Geography

This course introduces flows, networks, and diasporas as lenses from which to study international migration. The course mainly focuses on international migration from a global south perspective, but has a truly global scope that is particularly explored in analyses of the migration-development nexus. Likewise, the course discusses if and how climate change can be seen as a driver for migration and the role of migration in forming sustainable adaptation. The course focuses on one theme each week divided into two parts; first, conceptual presentations and discussions and second, critical readings of particular analyses/case studies. The exact content of the course may be influenced by students’ particular interests.

This course examines different ways of defining the economy and their implications for measuring, managing, and changing it. We will engage with a range of critical theoretical perspectives, some of which suggest broad interpretations of the economy that extends beyond corporations to consider domains such as unpaid household labor and different scales of government, as well as the role of social categories such as gender and race in shaping economies. As students build up a sophisticated conceptual understanding, they explore competing explanations for geographical differences in economic activities, wealth and development, as well as the relations between places.

Modern day Israel and Palestine, the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, covers an area that is six times smaller than the state of Pennsylvania, but has about the same population size (about 12.7 million people). In addition to the high density of population, this land is the heart of a religious, ethnic, national, and political conflict. This context makes spatial planning an immense challenge and is often used as a tool for achieving various political agendas. After presenting some brief background on the geography and the history of the land, this course focuses on topics including national and regional planning; the New Towns scheme; water planning issues; transportation planning; Jerusalem's geopolitical question; tourism development in historic cities such as Nazareth, Acre, and Bethlehem; the fence of separation, and affordable housing plans.

This course examines issues of environment and uneven development through the historical geography of empire. The course educates students on: 1) interdisciplinary theoretical approaches to empire in the social sciences and humanities, 2) the study of empire and environment (especially natural resources) within the subfields of political geography, historical geography, development geography, and political ecology, and 3) the complex natures, spatialities, and identities produced in the wake of European empires in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Specific topics include the spatiality of sovereignty, racialized labor regimes (including slavery, coolies, and peasants), imperial modes of water and forest development, imperial systems of food and agriculture, state responses to disease and disaster, and the contradictory political geographies of settlement, incorporation, exploitation, and decolonization. The course concludes with a reflection on struggles to ‘decolonize’ imperial knowledge systems, political economies, and social relations in the contemporary era.

Students learn about the comparative dimensions of urbanization from the 18th to the early 20th century. Students explore the relationships between urbanization and the broader currents of economic, social, and cultural change. Students learn to compare and contrast urbanization at different places and times in both quantitative and qualitative terms; explain the relationships between social, cultural, and political processes; and explain the production of urban spaces and urban forms.

Through interrogating theories, strategies and trajectories of development in diverse contexts, the course examines the geography of the global political economy as it relates to development issues and the attendant cultural and political geographies of development.