Using GIS tools to Explore Water and Empire in the Nile Valley and Colorado River Basin

Catalog description

Combining an introduction to digital GIS tools, critical GIS theory, and traditional archival research, this course explores the historical entanglements between water and imperial expansion in the western United States and Nile Valley from the nineteenth century to the present. Lectures, readings, and multimedia content explores how the physical properties of water, imperial projects of resource extraction, and indigenous resistance shaped environmental transformation. Students work in groups to develop original interdisciplinary research projects.