Alumni Rich Campanella receives the 2021 AAG Media Achievement Award

The 2021 AAG Media Achievement Award goes to Richard Campanella, Professor of Practice in the School of Architecture at Tulane University, where he also remains the only geographer on campus. As a scholar of New Orleans and the wider Gulf Coast, Campanella exemplifies how to employ popular media to engage the public in geographical scholarship. He combines historical maps, GIS, landscape photography, and accessible prose to explain for readers of his essays such quintessentially geographical topics as the origins of neighborhoods, street names, cadastral systems, settlement patterns, architectural styles, topography, hydrological engineering, and many other elements of the local landscape. Besides nearly 200 essays in the Times-Picayune, The Advocate, Louisiana Cultural Vistas, 64 Parishes, and other popular periodicals, Rich provides followers of his Twitter feed @nolacampanella near daily insights into the historical emergence of the places they live. As one of his nomination letters puts it, “he has become the unofficial geographer laureate for New Orleans and has reached a broad swath of the local and regional reading public.” Professor Campanella unquestionably exemplifies the letter and spirit of this award to recognize “exceptional and outstanding accomplishments in publicizing geographical insights in media of general or mass communication.”