Alberto Giordano

Biography:

I am a Professor in the Department of Geography at Texas State University, a former (2018-2019) President of UCGIS, the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science, and department from 2013-2018. In 2019 I served as a Fulbright Specialist in the Department of History at the University of Vilnius in Lithuania. I am a founding member of the Holocaust Geographies Collaborative, a network of researchers and scholars interested in bringing geographical approaches, methods, and perspectives to the study of the Holocaust and other genocides. On these topics, I have received funding from the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Holocaust Educational Foundation, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the USC Shoah Foundation, and the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure, among others. One topic that fascinates me is how maps are used by victims and perpetrators of genocide, including questions related to propaganda and the construction of the “other.” I am also interested and involved in projects related to spatial applications to forensic anthropology, most recently on migrant deaths at the Arizona-Mexico and Texas-Mexico borders.

Relevant recent publications (full CV here)

Giordano, A. and Cole, T., in press. Places of the Holocaust: Towards a Model of a GIS of Place. Transactions in GIS, Special Issue: Modelling and Analysing Platial Representations.

Giordano, A. 2019. GIS&T and the Digital Humanities. In The Geographic Information Science & Technology Body of Knowledge (John P. Wilson, ed.).

Giordano, A. and Cole, T. 2018. The Limits of GIS: Towards a GIS of Place. Transactions in GIS, 22(3), 664-676.

Giordano, A. and Spradley, K., 2017. Migrant Deaths at the Arizona-Mexico Border: Spatial Trends of a Mass Disaster. Forensic Science International, 280, 200-212.

Books

Knowles, A., Cole, T., and Giordano, A. (eds.), 2014. Geographies of the Holocaust. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Book chapters

Cole, T. and Giordano, A., 2016. Microhistories, Microgeographies: Budapest, 1944, and Scales of Analysis. In Microhistories of the Holocaust (Claire Zalc and Tal Bruttmann, eds.). Oxford, UK, Berghahn.

Interview with Anne Knowles, Tim Cole, Alberto Giordano, and Paul B. Jaskot, Contributing Authors of Geographies of the Holocaust [Interviewed by Claudio Fogu and Todd Presner], 2016. In Probing the Ethics of Holocaust Culture (Claudio Fogu, Wulf Kansteiner, and Todd Presner, eds.), Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 240-256.

Giordano, A., Cole, T., and Knowles, A., 2014. Geographies of the Holocaust. In Geographies of the Holocaust (Knowles, A., Cole, T., and Giordano, A., eds.), Chapter 1. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1-17.

Giordano, A. and Holian, A., 2014. Retracing the “Hunt for Jews”: A Spatio-Temporal Analysis of Arrests during the Holocaust in Italy. In Geographies of the Holocaust (Knowles, A., Cole, T., and Giordano, A., eds.), Chapter 3. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 52-86.

Cole, T. and Giordano, A., 2014. Bringing the Ghetto to the Jew: The Shifting Geography of the Budapest Ghetto. In Geographies of the Holocaust (Knowles, A., Cole, T., and Giordano, A., eds.), Chapter 5. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 121-157.

Cole, T. and Giordano, A., 2014. Rethinking Segregation in the Ghetto: Invisible Walls and Social Networks in the Dispersed Ghetto in Budapest, 1944. In Lessons and Legacies X: Expanding Perspectives on the Holocaust in a Changing World (H. Earl and K. Schleunes, eds.). Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 265-291.

Articles

Giordano, A. and Spradley, K., 2017. Migrant Deaths at the Arizona-Mexico Border: Spatial Trends of a Mass Disaster. Forensic Science International, 280, 200-212.

Burleson, S. and Giordano, A., 2016. Spatiality of the Stages of Genocide: The Armenian Case. Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal, 10(3), 39-58.

Giordano, A. 2015. The Holocaust Geographies Collaborative: 2007-2014. Position paper for the Panel on Digital Humanities, 2015 Southeast German Studies Workshop, Davidson College/University of North Carolina Charlotte, NC.

Seegers, J. and Giordano, A., 2015. Cartographic Constructs: A Case Study of Nantucket Oral Histories. The Professional Geographer, 67(4), 541-554.

Burleson, S. and Giordano, A. 2015. Extending Metadata Standards for Historical GIS Research: A Case Study of the Holocaust in Budapest and the Armenian Genocide in Turkey. International Journal of Applied Geospatial Research, 6(4), 88-109.

Cole, T., Giordano, A., Knowles, A., and Jaskot, P. 2014. Charting the World with Testimony: A New Methodology. Past Forward: The Digest of USC Shoah Foundation, Spring 2014, 16-18.

Spradley, K., Hamilton, M., and Giordano, A. 2012. Spatial Patterning of Vulture Scavenged Human Remains. Forensic Science International, 219(1-3), 57-63.

Giordano, A. and Cole, T. 2011. On Place and Space: Calculating Social and Spatial Networks in the Budapest Ghetto. Transactions in GIS, 15(s1), 143-170.

Beorn, W., Cole, T., Gigliotti, S., Giordano, A., Holian, A., Jaskot, P., Knowles, A., Masurovsky, M., and Steiner, E. 2009. The Geography of the Holocaust. The Geographical Review, 99(4), 563-574.

Courses recently taught

In preparation: Undergraduate Honors course on the Geography of the Holocaust

Undergraduate only

GEO 2426, Fundamentals of Geographic Information Systems

GEO 3411, Maps and Mapmaking

GEO 4427, GIS Design and Implementation

Undergraduate/graduate

GEO 4411/5417, Advanced Map Design

GEO 4422/5408, Web Mapping

GEO 4324/5324, GPS and GIS

Graduate only

GEO 5309, Geographic Analysis

GEO 7365, Theoretical Cartography