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Jason Dittmer is from Jacksonville, Florida, received his PhD from Florida State University in 2003, and has taught at University College London in the United Kingdom since 2007. He is the author of Popular Culture, Geopolitics, and Identity (Rowman and Littlefield, 2010) and the co-editor of Mapping the End Times: American Evangelical Geopolitics and Apocalyptic Visions (Ashgate, 2010). He is married to the lovely Stephanie and has two cats. They all live in southeast London.
GB: Tell us a little bit about yourself - your background, and how you got into the field of geography in the first place.
JD: Well, it seems like I was always taking geography classes without being an actual geographer. I went to a high school where world geography was taught in the 7th grade and I distinctly remember loving that class, but there wasn't any obvious way to follow up with that interest until I went to college at Jacksonville University. I was an International Studies and Political Science double major, so there was plenty of opportunity to take geography classes (International Studies was an interdisciplinary program). I loved them all and probably would have had enough geography credits for a minor if Fd tried. My masters degree at Florida State University was in International Affairs, another interdisciplinary program, so I kept on taking geography classes. Finally, it was time to get a PhD and there are no interdisciplinary PhD programs so I had to pick something. I thought, "hey, IVe always loved geography classes, why don't I do a PhD in that?" A really terrible way to choose a PhD program - I can't recommend it to anyone. But it worked out incredibly well for me. Now I'm a complete convert but I feel slightly guilty that I only have the one degree in geography.
GB: You've got an extensive record of publication, and a lot of it is based on source materials that one wouldn't immediately think of as geographical - comic books, end- of- days Christian novels, James Bond, vampires - to examine weighty issues such as national identity and geopolitics. What drew you as a geographer to study these sorts of things?
JD: Well, my PhD dissertation was on newspapers - considering the ways...