Place, Space and Culture

Catalog description

What is culture? Is it good literature, music, art and food? Or is it a full range of learned human behavior? Culture is in itself a very exciting topic; it invokes diverse imaginaries of life, livelihoods, ways of living, languages, and forms of entertaining, consuming, playing, and eating. In this course, we will delve deep to understand the 'how' and 'why' of culture, that is, how is a particular cultural landscape, a mode of living, produced and why? Most importantly, this course will examine how culture is not a stand-alone concept but rather a phenomenon that intersects with other social processes such as politics and economics. This course aims to survey and explore a range of perspectives on the nature of human integration with the environment and the manifestation of human culture on the landscape. The course will engage philosophical and metaphysical questions in addition to those of landscapes and place. The ultimate objective is for participants to develop a deep and multidimensional understanding of human-environment relations, and the manifestation of human activity on the landscape. Learning Outcomes: Through taking this course, students will be able to: 1. analyze the major themes and debates within cultural geography; 2. interpret representations of landscape, space and place in a variety of textual materials, such as academic readings, films, novels, newspaper articles and art; 3. evaluate the landscape, space and place as an expression of cultural forces.