Degrees: PHD, 1991, Rutgers Univ; MA, 1972, Ohio State Univ; BA, 1970, Rutgers Univ

Bio:

Dr. Wiley studied economics as an undergraduate at Rutgers before going on to Ohio State, where he pursued a master’s in higher education, specializing in student life administration. He worked in various student life administrative positions at Syracuse, Rider, and Princeton Universities, among other places before returning to Rutgers to pursue graduate degrees in geography, completing the PhD. in 1991. His dissertation dealt with host country refugee policies and programs in Central America, developing a case study of the Costa Rican situation as recipient of refugee migrations from neighboring countries.

Geographers typically have both regional and topical specializations. Dr. Wiley is a specialist in Latin America and the Caribbean. Topically, his focus is on economic geography, especially development and trade, and migration geography. In 1993 he began researching the international banana industry and trade, specifically the banana “war” involving the European Union, the USA, and banana exporting countries in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa. This project grew over time as the dispute continued into the new century, causing him to rethink the historical economic geography of the banana and bring that story into the contemporary development stage of globalization and neoliberalism. His book, The Banana: Empires, Trade Wars, and Globalization will be published in 2008.

Several issues emerged while researching the Caribbean side of the banana trade dispute. These revolved around the great challenges confronted by very small countries in dealing with globalization processes over which they have no control. This has led Dr. Wiley into a new project which is a broader analysis of the issues confronting small economies, especially island states, and their search for viable alternatives. Geographically, his scope has widened beyond the Caribbean to include island countries in the South Pacific, Micronesia, Indian Ocean, and Africa. This project is on-going.

Since coming to Hofstra in 1991, Dr. Wiley has added several new courses to the geography curriculum, including specific regional courses on Latin America, South America, the Caribbean, Africa, and Australia and the South Pacific. He was Hofstra’s first director of Latin American and Caribbean Studies and worked with colleagues to make that new major and minor program available to undergraduate students. In recent years, his teaching efforts have primarily been oriented toward providing a broad array of regional geography courses to allow undergraduates to fulfill their cross-cultural, distribution, and major graduation requirements.

Dr. Wiley’s philosophy is that geographers, circumstances permitting, should go out and see the world to be able to teach about it more effectively. Toward that end he has visited nearly 100 countries in all world regions and uses the field notes and photographs that he takes in each place to enrich the classroom experience that he offers.