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History & Philosophy of Geography Geography 421H1S: History & Philosophy of Geography University of Toronto, Winter 2014 Mondays, 6-8pm Sidney Smith 1078 Instructor: Dr. Matthew Farish Office: Sidney Smith 5040 Office Hours: Tuesdays, 11am-noon; Wednesdays, 10am-noon Office Phone: 416-978-6671 Email: [email protected] (basic questions only; please use office hours for other inquiries) Course Website: Accessible through http://portal.utoronto.ca (see below) Course Description: From the sciences to the humanities, it has become common to speak of knowledge as ‘situated’: always partial, always provisional, always from somewhere. This seminar on the history and philosophy of geography is particularly concerned with the ‘where’. As we follow geography’s emergence as a discrete academic discipline, and consider some of the key philosophical ideas underpinning this history, it will be crucial to place theories, debates, sites and individuals within a larger canvas, one particularly concerned with the operation of power. Given the limitations of a single term, we will focus on the period from the 15th century to the present. Each week, we will read one or more recent geographical essays that illuminate both a historical era and a philosophical approach (or approaches) to geography. But you will also often do your own primary reading and research on the times and places in question. Extensive knowledge of world history is not a requirement for this course, but historical curiosity is. So too is an interest in intellectual history, because geography is only discrete in an institutional sense, and it shares much with fields from biology to economics to literature. These three examples have been chosen because at times geography has claimed, and continues to claim, affinities with the sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities. As we will see, this diversity has been a source of seemingly endless anxiety for geographers and many of their critics, but it may also turn out to be an important indicator of the world’s complexity. Evaluation: Attendance and Participation: 20% One-Page Reading Responses (4): 20% Interpretative Essay – Proposal: 10% Interpretative Essay: 30% Interpretative Essay – Revised: 20% GGR421, University of Toronto, Winter 2014 Key Dates: One-Page Reading Responses: At least 2 of 4 must be submitted by February 24 Essay Proposal due: January 27 (electronically) (returned February 3) Essay due: March 3 (electronically) (returned by March 17) Revised Essay due: April 7 (electronically) Readings: There is no textbook that adequately addresses the range of topics covered in this course. Instead, the reading list is drawn from three sources: 1. Journal articles accessed through the U of T Library E-Journals portal (E) 2. Book chapters and other material posted to the course Blackboard site (B) 3. Web-based media (W) While the benefits of ‘free’ readings are clear, you will consume a significant amount of paper if you print all of the sources listed below. I encourage you to work with PDFs online or print creatively (two pages per page, double-sided, on recycled paper, and so on). Note: Whether you own a copy or consult it from time to time in a library, The Dictionary of Human Geography (5th edition, 2009) will be an extremely useful resource for this course (and many others). Class Schedule: Week 1 (January 6): Introduction (No reading) Week 2 (January 13): Definitions and Traditions [Although this week features four readings, they are all relatively brief, and will set up the rest of the course.] - John Agnew and David Livingstone, “Introduction,” in Agnew and Livingstone, eds., The SAGE Handbook of Geographical Knowledge (2011), 1-17 (http://www.sagepub.com/upm- data/38810_Agnew_Page_proofs.pdf) (W) - Mona Domosh, “Towards a Feminist Historiography of Geography,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 16 (1991), 95-104 (E) - Derek Gregory, “Geography,” in Gregory et al eds., Dictionary of Human Geography, Fifth Edition (2009) (B) - Bruce Rhoads, “Whither Physical Geography?” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 94.4 (2004), 748-755 (E) 2 GGR421, University of Toronto, Winter 2014 Week 3 (January 20): The Earth in Focus - James Sidaway, “The (Re)making of the Western ‘Geographical Tradition’: Some Missing Links,” Area 29.1 (1997), 72-80 (E) - Marina Warner, “Here Be Monsters,” The New York Review of Books 19 December 2013 (www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/dec/19/here-be-monsters/) (W) - Look at Ortelius’s Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (http://www.mirroroftheworld.com.au/exploration/venturing_out/theatrum_orbis.php) (W) - Find and bring to class a copy of one ‘world map’ from the period 1400-1600 (obviously not the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum) Week 4 (January 27): New Worlds ESSAY OUTLINE DUE - Charles Withers, “Encountering the Physical World,” in his Placing the Enlightenment: Thinking Geographically about the Age of Reason (2007), 112-135 (W) [Online through the U of T Library Catalogue] - Read 2-3 of the longer entries in The Endeavour Journal of Sir Joseph Banks (1768-1771) (http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks05/0501141h.html and other sites) (W) - Find and bring to class an image depicting an European encounter with ‘foreign’ nature and/or culture from the 15th-18th centuries Week 5 (February 3): Geography’s Empires - Diana Davis, “Desert ‘Wastes’ of the Maghreb: Desertification Narratives in French Colonial Environmental History of North Africa,” Cultural Geographies 11 (2004), 359-387 (E) - Gerry kearns, “The Imperial Subject: Geography and Travel in the Work of Mary kingsley and Halford Mackinder,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 22.4 (1997), 450-472 (E) - Find and bring to class a visual example (map, painting, photograph, etc.) illustrating geography’s role ‘in the service of empire’ Week 6 (February 10): Darwinism, Determinism, and the Discipline - Noel Castree, “Charles Darwin and the Geographers,” Environment and Planning A 41 (2009), 2293-2298 (E) - Felix Driver, “Charles Darwin and the Geographers: Unnatural Selection,” Environment and Planning A 42 (2010), 1-4 (E) - David Livingstone, “Race, Space and Moral Climatology: Notes Toward a Genealogy,” Journal of Historical Geography 28.2 (2002), 159-180 (E) - Find and bring to class an interesting excerpt from Charles Darwin’s A Naturalist’s Voyage Round the World (1839) (available at www.gutenberg.org/files/3704/3704-h/3704-h.htm) 3 GGR421, University of Toronto, Winter 2014 Week 7 (February 17): NO CLASS (Reading Week) Week 8 (February 24): Nationalism and Geopolitics - Michael Heffernan, “Fin de siècle, fin du monde? On the Origins of European Geopolitics, 1890- 1920,” in klaus Dodds and David Atkinson, eds., Geopolitical Traditions: A Century of Geopolitical Thought (2000), 27-51 (W) [Online through the U of T Library Catalogue] - Halford Mackinder, “The Geographical Pivot of History,” The Geographical Journal 23.4 (1904), 421-437 (E) - Find and bring to class a nationalist geographical image from the late 19th or early 20th centuries. Week 9 (March 3): Geographical Knowledge for a World at War ESSAY DUE - Trevor Barnes and Claudio Minca, “Nazi Spatial Theory: The Dark Geographies of Carl Schmitt and Walter Christaller,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 103.3 (2013), 669- 687 (E) Week 10 (March 10): Cold War Technoscience and the ‘Quantitative Revolution’ - Trevor Barnes, “Geography's Underworld: The Military-Industrial Complex, Mathematical Modelling, and the Quantitative Revolution,” Geoforum 39.1 (2008), 3-16 (E) - John Cloud, “American Cartographic Transformations during the Cold War,” Cartography and Geographic Information Science 29.3 (2002), 261-82 (E) - Find and bring to class a visual example illustrating geography’s close relationship with the Cold War Week 11 (March 17): Radical Geography and Social Justice - Trevor Barnes, Nik Heynen, Andy Merrifield, and Alison Mountz, “Classics in Human Geography Revisited: William W. Bunge (1971), Fitzgerald: Geography of a Revolution,” Progress in Human Geography 35 (2011), 712-720 (E) - Ruth Wilson Gilmore, “Fatal Couplings of Power and Difference: Notes on Racism and Geography,” The Professional Geographer 54.1 (2002), 15-24 (E) - Hugh Prince and David M. Smith, “Questions of Social Relevance” and “Radical Geography – the Next Revolution?” Area 3.3 (1971), 150-157 (E) [two short commentaries] Week 12 (March 24): Humanistic Geography and the Cultural Turn - Denis Cosgrove and Peter Jackson, “New Directions in Cultural Geography,” Area 19.2 (1987), 95-101 (E) - Yi-Fu Tuan, “Humanistic Geography,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 66 (1976), 266-276 (E) 4 GGR421, University of Toronto, Winter 2014 Week 13 (March 31): Feminism and Post-Structuralism - Michel Foucault, “Questions on Geography” (1976), in Colin Gordon (ed.), Power/Knowledge (1980), 63-77 (B) - Janice Monk and Susan Hanson, “On Not Excluding the Half of the Human in Human Geography,” The Professional Geographer 34.1 (1982), 11-23 (E) REVISED ESSAY DUE MONDAY, APRIL 7 (electronically) Attendance and Participation: With the exception of brief, 30-to-45 minute ‘table-setting’ lectures each week (slides will be posted on Blackboard), this will be a discussion-based course. It will challenge you to think about what is involved in ‘doing’ geography, to form a critical appreciation of the ideas that some geographers have committed to print, and to develop your own ideas in response to the readings and class conversations. I strongly encourage you to visit during my office hours in the first few weeks of the course. A brief conversation will help me to learn about your academic background and interests, and this in turn should improve our discussions in class. Aside from Week 2, where I will lead the general discussion, each week two or three individuals will submit three questions pertaining to the relevant assigned readings, linking these readings to broader course themes. I will compile these questions, and they will be the focus of our conversations. If you are scheduled to submit discussion questions, please post them on the course website’s Discussion Board by noon on the day of the class in question.
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