Intelligence Analysis, Cultural Geography, and Homeland Security

Catalog description

The main objective of this course is to enable students to develop the research and methodological skills required to effectively analyze current geospatial realities using the prism of cultural geography, and to create a rational predictive synthesis (intelligence summary) about potential human threats to civil security. The world around us comprises a variety of cultural and subcultural groups whose actions, ideologies, and existences may have implications for civil, national, and human security - either as communities that are underserved or marginalized, as groups that are targets of state or substate violence, or as groups that threaten the security of the state or international relations. While traditional, anthropology-oriented approaches to intelligence acknowledge these groups, they typically ignore the critical significance of geography to cultures and subcultures. This course is designed to engage students in theories and methods of cultural geography and to explore its relationship to security. Students will explore cultural geography as both a discipline and a methodological approach and situate research in cultural geography through case studies in homeland security and geospatial intelligence.