Harvey K. Flad

Emeritus Professor of Geography

Contact Harvey K. Flad
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box: 336
phone: 845-437-5540

B.A., English and Geology, University of Colorado, Boulder, 1962.
M.A., Ph.D., Geography, Syracuse University, 1973.

After completing his undergraduate work, Harvey Flad spent two years in Nigeria as a Peace Corps volunteer and worked at the American Geographical Society. He then began graduate studies at Syracuse University, where he received a Ford Foundation Fellowship in Ethnic Studies to complete his dissertation research on urban American Indians. Appointed to the Vassar faculty in 1972, he chaired the geography program from 1983-98, the Department of Geology and Geography for the decade 1988-98, and was Director of the American Culture program from 1998-2001; he has also co-taught in the American Culture, Urban Studies, and Environmental Studies programs.

In 1997-98, Flad was a Fulbright Fellow in Kyrgyzstan where he lectured on the geography of North America, environmental advocacy and planning, and American studies, while doing research on aspects of the historical and cultural landscapes of Central Asia. He has served as a consultant to government agencies such as USIA technical assistance to the University of Klaipeda in Lithuania (1995) and to the Smithsonian Photography Initiative, Smithsonian Institution (2004); and to a number of regional museums on exhibits, such as the Albany Insitute of History and Art’s “Hudson River Panorama: 400 Years of History, Art & Culture ,” (2008) for the 2009 Hudson-Fulton-Champlain Quadricentennial; and in national publications, such as the National Geographic and the New York Times ,for articles related to the cultural landscape and development in the Hudson Valley. His expert testimony on the aesthetic impact of a proposed nuclear power plant was cited as being most significant in its eventual denialwhile his testimony on “Community Character” (2005) was significant in opposition to a proposed industrial cement plant. He has authored or co-authored a number of environmental impact and management plans, especially for river shorelands in the bioregion.

Current teaching and research interests include cultural, historical and social geography; urban and regional geography; ethnicity; material culture; conservation history; community development; urban, rural and small town revitalization; land use policy and planning; landscape aesthetics; historic preservation; scenic evaluation; environmental design; landscape design history; and geographic education.

Recent scholarship:

2009. Main Street to Mainframes: Landscape and Social Change in Poughkeepsie. (Co-author Clyde Griffen) Albany: SUNY Press (forthcoming; May publication date)).
2009. “The Parlor in the Wilderness: Domesticating America’s First Iconic Landscape,” Geographical Review (forthcoming; July issue).
2006. DVD – A Digital Tour of Poughkeepsie. Produced by Urban Studies Program, Vassar College. Script researcher, writer, and narrator. Vassar College.
2008. “The Hudson River School of Art and Its Influence in Preserving the ‘Landscape that Defines America’,” Cedar Grove, the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, Catskill, NY.
2007. “Preserving the ‘Landscape that Defines America’: A Cultural Landscape Approach to the Hudson River School of Art,” New York Historical Society, NYC.
2006. “The Hudson River Valley: The Landscape that Defines America,” American Studies Program, Allegheny College.
2006. “Restoration of an Historical Urban Stream: Fallkill Creek, Poughkeepsie, NY,” on panel “New Approaches to Creating More Ecological Cities,” Association of American Geographers, Chicago.
2005. “A Tree and Its Neighbors: Creating Community Open Space,” co-authored with Craig M. Dalton, Hudson River Valley Review, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Spring): 56-67.
2004. “Audubon Terrace, The American Geographical Society, and the Sense of Place,” Geographical Review, Vol. 94, No. 4 (October): 519-529.
2004. “Introduction to Ed Zahniser, and ‘Wilderness and Our Community of Life’,” The Forest Preserve, vol. 18, no. 1 (October): 50-1.
2002. Commentator. Place, Region and Identity - Session III of The Lowenthal Papers: papers in honor of David Lowenthal. Association of American Geographers, Los Angeles, CA (March, 2002)
2001. "The Hudson River Valley and the Geographical Imagination," in From the Hudson to the Hamptons: Snapshots of the New York Metropolitan Area, edited by I. M. Miyares, M. Pavlovskaya, and G. A. Pope, pp. 8-15. NY: Association of American Geographers. Reprinted in WATERSHED JOURNAL, edited by Miwon Kwon, pp. 45-55. NY: Minetta Brook, 2002.
2000. "Following 'the pleasant paths of Taste': The Traveler's Eye and New World Landscapes," in Humanizing Landscapes: Geography, Culture and the Mangoon Collection, exhibition catalogue, pp. 69-102. Poughkeepsie, NY: Vassar College, Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center.
2000. Co-curator, with David Lowenthal (Geography, Univ. of London) and Karen Lucic (Art History, Vassar College). "Humanizing Landscapes: Geography, Culture and the Magoon Collection," exhibition, Frances Lehman Loeb Art Gallery, Vassar College.
2000. "The Parlor in the Landscape: Nineteenth Century Mountain House Resorts and the Shaping of Nature," in European Identity and its Expression in Philosophy, Science, Literature, and Art. Bergen, Norway: International Society for the Study of European Ideas.

Other recent publications and research have continued Dr. Flad's efforts in urban waterfront revitalization, landscape design history as well as his most recent experience in Central Asia. From the latter, for example, he presented “Reading Nuclear Landscapes in America and Central Asia: The Literary Contributions of Terry Tempest Williams and Chingiz Aitmatov, and the Development of the Civic Society” (2001), and authored more than 200 entries on Kyrgyzstan for The Columbia Gazetteer of the World, Columbia University Press, 1998. Contemporary issues of scenic and environmental assessment have most recently been addressed “Scenery and the Eye of the Beholder: Artist, Tourist and Judge” (2003), and in the article "Country Clutter: Visual Pollution and the Rural Roadscape,” published in The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Scoial Science (Sept. 1997). The majority of his recent publications and papers have examined the development of landscape design in America and its relationship to changing cultural evaluation of nature and society, especially in the mid-19th C. He has particularly focused on the role of Andrew Jackson Downing and the creation of an American landscape ideal, along with insights into the gendering of American spaces, through the presentation of numerous conference papers, with titles such as: “Andrew Jackson Downing and the Language of Landscape in Nineteenth CenturyAmerica” (2002), and "Roots of the Olmsted Vision: Downing, Vaux and Landscape Design" (1998).

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