J. Clark Archer

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J. Clark Archer

Retiree UNL Retirees University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Contact

Address
OLDH 926
Lincoln NE 68588-0370
Phone
402-472-1945 On-campus 2-1945
Email
jarcher1@unl.edu

Clark Archer is a political, urban and population geographer whose work combines political science, economics, demographics, cartography and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). He brings all of these disciplinary perspectives to bear in creating atlases.

His Historical Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections, 1788-2004, was named Best Single-Volume Reference in Humanities; Social Sciences for 2006 by the Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers, and was on the Library Journal's Best Reference List for 2006. His Atlas of American Politics, 1960-2000, was named Choice Magazine's Outstanding Academic Title for 2003 by the Association of College and Research Libraries. His coauthors for both volumes were geographers Steve Lavin, also at UNL, Fred Shelley at the University of Oklahoma, and Kenneth Martis at West Virginia University. Lavin, Shelley and Archer teamed up to produce the Atlas of the Great Plains, published in 2011.

Curriculum Vitae

Education

  • PhD - University of Iowa, Geography (1974)
  • MA - Indiana University, Geography (1968)
  • BA - Indiana University, Politcal Science (1964)

Research and Current Projects

Archer is best-known for his work on the geography of election results, but he also studies housing patterns, the economic structure of the Great Plains, population change, and settlement patterns. His research can be generally described as "human patterns that involve a lot of data crunching." For the Historic Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections, Archer digitized county boundaries and other data back to 1789. As a student, he generated 30 boxes of IBM punch cards containing census-tract data for his Ph.D. dissertation research.

Courses

  • GEOG 272 Geography of World Regions
  • GEOG 361 Urban Geography
  • GEOG 444/844 Geodemographics: Theoretical Concepts and Practical Applications
  • GEOG 447/847 Political Geography
  • GEOG 497/897 Internship in Geography
  • GEOG 996 Non-Thesis Research

Selected Publications

Archer, J. C., Edwards, R., Howard, L. M., Shelley, F. M., Wilhite, D. A., Wishart, D. J. (2017). Cartography editor for all maps considered/used. Atlas of Nebraska. Lincoln, NE.

Lavin, S.J., Shelley, F.M. Archer, J.C. Wishart, J., Hudson, J.C. 2011. Atlas of the Great Plains. University of Nebraska-Lincoln.