Module GEOG3551: CHICAGO: SITES OF GLOBAL CHANGE

Department: Geography

GEOG3551: CHICAGO: SITES OF GLOBAL CHANGE

Prerequisites

• GEOG2472 Social Research in Geography

Corequisites

• None

Excluded Combination of Modules

• GEOG3501 BERLIN: FIELD RESEARCH IN A EUROPEAN CONTEXT; GEOG3691 ICELAND: FIELD RESEARCH IN GLACIAL ENVIRONMENTS; GEOG3491 ALPINE LANDSCAPES AND PROCESSES; GEOG3581 TERRITORY AND GEOPOLITICS; GEOG3971 CAPE TOWN: GEOGRAPHIES OF ENERGY TRANSITION; GEOG3521 THE ARCTIC; GEOG3731 DYNAMIC MOUNTAIN ENVIRONMENTS; GEOG3701 MOUNTAIN HAZARDS

Aims

• To critically analyse how global processes interface with locally specific social, cultural, political, economic, and environmental processes.
• To employ field-based research in a large US metropolitan area in order to develop a specialist understanding of these processes and explore key concepts in human geography.

Content

• The global processes of change to be studied on the module, especially as they are sited in a large US metropolitan area, will reflect the research expertise of the teaching team in any given year. Themes covered in lectures, seminars, and workshops may include:
• Race and inequality
• Policing and mass incarceration
• Immigration, citizenship and belonging
• Work and (in)formal labour
• Smart and sustainable cities
• Gender, sexuality, and identity
• Economy, knowledge and power
• Cities and environmental change
• Social movements
• The field course will consist of 6 days spent in a large US metropolitan area (Chicago) and will involve:
• 1 day of introduction to siting global processes in Chicago, covering themes developed in lectures
• 2 days instruction on module themes (e.g. walking tours, talks with local experts, museum and historical site visits)
• 3 days of guided group and individual research around core themes.
• Daily field note writing.

Learning Outcomes

• To understand how global processes shape and are shaped by local context.
• To understand how a specific American city is shaped by—and contributes to—global change.
• To deepen knowledge of key geographical literatures addressing global-local change.

• On successful completion of this module, students will be able to:
• To utilise key concepts in human geography to understand how global processes shape and are shaped by local conditions.
• To develop skills in ethnographic methods and research project development.
• Demonstrate a capacity to carry out preliminary field research: by keeping detailed and reflexive notes; learning to make sense of those notes through an engagement with academic texts; learn-ing to prepare for and structure a diary of fieldwork; to engage critically with what it means to do fieldwork and with the spatial and temporal limits of that research work.
• Demonstrate a capacity to reflect critically on the themes introduced in the course: to engage in depth with a range of texts presented as part of the course; to identify key arguments in a text and be able to analyse the claims; to evaluate the evidence that different texts offer; to make a judgement about whether the evidence is convincing and persuasive; to make judgements about the strengths and weaknesses of an argument in relation to the questions put forward as part of the course.

• On successful completion of this module, students will be able to:
• Demonstrate a variety of communication skills including: evaluating and synthesising information from a range of sources including film, oral history, testimony, academic texts, artwork, and mu-sic; keeping an extensive field diary that critically reflects on their experiences of the field; re-searching, structuring and writing a longer research paper; responding, engaging and commenting on each other’s work.
• Demonstrate a capacity to evaluate and build on academic performance: through the formative and summative assessments; responding to feedback; managing time effectively – in the field and in reading.

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

• Lectures will provide background information and provide overviews of key theoretical ap-proaches and themes in the recommended reading.
• Seminars will focus on close reading and critical engagement with key literature and theoretical texts, and will enhance students’ ability to identify key themes across texts.
• Reading lists will provide students with key theoretical and thematic literature, as well as back-ground readings in preparation for fieldwork.
• Reading lists, handouts, and lecture materials will be posted on duo to assist student learning.
• The residential fieldtrip will introduce the students to specific themes through field-based re-search tasks.

Teaching Methods and Learning Hours

Summative Assessment

Formative Assessment:

Fieldtrip diary Students will be expected to keep a daily field diary/journal while they are in Chicago and will receive written and verbal feedback on research diaries during the residential fieldtrip. Verbal feedback on ideas for research papers and conceptual development in seminars.

■ 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