Contact Information

Department of Geography
University of the Fraser Valley
33844 King Road,
Abbotsford, B.C.
V2S 7M8
E-mail: michelle.rhodes@ufv.ca
Local phone: 4724
Office: A407c Abbotsford

Biography

For the past 15 years, I have spent most of my time shuttling between southwest BC and western Montana for school, work, research, and play. I moved to Montana in the early 1990s to attend to the University of Montana (B.A., 1995). After a year in Portland, OR, I moved to BC to complete graduate studies in Geography at Simon Fraser University (M.A. 1998, Ph.D., 2002). I then spent two years teaching Political Science and Geography at the University of Montana-Western, before becoming a UFV faculty member in Geography in 2004. Having been born and raised in northern Illinois, I have a certain keenness for cornfields and tractors—thus I felt right at home when locating to the Fraser Valley

Research Interests

My research interests have been and continue to be quite varied, but are largely concerned with the geographies of North American West. My graduate research focused on manufactured housing in the urban-rural fringe of Kalispell, Montana, and later on the changing nature and roles of international, state, and provincial boundaries in the post-CUFTA cross-border cattle and grain trade in the Plains/Prairie border region. I continue to maintain an interest in small town and rural-fringe development as well as boundary studies. Currently, I am researching the changing cultures and nature of work, settlement, and ecologies in the forest-urban fringe of northwestern US communities. I am also interested in tourism development and cultural change in western communities, as well as meanings and mythologies (past and present) of western American landscapes. My teaching interests also include national park histories and management, North American regional and political geography, Vancouver’s urban development, and rural and small town ecologies and social geographies.

Geography 130
Regional Geography of Canada

Geography 131
Regional Geography of British Columbia

Geography 140
Introductory Human Geography

Geography 241
Social Geography

Geography 362
Geography of Tourism, Recreation and Sport

Geography 433
Regional Geographies of North America (various)

Geography 443
Comparative Cultural Geography