Human Geography: Society, Space and Culture Programme Structure
SEMESTER 1
Compulsory 12 week module on theory and intellectual practice in human geography running concurrently with two thematic modules.
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MODULE 1
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Critical Human Geographies |
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MODULE 2
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Social Geographies of Segregation |
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MODULE 3
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Utopian Geographies |
SEMESTER 2
Compulsory 12 week module on the practice of research in human geography running concurrently with two thematic modules.
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MODULE 1
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Methods and Research Design |
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MODULE 2
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Worlds of Mapping |
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MODULE 3
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Nature Landscape and Power |
SUMMER TERM
A 60 credit dissertation on a subject agreed with the academic supervisor. Dissertation to be compiled over the summer months for submission in September and graduation in December.
Module Descriptions
SEMESTER 1
Critical Human Geographies (20 credits, 12 weeks)
Human Geography research covers a wide range of themes, practices and problematics, from the highly theoretical and philosophical to the empirically rich and technically sophisticated. This module will introduce you to some of the key conceptual debates that underpin much of the research in modern Geography and particularly the focus of the School’s ‘Society, Space and Culture’ research cluster. The expertise of the cluster ranges from themes in Historical-Cultural; Political Economy/Development; and Social/Political geographies. This course will expose you to contemporary geographical debates, and profile the diversity of our research content, process and practice, through a series of seminars delivered by the Human Geography staff.
Coordinator: Dr. Nuala Johnson (with programme teaching team)
Social Geographies of Segregation (20 credits, 12 weeks)
The module systematically examines recent social and economic change through the frame of Northern Ireland to help elucidate global patterns of social, political and economic change. It will examine critical geographical debates about community, ethnicity, inequality, work, conflict and, especially, segregation, and interrogates there usefulness in the context of Northern Ireland. Through the coursework project – of which all three elements provide a systematic progression through the research process – and through comparison with other divided cities, the module asks both whether Northern Ireland conforms to, or challenges, theorizations of social change in segregated societies, and if there is such a thing.
Coordinator: Dr. Ian Shuttleworth
Utopian Geographies (20 credits, 12 weeks)
From Plato’s Republic, through Marx’s utopic prescriptions, to the cultural potency of arcadia, our human geographies are inescapably underwritten by utopian visions. And yet whilst such ideals are invariably spatial conceptions, acting to reorder social worlds, geographers have tended to leave the systematic study of utopias to philosophers, sociologists and political scientists. If ‘radical’ geographers have long campaigned for social justice, more recently in reaction to the political toothlessness of the scholarly tradition of critique in an age of global uncertainty, human geographers have begun to explicitly engage with the idea of utopia in mapping ‘hopeful’ future geographies. Specifically, this module seeks to understand: 1) geo-philosophies of utopia; 2) the geographical effects and affects of utopian schemes; 3) the ways in which geographers have mobilised the utopian in conceiving geographical futures. Taught through a series of weekly seminars, each class takes a set text – starting with the Republic and ending with David Harvey’s Geographies of Hope – which act as the springboard for class discussion of key concepts. Drawing together a wide range of material from across the humanities, the module introduces students to the centrality of geography in all conceptions of change and the role of geographers in conceiving new worlds. The module is assessed by two essays, the first being 2,000 word (maximum), the second 4,000 words.
Coordinator: Dr. Carl Griffin
SEMESTER 2
Methods and Research Design (20 credits, 12 weeks)
The aim of this module is to consider the practice of different qualitative and quantitative methods, to ask how different methods constitute different disciplinary areas, and to question what constitutes ‘method’. It contrasts social scientific approaches (for instance focus groups and participant observation) with humanities approaches (for instance discourse analysis and genealogy), providing a practical and critical introduction to selected methods. The module also addresses the relationships between methodologies, the deployment of research methodologies in human geographical research, and ways in which different methodologies are mobilised in public and policy debates. This module will also be available to first year doctoral students in geography and cognate disciplines.
Coordinator: Dr. Carl Griffin (with programme teaching team)
Nature, Landscape, Power (20 credits, 12 weeks)
This module will examine the relationships between nature, landscape and power. Different theoretical understandings of the cultural construction of nature will be assessed, with an emphasis on how nature is socially produced by human societies. Drawing on historical and contemporary examples this module will address how different ‘sites’ of nature get transformed through discourses of power, identity and place. Stretching over themes such as the protection of an idea of wilderness in the historical development of an American national identity; the development of botanical gardens as spaces of science and beauty; to current debates about mapping the genome and contemporary attitudes towards race, this module will focus on the intersection between science, power and the projection of nature by human societies over the past two hundred years. The module is assessed by two essays, the first being 2,000 word (maximum), the second 4,000 words.
Coordinator: Dr. Nuala Johnson
Mapping Worlds (20 credits, 12 weeks)
Maps and mapping have long been a fundamental part of the geographical tradition. This module explores three aspects of this long and continuing relationship between cartography and geography: firstly reviewing the emergent critical philosophy and history of cartography of the 1980s and 1990s, particularly the work of geographers such as J B Harley and Denis Cosgrove, to understand the ways in which maps and mapping are currently debated in geographical and historical discourse; secondly, using examples of maps – both textual and visual – of the period 1000-1600 to re-evaluate the orthodoxy that a ‘revolution’ in map-making took place in Europe in the 1400s, and that there emerged a ‘cartographic consciousness’ that divides the medieval from the modern world; and thirdly, addressing recent theoretical debates among geographers and cartographers concerning contemporary mapping technologies and ‘digital cartographies’, for example in the ab/uses of web-based geo-visualizations and Geographical Information Systems (GIS). To engage with these three themes the module will consist of seminars and workshops, as well as visits to archives and galleries to study particular maps. The module will also make use of the School’s own map collection in the Map Library, as well as manuscript and printed historic maps housed in the University Library’s Special Collections. The module is assessed by two essays, the first being 2,000 words (maximum) in length and the second, 4,000 words.
Coordinator: Dr. Keith Lilley
Dissertation (60 credits, 12 weeks)
This triple-weighted module will provide Master’s students with the necessary guidance, advice, time- management and basic research skills and scholarly support via one-on-one supervisions, required to enable them to submit a 15,000 word (maximum) MA dissertation in the final week of the academic year. It provides an opportunity for students to engage in a substantial piece of scholarship into an appropriate area of their choice and under suitable supervisory guidance. Undertaking the dissertation will enable students to develop an advanced – and critical – understanding of the application of research methodologies to a substantive topic in the field of human geography. Feedback will be given on one initial draft. The module represents the culmination of the Masters programme.
