COURSE SYLLABUS GEO 702 CONCEPTS IN GEOGRAPHY Spring 2013 Room 305 Whitehall 12:30 - 3:15 Wed Dr.

J. Anthony Stallins Associate Professor Department of Geography Office hours 869 Patterson Office Tower 11:00 - 1:00 Tuesdays By appointment (257-2138) jast239@uky.edu

Course home page: Available in Blackboard Prerequisite: GEO 707 Development of Geographic Thought Course Rationale In this course, we trace out the themes and modes of reasoning among geographic scholars. Our intent is to demarcate the key concepts of geography that draw from its larger history, yet are still inclusive of the ongoing turns and moments in geography that define current scholarship. As ideas are evolving, situational, and provisional, this course takes a pragmatic view of geography. No one concept or body of thought in geography should be privileged over others. Geographys epistemologies, ontologies, and exemplary narratives are not absolutist answers to enigmas in which we can rest. Instead, their truth or usefulness arises from the experiences of the geographic practitioner. By introducing a wide (but ultimately limited) range of geographic concepts, students can identify which strands of thought speak to their particular experiences and interests related to their own research. The syllabus is organized around common themes shared by human and physical geographers, critical geographers, social theorists, quants, and spatial scientists: the various guises of scale; models, modeling and representation; environmental influence and causality; space-place-time conceptualizations; epistemology and ontology; landscape meaning and interpretation; non-representational and material perspectives; the nature of nature; and topologies and textures. Specific course objectives At the completion of this course, students should be able to 1) identify and describe some of the contemporary themes and debates in geographic thought; 2) practice a critical and informed engagement with key texts, arguments, and reasoning related to their own research and intellectual interests; 3) compare and contrast geography as a discipline organized around pragmatism versus more absolutist truth-revealing modes of intellectual empire-building Required textbook and supplies Most of the journal articles can be downloaded via the UK libraries. I will post pdfs of readings that are not available electronically. There is no one specific text or texts required for the course, but it may be strategic to invest in one maybe two general reference books on geographic concepts. There are many to consider. I would recommend reviewing the titles below and limiting your purchases to these. We will not read any one of these specific texts in full, but you will need to know many terms and concepts that are contained within them. In fact, that will be a formal aspect of the class: developing a list of terms, concepts, and authors that are relevant to a geographics concept course. There are several classic compendiums of geographic concepts not mentioned below. We will review the titles and authors of these books in class so that you are familiar with them. These here are more recent and perhaps more accessible to a diverse geographic audience: Clifford, Nicholas, Sarah L. Holloway, Stephen P. Rice, and Gill Valentine, eds. Key Concepts in Geography. 2nd ed. SAGE Publications Ltd, 2008. Gregory, Ken. The Changing Nature of Physical Geography, 2Ed. 2nd ed. Routledge, 2000. Holt-Jensen, Arild. Geography: History and Concepts. Fourth Edition. SAGE Publications Ltd, 2009. Hubbard, Phil, and Rob Kitchin, eds. Key Thinkers on Space and Place. Second Edition. SAGE Publications Ltd, 2010. Hubbard, Phil, Rob Kitchin, and Gill Valentine, eds. Key Texts in Human Geography. SAGE Publications Ltd, 2008. Inkpen, Robert, and Graham Wilson. Science, Philosophy and Physical Geography. New Ed. Routledge, 2004.

Evaluation Final letter grade assignment is based on a percentage of points you earn out of a possible 140 points. Weekly written summaries Faculty interview paper Film presentation Key concepts paper Final exam Concepts list Midterm journal list exam Total points Course activities Faculty interview paper. Following the approximate style of the interviews included on our reading list (see Feb 27 and April 17 reading lists), conduct an interview with a geography faculty member. You will work in groups of two so that no one faculty has more than one interview. Your aim is to deduce the key concepts in this facultys body of work through a reading of their publications and through conversation with them in a semi-structured interview. Inquire about their professional influences (what was their PhD advisor known for?) as well as personal motivations (are there any earlier educational or non-educational experiences that may have led to them problematizing particular concepts in geography?). Ask forthrightly, what are the key geographic concepts embedded in your research? Respect the facultys time, and make an appointment to see them during their office hours. Prepare an interview guide that provides structure for your interview. Summarize your conversation in a 3-4 page paper (single-spaced, 11 point Arial font, 1-inch margins, left justified, single line breaks, no indentation, no page numbers, stapled; no headers, footers, or titles. Please pencil in your name on the back). Faculty selections will be assigned by the instructor based on student preferences. An interview guide will need to be visually inspected in class by the instructor some time before your interview. Due anytime on or before April 3th in hardcopy Film presentation. Two documentary films will be viewed in the second half of the class. These will be shown outside of the regular meeting period. A time, date, and location will be decided upon in class. In groups of no more than two (you may work individually if you wish), draw out the geographic concepts and ideas reflected in one of these films. Emphasis will be placed on your framing of the central conflicts, characters, and situations in the film around concepts in geographic thought. Exercise a wide-ranging geographic interpretation of the film. Avoid hammering over and over on one single geographic concept or perspective, particularly one that you are most familiar with. Creativity and originality will count for more than adherence to a particular interpretative perspective. Think of how issues about causality, environmental influences, scale, representation, modeling and models, boundaries, borders, and materiality matter not only in the content/story/imagery of the film, but also for the dynamic you are participating in, the one between film and film viewer. You might also consider these geographic concepts in the context of film making; in other words, keep in mind that what you are watching is a result of a technical/creative process and a visioning by directors. Hold the film theory aesthetics and theorizing to a minimum and concentrate on illuminating geographic concepts. These reviews will be presented orally in class as a 15 minute presentation. They can be assembled in Powerpoint or other presentation software. You are encouraged to complement your text with visuals: still photos from the movie, short video clips, or movie posters will enliven your points. You may refer to the film, but do not attempt to do both films in the same presentation as double feature. Presentations will be made during our final exam period, Monday, April 29th from 10:30 am - 12:45 pm. Bring your presentation on a flash drive and have a copy accessible online. Please email me your presentation after you present. Weekly written summary. There will be a writing assignment related to each weeks readings (13 total). In some cases, this writing assignment may simply be a summary of one or more of the readings. At other times, I may pose more directed questions for you to write about based on the readings as well as other activities. I may also assign readings to particular students or at times let you select or even debate. When asked to summarize an article or set of articles, your task is to distill the key points of your readings, neither being too brief, nor trying to reproduce the endless 2 20 (~15%) 20 (~15%) 20 (~15%) 20 (~15%) 15 (~13%) 15 (~13%) 15 (~13%) 125 A B C D E > 90% 80 89% 70 79% 60 69% < 60%

details of the text. This is perhaps the hardest task you have as a scholar: learning to distill readings into useful nuggets of information that you can describe to others, cite, and refer back to in the future. Summaries/responses will be collected in class in hardcopy only; no electronic submissions. Follow the standard format: (single-spaced, 11 point Arial font, 1-inch margins, left justified, single line breaks, no indentation, no page numbers, stapled; no headers, footers, or titles. Please pencil in your name on the back). Length is expected to range from 2-3 pages. Concepts list. Students are responsible for developing a list of key geographic concepts along with their meanings and descriptions. This can include the names of scholars as well as the titles of books and other works. I may dictate and define some of these concepts and key texts in class; however, I will also assign them to you to complete and report back on for our class discussion. Annotate your list through your own reading, but do not focus only on your particular interests and research focus. Assume that you are going to teach this course and want to demarcate a body of scholarship that could define geography. In addition, the terms and names do not necessarily have to be constrained to those presented in class or in the readings. Our readings are not meant to be the canon of geography (if there could ever be one), but selections chosen because of their broader focus and synthesis of geographic scholarship. The bibliographies of our readings should in many cases direct you to older key works. At the end of the semester, I will collect your individual digital versions of these lists and grade them according to their breadth, intellectual heft, and evidence for some self-directed exploration (versus carbon copying terms from existing web pages). A shortlist of terms will be compiled by students working in small cooperative groups outside of regular class time. This will be reviewed and edited down and distributed to all class members as a study guide for the final exam. Individual lists are due via email Wed, April 17th. Key concepts paper and EndNote bibliography. Write a review of the key concepts underlying the research you intend to conduct for your thesis or dissertation. Begin by providing a very short description of your research plan or focus. No need to be overlong or too detailed. In fact, avoid turning this key concepts paper into a methods-oriented research proposal describe only enough of your research to initiate your discussion of key concepts. What makes your work geographical? Who are the immediate scholars that you can make reference to? What concepts and key questions do they investigate? What is the deeper historical lineage of your ideas? What is it about these concepts that speaks to you individually? How did you come across these ideas and the topic for your research? What in your particular experiences makes your theoretical and conceptual choices seem true or best? Is there a different conceptual framework that would also be valid for what you are thinking about studying? What are the conceptual arguments that relate to your research interests? Follow the standard format: (single-spaced, 11 point Arial font, 1-inch margins, left justified, single line breaks, no indentation, no page numbers, stapled; no headers, footers, or titles. Please pencil in your name on the back). Length is expected to be 4-5 pages. References are mandatory. Append a bibliography to your paper, but also compile a larger bibliography of books and articles relevant to your research in Endnotes. This list can be considered your larger research library that you will use for your thesis, dissertation, or Ph.D. qualifying exams. This bibliography will be inspected to see that you are referencing sound sources (university book publishers, peer-reviewed journals) as opposed to web pages and generic library catalog gunk that you can download in a blink of an eye. Sort through your bibliography and try to make some decisions about what is useable and what is peripheral or marginal in quality. To submit: 1) hardcopy of paper with appended bibliography, 2) digital version of this paper, and 3) your EndNote file. Send these electronic submission via email (jast239@uky.edu). Submissions are due at the end of exam week, Friday, May 3rd. Midterm journal list exam. Students will be expected to list from memory 20 peer-reviewed preferably ISI Web of Knowledge journals central to the discipline of geography and their particular research interests, plus a short onesentence description of the journal that distinguishes it from the others. To derive this identifying characteristic, compare the aims of the journal with the types of articles being published. What does this tell you about the journal? Is there a particular country or regional focus (i.e., North American, British, international) that would not be evident from the journals title? Do non-geographers publish in them along side geographers? Avoid copying the information from the journal web page. Make your own identifying description; be succinct, witty, direct. This short midterm exam is scheduled for Wed, Feb 20th. Final exam This exam will require you to define a subset of key concepts in geography. Definitions should be defined precisely, not generally, circularly, or from the armchair. This test will last only one hour and is scheduled for Wed, April 24th. 3

DATE Jan 9

TOPIC Introduction Bayard, P. 2007. How to talk about books you havent read. New York Times Book Review. (Book review). Delbanco, N. 2002. In praise of imitation: on the sincerest form of flattery. Harper's (July). Deresiewicz, W. 2010. Solitude and leadership. American Scholar (Spring). Keizer, G. 2006. Crap shoot: everyone loses when politics is a game. Harpers (February). Pigliucci, M. 2012. Who knows what: on consilience. Aeon (October) Rose, M. 2009. Blue collar brilliance. American Scholar 78(3): 43-49.

Jan 16

Philosophies of learning and doing: pragmatism Allen, J., 2008. Pragmatism and power, or the power to make a difference in a radically contingent world. Geoforum 39 (4): 1613-1624. Barnes, T.J., 2008. American pragmatism: Towards a geographical introduction. Geoforum 39 (4): 1542-1554. Hepple, L.W, 2008 Geography and the pragmatic tradition: Geoforum 39(4): 1530-1541.

Jan 23 Faculty interview selection due

Geography as a concept:: what is geography?

Baerwald, T.J., 2010. Prospects for geography as an interdisciplinary discipline. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 100 (3): 493-501. Kwan, M.P., 2004. Beyond difference: From canonical geography to hybrid geographies. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 94 (4): 756-763. Turner, B.L., 2002. Contested identities: Human-environment geography and disciplinary implications in a restructuring academy. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 92 (1): 52-74.

Jan 30

Environmental causality Clark, T.L., Clark, E., 2012. Participation in evolution and sustainability. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 37 (4), 563-577. Judkins, G., Smith, M., Keys, E., 2008. Determinism within human-environment research and the rediscovery of environmental causation. Geographical Journal 174, 17-29. Simandan D, 2010, Beware of contingency. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 28(3) 388-396. Stallins, J.A., 2012. Scale, causality, and the new organism-environment interaction. Geoforum 43 (3), 427-441. Warf, B., 2009. Teleology, contingency, and networks, In Milieus of Creativity, Meusburger, P., Funke, J., Wunder, E. (Eds.),Springer Netherlands, pp. 255-267.

Feb 6

Scale I McMaster, R.B. and Sheppard, E. 2004. Introduction: scale and geographic inquiry. In Sheppard, E. S., and R. B. McMaster (Eds). Scale and Geographic Inquiry: Nature, Society, and Method. Blackwell, p. 1-22. Sheppard E.S. and McMaster, R.B. 2004 Scale and geographic inquiry: contrasts, intersections, and boundaries. In Sheppard, E. S., and R. B. McMaster (Eds). Scale and Geographic Inquiry: Nature, Society, and Method. Blackwell, p. 256-267. Herod, A. 2010. What is scale and how do we think about it. In Scale. Routledge. Turner, M.G., Gardner, R.H. & O'Neill, R.V. 2001. The critical concept of scale. In Landscape Ecology in Theory and Practice: Pattern and Process, New York, Springer.

Feb 13

Scale II Brenner, N., 2001. The limits to scale? Methodological reflections on scalar structuration. Progress in Human Geography 25 (4): 591-614. Fraser, A., 2010. The craft of scalar practices. Environment and Planning A 42 (2): 332-346. Manson, S.M., 2008. Does scale exist? An epistemological scale continuum for complex human-environment systems. Geoforum 39 (2): 776-788. Marston, S.A., 2000. The social construction of scale. Progress in Human Geography 24 (2): 219-242. Marston, S.A., Jones, J.P., Woodward, K., 2005. Human geography without scale. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 30 (4): 416-432. Neumann, R.P., 2009. Political ecology: theorizing scale. Progress in Human Geography 33 (3): 398-406. Sayre, N.F., 2005. Ecological and geographical scale: parallels and potential for integration. Progress in Human Geography 29 (3): 276-290.

Feb 20

Epistemologies, ontologies, and what they do

Midterm exam (15 minutes) Proctor, James D. 1998. The social construction of nature: relativist accusations, pragmatist and critical realist responses. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 88 (3) 352376. Hallisey, E. J. 2005. Cartographic visualization: An assessment and epistemological review. Professional Geographer 57 (3):350-364. Latour, B. 2004. Why has critique run out of steam? Critical Inquiry (Winter). Shapin, S. 2010. How to be antiscientific. In Never Pure. John Hopkins University Press. Shaw, I.G.R., Robbins, P.F., Jones, J.P., 2010. A bug's life and the spatial ontologies of mosquito management. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 100 (2): 373-392. Sheppard, E., 2008. Geographic dialectics? Environment and Planning A 40 (11): 2603-2612.

Feb 27

Space, place and time I Semester midpoint grades posted Select dates and times for class film viewing Harvey, D. 2001. Globalization and the spatial fix. Geographische Revue (2):23-30. Williams, J.J., 2007. The geography of accumulation: An interview with David Harvey Minnesota Review (69): 115-137. Smith N. 2006. Nature as accumulation strategy. In Coming to Terms with Nature: Socialist Register 2007. Monthly Review Press. Sheppard, E., 2002. The spaces and times of globalization: Place, scale, networks, and positionality. Economic Geography 78 (3): 307-330. Soja, E. The city and spatial justice. Justice spatiale/Spatial justice. http://www.jssj.org/archives/01/media/dossier_focus_vo2.pdf

March 6

Space, place and time 2 Hanson, Susan. 2010. Gender and mobility: new approaches for informing sustainability. Gender, Place and Culture 17(1): 523. Massey, D., 1999. Space-time, 'science' and the relationship between physical geography and human geography. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 24 (3): 261-276. Thrift, N., French, S., 2002. The automatic production of space. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 27 (3): 309-335. Wainwright, J., Barnes, T.J., 2009. Nature, economy, and the space-place distinction. Environment and Planning DSociety and Space 27 (6): 966-986. Woodward, K., Jones, J.P., Marston, S.A., 2012. The politics of autonomous space. Progress in Human Geography 36 (2): 204-224.

March 13 March 20

Spring Break Models and modeling Creager, A.N.H., Lunbeck, E., and Wise, M.N. 2007. Science Without Laws: Model Systems, Cases, Exemplary Narratives. Duke University Press. Oreskes, N. 2000. Why predict? Historical perspectives on prediction in Earth Science. Pages 23-40. In Prediction: Science, Decision Making, and the Future of Nature, D. Sarewitz and R.A. Pielke Jr., R. Byerly, Jr. (Eds.) Island Press. Demeritt, D. 2001. The construction of global warming and the politics of science. Annals Of The Association Of American Geographers 91 (2): 307-337. Sheppard, Eric. 2001. Quantitative geography: representations, practices, and possibilities. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 19 (5): 535 554.

March 27

From the representational to the material and the processural Barad, K., 2003. Posthumanist performativity: Toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter. Signs 28 (3): 801-831. Kitchin, R., Gleeson, J., Dodge, M., 2012. Unfolding mapping practices: a new epistemology for cartography. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. doi:10.1111/j.1475-5661.2012.00540.x. Martin, R., Sunley, P., 2007. Complexity thinking and evolutionary economic geography. Journal of Economic Geography 7 (5): 573-601. Rhoads, B.L., 2006. The dynamic basis of geomorphology reenvisioned. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 96 (1): 14-30. Thrift, N., 2012. The insubstantial pageant: producing an untoward land. Cultural Geographies 19 (2): 141-168. Whatmore, S., 2006. Materialist returns: practising cultural geography in and for a more-than-human world. Cultural Geographies 13 (4): 600-609.

April 3 Faculty interviews due

Nature, the construction of nature, and the return of nature

Castree, N., 2012. Inhuman Nature: Sociable Life on a Dynamic Planet. Cultural Geographies 19 (4): 547-552. Clark, N., 2012. Everything but the earth? Progress in Human Geography 36 (5): 685-687. Dixon, D.P., Jones, J.P., 2012. Inhuman nature: sociable life on a dynamic planet. Progress in Human Geography 36 (5): 677-687. Head, L., 2012. Earthly indifference and human difference. Progress in Human Geography 36 (5): 683-685. Swyngedouw, E., 2012. Novelty, critique and ethics: taking issue with Nigel Clark. Progress in Human Geography 36 (5): 680-683. April 10 April 17 AAG Topology and textures Individual concepts list due via email Assign groups to select final concept lists Submit group lists via email by Friday April 19 Final study list emailed to all students Sat April 20 Hess, M., 2004. Spatial' relationships? Towards a reconceptualization of embeddedness. Progress in Human Geography 28 (2): 165-186. Law, J., 2009. Actor Network Theory and Material Semiotics, In The New Blackwell Companion to Social Theory. Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 141-158. Leitner, H., Sheppard, E., Sziarto, K.M., 2008. The spatialities of contentious politics. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 33 (2): 157-172. Robbins, P. and B. Marks. 2009. Assemblage geographies. In The SAGE handbook of social geographies, S.J. Smith, S. Smith, R. Pain, J. P. Jones III, S. A. Marston, (Eds.). 176-194. Los Angeles-London: SAGE Publications. Williams, J.J. 2009. Science stories: an interview with Donna J. Haraway. Minnesota Review (73-74): 133-163.

April 24 Final exam (1 hour)

Landscapes

Alderman, D. and Inwood, J. 2013. Landscapes of memory and socially just futures. In The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Cultural Geography, Johnson, Nuala C., Richard H. Schein, and Jamie Winders (Eds.) Wiley-Blackwell. Creswell T. 2002. Landscape and the obliteration of practice. In Handbook of Cultural Geography, Anderson, Kay, Mona Domosh, Steve Pile, and Nigel Thrift (Eds). SAGE Publishers Schein, Richard H. 1997. The place of landscape: a conceptual framework for interpreting an American scene. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 87 (4): 660680. Exam week Film presentations Monday, April 29th 10:30 - 12:45 Concept papers due Friday, May 3 Submit a hardcopy of your final paper to my box or under my office door, and email your electronic version of your paper and your EndNotes file