Module GEOG30A7: RACE, NATURE AND CRISIS

Department: Geography

GEOG30A7: RACE, NATURE AND CRISIS

Prerequisites

• Any Level 2 GEOG module

Corequisites

• None

Excluded Combination of Modules

• None

Aims

• To provide students an opportunity to identify and evaluate how the concepts of ‘race’ and ‘nature’ interact and organise the differential experience of place and space.
• To identify the broad historical phenomena i.e., slavery and colonialism, that have contributed to contemporary geographies of race and racism.
• To give students the chance to situate their own self-understanding in relation to ‘race’, ‘nature’ and place; and
• To apply the critical literatures on race and nature to real-world geographic phenomena, including climate change, electoral politics, and the Anthropocene.

Content

• Race, nature and the crisis of humanism will focus on the way that ‘race’ continues to organise the experience of nature, place and space, even when it is often said that race is no longer a legitimate category for understanding contemporary social and political phenomenon in the West. It provides students with an in-depth survey of several different streams of thought current in human geography that connect the themes of race, nature and humanism. The module will help students disentangle the messy world of racial politics through an engagement with several real world case studies, including indigenous peoples resistance to pipeline development, black incarceration, and migration. While not a guide on how best to eliminate racism, the module is policy-relevant as it offers important tools for thinking critically about the racial dimensions of numerous contemporary policy issues. The module will combine case studies with in-depth theoretical material drawn predominantly from critical race theory, postcolonialism, poststructuralism and posthumanism. Indicative concepts addressed in the module include: racial naturalism, racial historicism, post-racialism, race and gender, neoliberalism, Blackness, Whiteness, dehumanisation, sovereignty, climate change, the Anthropocene.

Learning Outcomes

• Identify and critically evaluate how the concepts of ‘race’ and ‘nature’ interact to organise the differential experience of place and space.
• Identify the broad historical phenomena i.e., slavery and colonialism, that have contributed to contemporary geographies of race and racism.
• Demonstrate advanced level understanding of what is meant by and the significance of the idea that ‘race’ and ‘nature’ are socially constructed.
• Understand a range of advanced theoretical concepts and principles that geographers use for making sense of race, nature and humanism.

• Identify and explain many of the ways in which ‘race’ and ‘nature’ continue to organise contemporary geographical phenomena.
• Appreciate and critically reflect on a range of concepts and theoretical approaches for understanding ‘race’ and ‘nature’.
• Apply and evaluate the appropriateness of these concepts and theoretical approaches in order to understand real world geographical phenomena.
• Synthesise interdisciplinary literatures on race, nature and place in order to provide interpretive insights about contemporary geography.

• Demonstrate a variety of written communication skills
• Demonstrate a capacity to reflect critically and creatively on the relations between concepts and a range of real world problems and issues.
• Demonstrate the ability to synthesise information and develop an argument on contemporary issues and problems.

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

• Lectures will introduce students to the main module themes of ‘race’, ‘nature’ and ‘crisis’, and how these concepts interact with one another in support of contemporary and historical phenomena, such as white supremacy, white nationalism slavery, colonialism and imperialism. Emphasis will be given to how these concepts have been dealt with by geographers and those in related fields of study. Lectures will draw from relevant case study material.
• Workshops will offer students a chance to discuss module themes in a range of learning formats including small group teaching, presentations, student-led discussions, and peer-review. Emphasis will be placed on encouraging students to develop their own self-understanding of the module themes and how to apply their learning to assessed work.
• The Summative Assessment is designed to give students a chance to critically reflect on the module themes and apply these to case study material of their own choosing. The summative assessment consists of a 5 page essay on a topic of the students own choosing. The aim is to give students an opportunity to engage critically with the module themes by reflecting on a contemporary or historical geographical phenomenon. Students are required to develop their essay argument by drawing from the book review that comprises the formative assessment.
• The Formative Assessment offers students a chance to read, comprehend and critically evaluate a key scholarly text on race and nature.

Teaching Methods and Learning Hours

Summative Assessment

Formative Assessment:

Book review: A 3-page book review of a book that will serve as a major source for the module summative essay. An indicative list of books for review will be provided in the module handbook.

■ Attendance at all activities marked with this symbol will be monitored. Students who fail to attend these activities, or to complete the summative or formative assessment specified above, will be subject to the procedures defined in the University's General Regulation V, and may be required to leave the University