Syllabus
Geography 133: CulturalGeography of the Modern World--
A Critical Approach
University of California, Los Angeles
Winter 2006
course web page: http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/06W/geog133-1/
This course is oriented around the following key questions: What is cultural geography? What is the modern world? What is a critical approach?
Predicated on these modest queries, our goal will be to explore the struggles that make “culture”, to show how they get worked out in particular spaces and places—in particular landscapes—and to show how struggles over “culture” are a prime determinant in the ways that we live our lives. This course takes as a starting point the fact that we live in a world defined by continuous culture wars. These are contestations over the shape of everyday life, over the production, maintenance, and reproduction of social meanings and expression, and, most importantly, over the distribution of power, justice, and social and economic advantage.
The project of developing ways of thinking “critically” (and reflexively) about the production of knowledge and places has a long and contested history that draws upon various theoretical perspectives and political alignments, including Marxist, feminist, postcolonial, post-structural, and conservative thinking. Further, a critical perspective demands subjective awareness, and an openness to view the world from multiple epistemologies and scales.
Throughout this term we will engage in complex but important questions about social processes such as identity formation, the construction of cultural difference, gender, citizenship and belonging as well as geographies of spectacle and resistance. Because of the tremendous and far-reaching power of the capitalist system to shape local and global culture, we will explore its tenets and place-shaping expressions. We will also engage with the “landscape perspective”, which has long been the purview of cultural geography as well as meanings of nature as both concept and transformative agent.
Ultimately, our intention here is not merely to explore what cultural geography is…but what it does.
Lecture
Tuesday/Thursday. 12:30pm-1:45pm
Franz Hall rm. 1260
Instructor
Dr. Mark Troy Burnett
tburnett@ucla.edu
Office Hours: Tuesday 10-12am, Bunche 1127c
Reading Material
Atkinson, David et al. 2005. Cultural Geography—A Critical Dictionary of Key
Concepts.
Mitchell, Don. 2000. Cultural Geography—A Critical Introduction.
Weekly supplemental readings. Course webpage (http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/06W/geog133-1/)
(30%) Midterm: Thursday, February 16
(40%) Final: Friday, March 24 (3-6pm)
Field Work Project
(30%) Geography is invariably a field science, i.e. you need to go out into the world and explore/analyze it with the various cultural geographic concepts you have acquired. With its myriad places and multi-textured qualities, Los Angeles is a splendid area offering numerous sites to study. Thus, you are charged with venturing into the city to study two “places” of your choosing and write about them (from a cultural geographic perspective). Length 1000 words each.
Due Friday, March 24.
Here is a list of potential sites to study; though, you are allowed to write about any place, just pass the topic by me first:
Santa Monica Pier; 3rd St. Promenade; Getty Museum; Universal City Walk; Venice Boardwalk; LAX; Downtown LA (eg. Bunker Hill, Pershing Square; City hall; Bonaventure Hotel); Dodger Stadium/Chavez Ravine; Skid Row; Chinatown; Grand Central Rail Station; Oliveras Street; Watts Towers; Plaza Mexico; Hollywood Park; Port of Los Angeles; LA River (anywhere along its course); Grauman’s Chinese Theater; Hollywood walk-of-fame; Kodak Theater; Beverly Center; Griffith Park Observatory; Will Rogers State Park; Doheny state beach; Korea Town; LACMA/La Brea Tar Pits; Malibu; USC; Rodeo Drive Beverly Hills; Disneyland/California Adventure
Itinerary
Week #1
Lecture Topics Culture wars: culture is politics by another name
What is culture?
Culture in cultural geography: an historical overview
Mitchell. Chapter 1
Atkinson et al: pp. 41-48
Cosgrove: Geography is Everywhere
Week #2
Lecture Topics
The roots of cultural studies and the new cultural geography
The political economy of culture
The cultural contradictions of capitalism
Readings
Mitchell: Chapters 2-3
Atkinson et al.: pp. 6-15; 169-174; 27-33
Bell: The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism—Afterword 1996
Week #3
Lecture Topics
The work of landscape: producing and representing the cultural scene
Landscapes as systems of social reproduction
Mitchell: Ch. 4-5
Atkinson et al.: pp. 49-56
Cosgrove. Social Formation and Symbolic Landscapes, pp. xi-xxx
Week #4
Lecture Topics
Cultural politics: the dialectics of spectacle
Geographies of resistance
Mitchell: Ch. 6
Routledge: Putting politics in its Place—Baliapal, India, as a Terrain of Resistance.
Week #5
Lecture Topics
Identity
Space, place, and gender
Feminism and cultural change
Readings
Mitchell: Chs. 7-8
Atkinson et al.: pp. 91-108; 122-127
Forest: West Hollywood as Symbol: The Significance of Place in the Construction of a Gay Identity.
Week #6
Review
Readings
No assigned readings
Midterm I: Thursday, February 16th
Week #7
Lecture Topics
Nature/Culture
The Dialectic of Nature in the Los Angeles context
Readings
Cronon: In Search of Nature Lowenthal: Making a Pet of Nature
Wolch et al.: Urban Nature and the Nature of Urbanism Week #8
Lecture topics
Cultural geographies of race
Environmental racism
Readings
Mitchell: Ch. 9
Atkinson et al.: pp. 109-114
Di Chiro: Nature as Community—The Convergence of Environment and Social Justice
Week #9
Lecture topics
Globalization and geographies of belonging
Nations, nationalism, and identity
Geopolitics and governance
Monument and memory
Readings
Mitchell: Ch. 10
Atkinson et al.: pp. 65-71; 72-79; 161-168; 175-187; 135-140
Johnson: Cast in Stone—Monuments, Geography, and Nationalism
Week #10
Lecture topics
Culture geography for the 21st century
Readings
No assigned readings
FINAL: Friday March 24, 3pm-6pm
