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Denis E. Cosgrove (b. 3 May 1948 Liverpool; d. 21 March 2008 Los Angeles) was an Alexander von Humboldt Professor of Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles. He was a cultural geographer, whose work focused upon the concepts of landscape and representations. He was a leading proponent of the 'new cultural geography' which encouraged a focus upon the complex interconnections between the many different aspects of landscapes and the world.

Research

Cosgrove's research interests evolved from a focus on the meanings of landscape in human and cultural geography, especially in Western Europe since the fifteenth century, to a broader concern with the role of spatial images and representations in the making and communicating of knowledge. His work included how visual images have been used in history to shape geographical imaginations and in connection between geography as a formal discipline, imaginative expressions of geographical knowledge and experience in the visual arts (including cartography).

This broad concern was pursued through a series of focussed studies: of landscape transformation, design and images in sixteenth-century Venice and north Italy, of landscape writings by authors such as John Ruskin, of landscape, space and performance in twentieth century Rome, of cosmography in early modern Europe (1450-1650), and of the history of Western imaginings of the globe and whole earth. He has also written extensively on theory in cultural geography and edited for six years the journal Ecumene which publishes cross-disciplinary work on environment, culture and meaning.

Within his cultural research, Cosgrove differentiated between dominant cultures and alternative cultures. The dominant culture has the most influence in shaping a landscape. Most of what you see, he claimed, is likely to be a product of the dominant culture in a region. However, one is also likely to see evidence of alternative, or subcultures in the landscape. Within the category of alternative culture, Cosgrove differentiated between residual cultures (historic cultures that have disappeared or are in the process of fading away), emergent cultures (those that are just now appearing), and excluded cultures (those that are actively or passively excluded by the dominant culture).

Cosgrove died following complications after cancer surgery in 2008.

External links

• Full Biography
• UCLA Geography Dept. Faculty Website

Selected Publications

1993

• The Palladian landscape: geographical change and its cultural representations in sixteenth century Italy 287 pp. Leicester University Press/Pennsylvanian State U.P., 1993 [in June 2006 being translated into Italian by Cierre, Verona]

1997

• "Cultural Landscapes" in T.Unwin ed. Europe: a modern geography, Longman, London, 1997, 65-81.

1998

• Social formation and Symbolic Landscape (2nd edition with additional introductory chapter), Wisconsin Univ. Press, 1998
• "Urban rhetoric and embodied identities: city, nation and empire at the Vittorio Emanuele II monument in Rome 1870-1945" (with D. Atkinson) Annals, Association of American Geographers, 88, 1, 1998, 28-49.

1999

• "Airport/Landscape" in J. Corner (ed.) Recovering Landscape Princeton Architectural Press, Princeton NJ, 1999, 221-232 (with paintings by Adrian Hemming)
• "Empire in modern Rome: shaping and remembering an imperial city" (with D.Atkinson and A.Notaro), in F.Driver & D.Gilbert (eds.) Imperial Cities: landscape, display, identity. Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1999, 40-63.
• "La geographie culturelle et la signification du millenaire" Geographie et Cultures, 31, 1999, 49-64.
• "Liminal geometry and elemental landscape: construction and representation" in J. Corner (ed.) Recovering Landscape Princeton Architectural Press, Princeton NJ, 1999, 103-120.
• Mappings (editor) 311 pp. Reaktion Books, London, 1999

2000

• "Global illumination and enlightenment in the geographies of Vincenzo Coronelli and Athanasius Kircher" in C.Withers & D.Livingstone eds. Enlightenment Geographies, Chicago University Press, Chicago, 2000, 33-66.
• "Millennial geographics" (with L.Martins) Annals, Association of American Geographers 90. 1, 2000

2001

• Apollo's Eye: a cartographic genealogy of the Earth in the Western Imagination Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, Baltimore, MD, 2001.

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