wind: Reckoning with the Legacy of Mining in Wales. Grayson Kirk Distinguished Lecture Series, Miami University, OH, February 2020 with W. Price.

Lost Utopia: Star Trek’s Socio-spatial Reflections. Earth and its Others: The Geographies of Science Fiction, RGS Annual Meeting Workshop, online, August 2020.
Memory Work of Museum Landscapes at the National Waterfront Museum. Nystom Finalist Presentation. Annual Meeting of the AAG, online, April 2020.
Kraing Ta Chan, Spatial Narratives, and the Memorialization of the Cambodian Genocide. International Studies Association: Commemorating Violent Conflicts and Building Sustainable Peace, Kent, October 2019 with K. Hannum.

Session Organizer (with Alex Colucci) Landscapes of (Post-)Industrial Violence and Participant Dancing around the Subject: Museum Landscapes of Post-Industrial Environmental Crises. Annual Meeting of the International Society of Landscape, Place, and Material Culture (ISLPMC), Detroit, October 2019.
Paul Robeson’s Place in YouTube: A Social Spatial Network Analysis of Digital Heritage. Memory Studies Association Third Annual Conference, Madrid, June 2019.
Session Organizer (with Amy Walker and William Price) Post-Industrial Place Memory, and Heritage and Participant: Amgueddfa’r Gogledd: Slate, Slavery, and Trans-Atlantic Labor in the National Slate Museum. Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers (AAG), Washington, D.C., April 2019.
Biography, Activism, and the Applied Geographies of Paul Robeson. Applied Geography Conference, Kent, OH, October 2018.
Cardiff and the Confluence of Memory Work: Welshness in the Nation’s Capital. Race, Ethnicity, & Place (REP) IX, Austin, TX, October 2018.
The Absent Presence of Paul Robeson in Wales: Appropriation and Philosophical Disconnects in the Memorial Landscape. Annual Meeting of the International Society of Landscape, Place, and Material Culture (ISLPMC), New Orleans, September 2018.
“A Bubble of Welshness”: Soundscape, national identity, and the National Eisteddfod. Royal Geographical Society (RGS) Annual Meeting, Cardiff, August 2018.
Bursting the Swigen Iaith: Soundscape and national identity at the National Eisteddfod. North American Society for the Study of Welsh Culture and History International Conference on Welsh Studies (NAASWCH), Bangor, Wales, July 2018.
Session Organizer (with Kathryn Hannum) Celtic Geographies and Participant: “Making it More Celtic”: Welsh Nation-Building in the Year of Legends. AAG Annual Meeting, New Orleans, April 2018.
The Paul Robeson Party: Politicization of the Welsh Memorial Landscape. AAG Political Geography Specialty Group Pre-Conference, New Orleans, April 2018.

Research Projects

National Identity and Heritage Institutions in Wales
Postindustrial Memory and Landscape
Legacies and Memorial Landscapes of Paul Robeson
Political Ecology and Living Memory
Cultural and Economic intersections with Futures Studies and Transformations