FEMINIST GEOGRAPHY: THEORETICAL APPROACHES

GEN&WS/GEOG 514

An introduction to foundational approaches to feminist qualitative research in human geography. Research is not separate from a social world that historically has been and continues to be shaped by (settler) colonial, racialized, gendered, sexualized, and class-inflected relations of power (among others). Research practices and "findings" have been and continue to be used to inform and rationalize relations of oppression, exploitation, and violence. For feminist researchers, then, questions of power, difference, and social change are central to how we design and conduct research. Engages in political-ethical discussions about the positionality and responsibilities of ourselves as researchers, and how our knowledge production can reproduce and challenge prevailing relations of power.

GEOG 511

An introduction to many key movements and thinkers within Critical Social Theory. Explores the changing histories and presents of the field through a range of primary works from philosophy, critical theory, and geography - paying particular attention to the points where social theory intersects with problems of space and place. Covers classic problems in social theory ranging from theories of the political-economic constitution of the social (Marxism) and its extensions into the culture (the Frankfurt School) to a range of mid- to late-twentieth-century epistemological interventions framed around questions of difference and identity. Recent contestations and reformulations that have surfaced across ontological, decolonial, non-human, algorithmic, and other reimaginings and extensions of the social are examined.

GEOG 518

Advanced political geography course that explores reconceptualizations of power, place, and identity, as well as the interactive forces at work that continually reshape place-making and the inter-related processes of identification and differentiation.

GEOG 300

An opportunity to re-imagine human geography. The history of geography is particularly violent and exclusive. It is well known that systems of colonialist exploitation, theft, kidnapping, and murder were facilitated in part by the work of modern cartographers and "explorers." The discipline that we have today is a product of these earlier colonial epistemologies and ideologies. The science that emerged from these fields - geography - institutionalizes and reproduces many the ideas and viewpoints of their modern practitioners. Creates a space to re-imagine and re-invent what the field of human geography might be. Interrogates the colonial history of geography as a social science and practice. Explores several ways of thinking about space and social life that might not fit cleanly into the discipline at large.

GEOG 513

Explores several key events, sites, thinkers, and texts that contribute to the social, personal, and intellectual landscapes of Queer Geographies. An invitation to survey and reflect on queer critical strategies that sample, record, and remix constellations of relationships between theory, space, sexuality, gender, and identity. It foregrounds modes of queer spacing and placemaking in academic and popular works devoted to queer lives, studies, sexualities, narratives, publics and privates, joys and griefs, art, theory, and beyond. Offers a range of strategies for reading, interpreting, and developing nuanced scholarly interventions and theories. Question and reimagine normative notions of the personal, the social, and the socio-spatial.