Cultural Geography

Learning Outcomes

Learning Outcomes

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• Apply key concepts and approaches to relevant cultural issues (such as identity, representation, walking, nature, eating, gaming), and critically reflect on geographical work on culture.
• Structure conceptual material and develop arguments in an in-depth, reasoned, ordered and motivated way.
• Present and structure ideas clearly in in-class discussions and oral presentations.
• Identify and assess the merits of a range of key cultural geography concepts and approaches, such as hybridity, orientalism, non-representational theory, affect, digital geographies, animal geographies.
• Identify appropriate research techniques, methods and (interdisciplinary) methodologies for the investigation of cultural geography (visual, ethnographic, science and technology studies, literary).
• Critically reflect on conceptual issues and apply them to real life research problems.

This module provides an introduction to cultural geography as a field of vibrant scholarship within the discipline; and introduces students to different areas of inquiry and conceptual fields in cultural geography. Key themes within the module include the evolution of the scholarly field of cultural geography with a focus on the post-1990s ‘cultural turn’, spatial identity formation, politics of representing spaces, cultural geographies of everyday practices, emotional geographies, affect and eating, the relationship between nature and culture; animal geographies; digital cultural geographies. The module also demonstrates how concepts are used in geography more generally.

The module is delivered via a weekly two-hour lecture and a fortnightly one hour seminar. Each session will usually feature a lecture outlining key conceptual issues and a case study in which this issue is present. Seminars will centre on in-depth exploration and student engagement with the lecture theme through focus on particular readings, images, films etc. Seminars will take place through a variety of formats such as presentations, debates and group discussions. The format of each seminar is disclosed in the handbook and will also be outlined the week before the seminar is to take place.

The module will draw upon local, national and international examples and will employ a diverse range of materials including academic, literary and popular texts, media accounts and film. Sessions are clustered into blocks reflecting contributor expertise.

The module comprises of two pieces of coursework.

For seminars, students will be split into groups at the start of the module and will be assigned a seminar leader.

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.

Referral

This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.