Geography 4712 Fall Semester 2011 POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY Instructor: John O’Loughlin 201h Guggenheim 303-492-1619 or 303-492-4371 email: [email protected] Office Hours: MW 4-5pm or by appt. (make appt. by email) Personal Homepage: http://www.colorado.edu/IBS/PEC/johno/johno.html Teaching Assistants: Meagan Todd Adam Levy Guggenheim 311 Guggenheim 311 Sections: 101, 102, 103 Sections: 104,105,106 [email protected] [email protected] Office Hours: Tues 11:30-1:30 or by appt Office Hours: MW 4-5pm or by appt . This course focuses on the international and cross-national perspectives of political geography. It deals with political, economic and social aspects of international relations from a geographical perspective and examines societies in transition in the post Cold War and 9-11 world. As such, the course has an integrative character and requires basic knowledge about international affairs. Frequent reading of a substantive newspaper or magazine, such as The New York Times, The Guardian, Christian Science Monitor, the Economist or the BBC News webpage (news.bbc.co.uk) would help significantly to acquire (or develop) knowledge of global locations and current events. The course is designed for the upper-division level. It surveys some important aspects of the discipline of political geography but does not engage in a systematic survey of regional issues and conflicts. Instead, contemporary developments in the world’s regions (especially the Balkans and the former Soviet Union, the Middle East and Africa) are used to illustrate the concepts from the lectures and readings. In response to student requests, we restructured the course in 1996 as a two lectures- one discussion period per week. (Formerly we had 3 lectures per week). This experiment is successful when all students come to the discussion sections having already read the material and with questions. The website will have a list of key concepts/terms from the lectures and readings and the TA will organize discussion around them. Further details in the first recitation section meeting. There is no text though we will read various text-like chapters as well as research articles on electronic reserve. Details on accessing the electronic files are given on the course webpage - http://www.colorado.edu/geography/class_homepages/geog_4712_f11/ PDF files of the class materials (text-only and key diagrams/maps) used in lecture are also available via the website for pre-lecture printing; these print-outs should help to alleviate frantic note-taking. The username for these notes via the Materials link is geog4712 and the password is xxxxxxxxx. (see the print copy or the instructors for the password) Success is this course is a function of the well-proven formula (class attendance, staying current with the readings, and asking for help when needed). Use of the lecture notes from the website is no substitute for class attendance. The TAs will take weekly recitation attendance and you will be expected to have the recitation sheet completed before class. The TAs may give small quizzes inorder to assess students’ comprehension of reading material especially if it clear that the readings are being ignored. Please note that recitations begin during the first week of classes. The exams are evenly divided between lecture and recitation material using a mixed essay and short-answer format. A supplemental review sheet of important concepts will be posted on the course website prior to exams. For the course research paper students are required to follow a specific framework by using a theory to explain/interpret a case study they have selected in consultations with their TA. Because of this format, students will find that the research paper is different than papers they have submitted to other courses. We strongly recommend that students carefully adhere to the paper guidelines, which are posted on the course webpage. Students are required to submit a paper proposal to their TA and the proposal must be approved before students continue with their research. Details about the format and requirements of the research paper will also be given in the discussion sections about mid-October. Grades are assigned on the basis of 25% midterm; 25% final examination; 25% term paper; 25% discussion section attendance/performance. NOTA BENE - KEY DATES Fall SEMESTER 2011: Midterm examination will be held on Wednesday 12 October 7-10pm in Hellems 199 Proposals (guidelines will be distributed) for the paper are due to the TA Friday October 21 at 5pm The paper must be submitted to the TA and to Turnitin.com by 5pm on Friday November 18. The final examination will be held on Thursday, December 15, 10:30am-1pm. (The final will cover the material in unit 2). Course Overview: In this course, we emphasize relative (and sometimes abstract) understandings of the spatio-temporal context within which life unfolds. Major concepts and theories from the field of international relations are included in our critique of world politics alongside topics that anchor the discipline of political geography. The course is not purely theoretical, however, and our explicit goal is to tie theory to contemporary issues and case studies. This is especially true in weekly recitation sections. The course material also does not center on a single world region. Instead, we follow a thematic approach: U.S. foreign policy, civil war in African states, political transformations in the former Soviet Union, and international political economy are all examples of topics covered in this course. Reversing the order of topics in the course for practical (many students write papers on nationalist topics) and pedagogical (more accessible and familiar material first) reasons, we begin by analyzing the reasons why “nationalisms” and civil wars seem to be booming, both literally and figuratively Then we examine the “Third Wave of Democracy” and examine the recent developments in Russia, the Middle East and Africa. After the midterm, we begin with a short review of “geopolitics” particularly as the field developed in the U.S. before and after the Cold War before we turn to a comprehensive framework for understanding contemporary global economic and political changes, “world-systems theory” and we then use this theory to understand contemporary
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