University of Baltimore Office of the Provost
Joseph S. Wood, PhD
Provost
University of Baltimore
jswood@ubalt.edu
410.837.5244
Joe Wood is a cultural geographer whose scholarship and teaching focus on the North American cultural landscape. He holds degrees in geography from Middlebury College (1968), the University of Vermont (1974) and The Pennsylvania State University (1978). He has taught geography at the University of Nebraska at Omaha; George Mason University, where he was chair of the Department of Geography and Earth Systems Science, taught in New Century College, and served as Vice Provost for Academic Affairs; and the University of Southern Maine, where he was provost and interim president. He came to UBalt as provost in 2009. At UBalt, Joe is teaching in the Division of Legal, Ethical, and Historical Studies and also holds appointment in the School of Public Affairs.
Joe’s publications explore the New England village as invented tradition, historic preservation of warehouse districts in Midwestern cities, the idea of a National Road in antebellum America, and contemporary Vietnamese place-making in American suburbs. He is an active book reviewer for professional journals in geography, history, and architectural history and author of The New England Village (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997; paperback 2002). His most recent work is “Creating the Landscape of Civil Society,” Pp. 357-380 in The Making of the American Landscape, 2nd Ed. (edited by Michael Conzen. Routledge. 2010).
Joe also teaches about East and Southeast Asia, was a visiting professor at South China Normal University and has been an American Geographical Society Travel Program lecturer in Cambodia and Vietnam, where he served in the Army, as well as across Canada by train and, most recently, by ship from Newfoundland into the Great Lakes.
Joe has served a number of national professional associations, including as councilor and treasurer of the Association of American Geographers, board member of the Vernacular Architecture Forum, and councilor of the American Geographical Society. His community service activities have included chair of the Omaha (NE) Landmarks Heritage Preservation Commission and board member of the District of Columbia Preservation League, board member of the Maine Philanthropy Center, and president of the Maine-based Center for Prevention of Hate Violence, which works to reduce school bullying.
Joe lives in Baltimore with his wife, Diane, a professor of education at Towson University.
To learn more about Wood's academic career, read his C.V.