Space,
Place and Identity
GEO 6473, Fall 2011
Class Location: SIPA 503 Time: 2:00-4:45 p.m. Monday
Seminar Facilitator: Ben Smith Email: bsmith@fiu.edu
Office: SIPA 305 Office
Phone: 348-2074
Office Hours: Monday, 12:45-1:45 (or
before and after class)
Teaching Homepage: http://www.fiu.edu/~bsmith/teaching.htm
Readings: http://ecampus.fiu.edu (log on to moodle)
So you want
to learn about Star Trek, coming in second in horse racing, and government
issued photo cards?
To make this a good seminar experience for everyone, you will have to 1) read all the required reading, every week, even if it is lengthy/difficult and 2) come prepared and ready to our weekly meetings so that we all can learn from each other. To make sure you reap maximum reward out of this reading and sharing, you need to 3) write about it.
To provide the incentive to do all this, I have to assign grades. Grades in the seminar will be broken down in the following manner:
Seminar attendance participation 25%
Weekly questions for discussion 5%
Weekly thought pieces 20%
Seminar Attendance & Participation
First off, to get the most out of
the seminar, you have to be there, every week, on time. The only valid excuses are if you have a
medically validated illness or you are presenting at an academic
conference. Or, if the
campus is destroyed by a hurricane.
Not feeling like it, having other things to do, traffic and work are not
excuses.
But showing up is only a fraction
of it. You also have be
alert and ready to participate. While I
try to put the readings in context (letting you guess my thinking behind them),
it is not my job to lecture – my role is as a facilitator for all of us to have
a discussion and for all of you to have a chance to get your questions answered. While I don’t like to (and thankfully,
normally don’t have to), I will start calling on people with questions if the
discussion starts to ebb, so be prepared with something to say.
Using Ecampus/Moodle & Your First Assignment
This is probably going to be the
first time most of you have used Moodle (it certainly is mine). So there will be a feeling out process, but
here is what I know:
1. Go to http://ecampus.fiu.edu
2. Look at the menu in the left column. Click on “Moodle Login”
3. Use your FIU email ID and password to login. Note: if your usual ID doesn’t work, ask Ben. I will see which one the course shows you as using.
4. In the upper-right corner, is a box called my courses. Click on the Fall 2011 folder, and then on GEO 6473
5. First thing you need to do is go to the left-hand column and click on “Profile”. Once there, you should do several things.
a. Click the “Edit Profile” tab.
b. Unless you want to get an email every time anyone posts anything in a forum, change the box next to “Forum auto-subscribe” to “No: don’t automatically subscribe me to forums”
c. It would probably be good to set “Forum tracking” to “Yes” so it is easy to see which posts you have and have not read.
d. Please put a picture up. It doesn’t have to be of you, but it is nice to have some sort of avatar for everyone so we can see who did what on the forums.
e. The rest of it is up to you if you do it or don’t
6. For your first assignment, I want you to go into the forum under “Getting to Know Each Other Week” and follow the instructions there to make a bio post. Everyone please post their bios using the “Add a new discussion topic,” not by replying to each other’s posts.
Weekly Questions and Thought Pieces
By noon on the day of seminar,
you will need to login to http://ecampus.fiu.edu
and click on the link for this course.
Then, go to the appropriate week, and click on the discussion forum (it
has a little button that looks like this 
).
In that forum, you need to put a single post that includes two things:
1. A 600-900 word “thought piece” which touches on ALL the assigned readings for the week (more on this below).
2. Two questions for discussion in class. These questions can be points you were unclear on, or perhaps something you think would get a cracking good discussion going.
To make this post, hit the “Add a new discussion topic” button. In the “Subject” box, please type your name. In the message box, please place both your thought piece and questions. You can type directly into the box, but I would suggest using another program like Word to type your response and questions first, and then simply copy the text into the message box.
A couple of DO NOTs
1.
DO NOT make your
initial post as a reply to someone else’s post.
Hit the “Add
a new discussion topic” button to make your first post. However, you are of course free to reply to
each other’s posts if you want (although it is not required).
2.
DO NOT include your thought piece and questions as an
attachment. It just takes everyone more
time to look at yours if you do that.
Once noon has passed, you should take time (provided you have it) to read over each others’ posts, so we are ready to discuss.
This writing and sharing is probably the single most beneficial part of the class – it allows you to collect your own thoughts and learn from the thoughts of your fellow students.
Weekly Thought Pieces
To make sure you have thoughts to share each week, and also have some notes available as you prepare for qualifying exams and thesis writing, each of you are to write a single 600-900 word commentary each week, focusing on all the assigned readings. A commentary should give a brief informal abstract of EACH AND EVERY ONE of the readings (with the exception of the Key Thinkers.. readings, which are already summaries) assigned for the week (a few sentences on what it is about, what the author argued, what it speaks to, etc.). It must also contain some original thoughts, analysis and/or criticisms on whatever you found striking in the readings: maybe how they connected together (or disagreed), or maybe a way a particular theory or method was used, or maybe a novel interpretation, etc. These thoughts don’t have to be incredibly refined – they do have to be there.
Again, to repeat, I only want one
600-900 word
commentary from you each week. The exact
format is up to you and whatever works best for you is fine(e.g.
one long flowing essay, more distinct sections for each reading, following by a
paragraph that makes connections and analysis, etc). However, that one
commentary must address all the readings, while also showing some original
thoughts.
I expect them to be ready by noon for each class session. I am not expecting you to turn out The Sublime Object of Ideology, but I do expect you try your best to be grammatically correct, analytically bold and to not just babble on with no structure. Continually sub-par work will be rewarded as such – and apparent to all your hard-working peers.
Each week, you will receive “+” for doing the assignment; a “+L” if it is turned in late but done correctly, a “–“ if it is turned in, but showed lack of effort; or 0 if it is not turned in.
Additionally, once (and only once)
during the semester, you are allowed to pass on a week’s readings (if you are
going to conference, or out of town, or are sick). To use your pass, you still have to make a
new post in the forum, but just write “Pass” in the message box. This will be scored as a “+P”.
Critical
Essays
Because the various weeks’ readings all focus on
issues of space, place and identity, but do so in fairly diverse contexts, I
will not make you go through the whiplash-inducing process of connecting them
all together in a single paper.
Instead, what I am asking for are three 1750-2000 word essays, the best
of which will be presented to the group at the end of the seminar.[1] Ideally they will be expansions of the
“thoughts, analysis and/or criticisms on whatever you found striking in the
reading” from some of your weekly summaries, and not merely abstracting once
again what the articles were about. In
other words, this is your chance for bold critical thinking. And by critical thinking, I don’t mean just
looking at an article and declaring “It Stinks.” It means that you engage the readings,
appreciating the context in which they were written and being humbly aware of
the context from which you, as a situated reader, approach the readings. This is a chance to push your boundaries as a
thinker and writer.
As for how to structure the essays, I hope you vary
the approaches you take in the papers.
1. One approach is to vary the scale of your
analysis. For example, if one particular
passage or sub-section really grabs you, you can write an in-depth analysis of
it. Maybe it will be one paper, or a few
of the papers from a given week. Or
maybe you have made some surprising connections across papers from different
weeks.
2. Another approach is to vary the focus of the essay –
for example (and please don’t limit yourselves to these), one time discuss what
type of intellectual inquiry a group of readings make possible and what they
ignore, another time discuss how theory is translated into empirically enquiry,
or maybe how those people working as professionals or activists might be able
to apply lessons from the readings to transform society.
3. Yet another approach – and one I hope you all take in
one of your essays – is to espouse on how some of the readings might enrich
research you hope to undertake, or – if you don’t yet have a clue what you want
to research – how these readings inform, or maybe transform theory in your
discipline.
Basically, I don’t want to see the same paper from you
three times, just focusing on different articles.
I want to see a much higher level of polish on these
in terms of structure, grammar, and analysis than in the weekly thought
pieces. Papers that score well will
show rigorous, internally consistent thought that engages the readings in their
context. Please note: these are not
research papers, these are analysis papers.
You do not need to collect a bunch of outside sources.
To prevent you from leaving all three thought papers
until the last minute (and to get some feedback from me), I will make the first
one due on or before Monday, November 7.
It must be typed, printed and stapled, and handed to me during that
day’s meeting. The other two must be
handed in at the beginning of class on Monday, Dec. 5. Late papers will lose points rapidly and I
don’t do incompletes.
Also, so everyone in the seminar knows what you are
thinking, you are going to choose your best paper to present in class. This will be done during the last two
sessions of the seminar. This paper
will be weighted slightly higher than your other two.
Required
- Massey, Doreen. For Space. Sage Publications, Ltd. 2005. – This is a good overview of space, place and identity written by one of the most recognized authors on the subject.
- Hubbard, Phil; and Kitchin, Rob. Key Thinkers on Space and Place (Second Edition). Sage Publications Ltd. 2010. – This should be handy for you to contextualize the work of some of the big names we read this semester.
The rest of the readings I am distributing to you online.
Early Readings Schedule
(will be updated ):
Week 1: August 22 – Introductions
Week 2: August 29 – Imaginative Geographies
1. Edward Said. “Introduction” and “Imaginative Geography and Its Representations: Orientalizing the Oriental” Orientalism. Vintage, 1979. 1-28 and 49-73
2.
Derek Gregory. “Architectures of Enmity” and “‘Civilization’
and ‘Barbarism’” The Colonial Present:
3. Michael Heffernan. ``A Dream as Frail as Those of Ancient Time'': The In-credible Geographies of Timbuctoo” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 19.2 (2001): 203-225
4.
Jeffrey Sasha Davis. “Representing Place: ‘Deserted
Isles’ and the Reproduction of
5. “Edward Said” and “Derek Gregory” in Key Thinkers…
Week 3: September 5 – Labor Day – No Class