Larry Knopp is quite familiar with the University of Minnesota Duluth campus. From 1989 to 2009, he served as a Professor of Geography (including two terms as Chair), Coordinator of the Urban & Regional Studies Program, Director of the Center for Community & Regional Research, and Associate Dean of the Graduate School at UMD. Not only did Knopp hold several administrative positions at UMD, he also established the Emma Goldman Scholarship in Geography.
Since then, Knopp has been serving as a Professor and Graduate Program Coordinator in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences (IAS) at the University of Washington Tacoma. He was the Director of IAS from 2009 to 2013, and now teaches courses and advises students on both the Tacoma and Seattle campuses of the University of Washington.
Even though Knopp resides in Washington, he continues to impact and empower UMD students’ lives. On March 18, Knopp visited UMD to talk on “Race, Religion, Sexuality, and the Cultural Politics of Place: Legacies of a Radical Farmer Movement in Sheridan County, Montana.”
What prompted you to initiate the Emma Goldman Scholarship in Geography at UMD?
Larry Knopp: I spent 20 years as a faculty member in the Geography Department at UMD. Throughout that time, the demographics of our Geography majors mirrored those of Geography students nationally: namely, disproportionately male and white.
The scholarship recognizes students whose achievements embody the ethics, values, and accomplishments of Emma Goldman, a Lithuanian-born activist and intellectual. What else would you like people to know about Emma Goldman and her work?
Knopp: Emma Goldman is a tremendously inspiring feminist historical figure who had close ties to the world of academic Geography, primarily through her association with the Russian anarchist intellectual and geographer Pyotr (Peter) Kropotkin.
She emigrated to the U.S. in 1885, gained U.S. citizenship, but was imprisoned for anti-military activism in 1917 and deported in 1919 as part of an early-20th-century “red scare”. As a fierce voice for independent thought, women’s and civil rights, and a critic of militarism, she quickly became disillusioned with the authoritarian Soviet Union and spent her remaining years in various parts of Europe (including Spain, where she opposed Franco’s fascism) and Canada, where she died in 1940.
She is particularly remembered by feminists for her trenchant critiques of patriarchal institutions, her advocacy of women’s freedom and empowerment, and her very progressive views (for the time) on sexuality.
What do you hope the scholarship will help accomplish? What difference do you hope it will have 10 to 20 years from now?
Knopp: My fondest hope is that as a result of the scholarship the culture of the discipline locally and beyond will become more welcoming to women and others who are, to one degree or another, marginalized or oppressed.
This means not only changing the demographics of Geography majors but raising the profile of feminist, anti-racist, and social justice-oriented scholarship in the field.
Nationally things have improved only marginally since the late 2000s, but I don’t know how the demographics and culture of Geography at UMD has changed. My sense is that there have been improvements.
I do know that there are Geography departments elsewhere in the U.S. where women and minorities constitute much closer to (or in a few cases greater than) 50% of majors, and where feminist, anti-racist, and social justice-oriented scholarship are at the forefront of what those departments do.
Why should people consider donating funds to this scholarship?
Knopp: I would hope that anyone who cares about supporting women, feminist principles, and social justice more broadly – or just their female and/or feminist friends and family members in Geography – would consider donating to this fund.