Module GEOG30U7: GEOGRAPHIES FOR THE END OF THE WORLD

Department: Geography

GEOG30U7: GEOGRAPHIES FOR THE END OF THE WORLD

Prerequisites

• Any Level 2 BA Geography module

Corequisites

• None

Excluded Combination of Modules

• None

Aims

• To understand and analyse popular and academic discourses around the end of the world.
• To encourage critical engagement with and analysis of figures and narratives of civilisational and existential apocalypse and disaster, and of possible futures.
• To embed such engagement with contemporary and emergent work on capitalism, race, sexuality, colonialism, and the human.

Content

• The world is ending, we must save it. In all manner of ways, the world is under threat. This course examines narratives, representations, the fears, desires, and fantasies which circulate around this threat and asks whose world? What is to be saved? And at what cost? In doing so, the course speaks to questions of impending extinction, to dreams of salvation, and wishes to exit the world as it is. Bluntly put, who gets to live and who gets to die? Which modes of existence get to survive, and which do not?
• The course is structured around a series of engagements with popular representations of the end of the world in contemporary media, primarily mainstream post-apocalyptic, disaster, sci-fi, and horror cinema and television series. These genres are approached here as places in which cultures and societies make sense of and dream themselves, their possible ends and futures, and play out the symbolic economies of survival.
• Each of these engagements is paired with and underwritten by a significant and sustained engagement with contemporary conceptual work on Negative Geographies, Extinction Studies, Post-Humanism, Queer Negativity, and Afro-Pessimism. These conceptual literatures provide the framework for reading and analysing the narratives, meanings, politics – the moral and symbolic economies of - contemporary media.

Learning Outcomes

• On successful completion of the module students will be able to:
• Critically analyse contemporary media from a range of theorical perspectives.
• Demonstrate an advanced level understanding of the politics and ethics of end of the world debates and narratives.
• Understand and deploy a range of concepts and theoretical perspectives for analyzing end of the world media and narratives.

• On successful completion of the module students will be able to:
• This critically and creatively about the politics and ethics of end of the world narratives.
• Reflect on the moral and symbolic meanings of a range of contemporary media.
• Interpret and make use of key concepts from advanced conceptual material.

• On successful completion of the module students will be able to:
• Demonstrate communication skills.
• Demonstrate a capacity to interpret and work with advanced conceptual material.
• Demonstrate a capacity to critically and creatively analyse and interpret narratives about the end of the world.

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

• The lecture component of the course (first 6 weeks of course) introduces and contextualises a number of different conceptual frameworks for thinking about the end of the world, and the histories, politics, and ethics thereof. Use will be made of examples from cinema and television as objects of for analysis, investigation, and interpretation.
• The workshops (weeks 7 and 8 of course) will put these literatures to work through structured discussion and small group work on key readings and examples. The final workshops will also introduce the summative assessment (see below).
• The essay writing workshop (week 10 of course) will provide an opportunity to discuss the summative assessment and provide feedback on idea and plans. The interval between weeks 8 and 10 of the course will enable students to have the time to reflect and devise a topic for their summative essay, and bring their ideas to the session.
• The formative feedback will be ongoing during workshops, with specific feedback related to ideas for the summative assessment (see below) in the essay writing workshop.
• The summative assessment consists of a five-page essay consisting of a critical analysis of a film or television series which makes sustained use of at least one of the conceptual frameworks introduced in the course.

Teaching Methods and Learning Hours

Summative Assessment

Formative Assessment:

The formative feedback will be ongoing during workshops, with specific feedback related to ideas for the summative assessment in the essay writing workshop.

■ 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