GEOG3551: CHICAGO: SITES OF GLOBAL CHANGE

• GEOG2472 Social Research in Geography

• None

• GEOG3501 BERLIN: CULTURE, POLITICS AND CONTESTATION; 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

• 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.

• The global processes of change to be studied in 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:
• Migration, race and identity
• Financialisation
• Mobility and transit
• Work and (in)formal labour
• Transformations of the built environment
• The field course will consist of 6 days spent in a large US metropolitan area (Chicago) and will involve:
• 3 days of instruction on module themes (e.g. walking tours, talks with local experts, museum and historical site visits)
• 3 days of student-led and guided activities around core themes, supported by the fieldtrip teaching team.
• Daily field note writing.

Subject-specific Knowledge:

• 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.

Subject-specific Skills:

• To utilise key concepts in human geography to understand how global processes shape and are shaped by local conditions.
• To develop skills in research project development, especially evaluating different ways of producing and representing data in human geography research.
• Demonstrate a capacity to reflect on the role of place-based research in human geography: by keeping detailed and reflexive field notes; learning to make sense of those notes through an engagement with academic texts; 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.

Key Skills:

• 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, maps, spatial data and music; keeping a field diary that critically reflects on their experiences on the fieldtrip; researching, structuring and writing a longer research paper; responding, engaging and commenting on each others 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.

• Lectures will provide background information and provide overviews of key theoretical approaches and themes in the recommended reading.
• Workshops will focus on close reading, practical activities engaged with core concepts in human geography 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 background readings in preparation for fieldwork.
• Reading lists, handouts, and lecture materials will be posted on Blackboard Learn Ultra to assist student learning. The residential fieldtrip will introduce the students to specific themes through field-based research tasks.

Verbal feedback on ideas and conceptual development for essays in workshops. Verbal feedback on field notebooks during the fieldtrip.

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