Module GEOG2561: SOCIAL AND CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY

Department: Geography

GEOG2561: SOCIAL AND CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY

Pre-requisites

Corequisites

Excluded Combinations

Aims

• To develop with students their understanding of key approaches, issues, theories and debates in social and cultural geography.
• Students will be introduced to different ways of understanding 'culture' and 'the social', and to the changing ways in which geographers have approached cultural and social issues.
• They will become familiar with a number of the key themes and theories around which recent geographical work has been focused, and the particular philosophical, methodological and political debates surrounding the doing of social and cultural geography.

Content

• Introduction to the module.
• Interrogating 'culture' and 'the social'.
• Space, place and scale.
• Power, identity and meaning.
• Mapping, critique or dialogue? Doing social and cultural geography.
• Knowledge, transformation and action: the impacts of social and cultural geography.
• Orientalism: past and present?.
• Postcolonialism: representation, ideas, practice and lives.
• How societies invest landscapes with meanings.
• The politics and poetics of landscape.
• Geographies of food.
• Geographies of science fiction.

Learning Outcomes

• Students are expected to be able to: Demonstrate understanding of key approaches, theories and debates in social and cultural geography.
• Critically assess and debate a number of the current questions facing social and cultural geography.
• Demonstrate appreciation of the spatialities of social and cultural phenomena, and of competing explanations for these.
• Show a detailed understanding of selected areas of social/cultural geographical research.

Modes of Teaching, Learning and Assessment and how these contribute to the learning outcomes of the module

• Teaching and Learning: Background information and key concepts will be introduced in lectures.
• In seminars, students will develop and demonstrate more detailed understanding and their skills of critical assessment, through presenting to the class.
• In their independent learning, including reading widely, students will deepen their understanding of different perspectives and explanations - seminar preparation and time set for reading in the course will also encourage this.
• Assessment: Researching the seminar presentation, and receiving formative feedback, will contribute to learning outcomes as above.
• The essay will allow students to demonstrate independent learning, as well as detailed understanding of specific topics and debates.
• The exam will allow students to demonstrate broader understanding of the subject and to put together substantiated arguments.

Teaching Methods and Learning Hours

Summative Assessment

Formative Assessment

In line with Board of Studies policy for all Level 2 optional modules, formative assessment is provided through formative feedback on summative coursework.